Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and love all things tech. So listener
Speaker 1: Limb asked that I do an episode about the Space Shuttle,
Speaker 1: and little did lim know what journey that would set
Speaker 1: me upon. It sent me to create that huge block
Speaker 1: of shows about space travel and spacecraft, and it actually
Speaker 1: has me thinking about pitching a series to my bosses
Speaker 1: about kind of a more in depth exploration of the
Speaker 1: stories behind the various space programs out there, going into
Speaker 1: more detailed because even though I've done multiple episodes, I've
Speaker 1: really only scratched the surface of the stories. So if
Speaker 1: you would like to hear a mini series, you know,
Speaker 1: not a ongoing podcast, but maybe a mini series episode
Speaker 1: or a series of episodes all about the space race
Speaker 1: and the development of spacecraft and launch vehicles and that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. Let me know. There's no guarantee I'll
Speaker 1: get it greenlit, but if you guys have an interest
Speaker 1: in something like that, I can certainly pitch it, particularly
Speaker 1: if it means I might get to go do stuff
Speaker 1: like take parabolic flights to experience micro gravity, or or
Speaker 1: to talk with astronauts and engineers and technicians and rockets scientists.
Speaker 1: I would love to do all of that, but I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna continue doing that on this show. That would
Speaker 1: be excessive. And there's so much more tech than just
Speaker 1: the space program, obviously, So we're going to conclude this
Speaker 1: power block of space material with a discussion about the
Speaker 1: space shuttle program. The Apollo Soyo's mission that happened in
Speaker 1: nine was the last we put people up into space
Speaker 1: until and that's when the first space shuttle flight took place.
Speaker 1: But just like there was overlap between Mercury, Gemini and Apollo,
Speaker 1: the space shuttle program actually overlapped with other space efforts.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like the Apollo Sayer's mission ended and then
Speaker 1: everyone said, well that was fun, Let's go make a
Speaker 1: space shuttle. For one thing, Richard Nixon announced that NASA
Speaker 1: was working on what would become the space shut program
Speaker 1: way back in nineteen seventy two. But you could actually
Speaker 1: argue the history of the space shuttle program goes back
Speaker 1: way before the Space race. That means to look at
Speaker 1: the origin of the space shuttle, we once again have
Speaker 1: to look at World War Two. So much of what
Speaker 1: came out of the space race, the space age really
Speaker 1: got started in World War Two. One of the projects
Speaker 1: that the Nazis pursued during World War two was the
Speaker 1: design of an aircraft that could take off from Germany
Speaker 1: and fly all the way to the United States with
Speaker 1: the intent of dropping a bomb on US cities. One guy,
Speaker 1: an engineer named Eugen Sunger, submitted a proposal for an
Speaker 1: aircraft that he called the Silver Vocal or Silver Bird.
Speaker 1: The aircraft was essentially a rocket with wings, and it
Speaker 1: was meant to take off to fly to a suborbital
Speaker 1: altitude but above the Karmen line, so it's technically in space,
Speaker 1: it just wasn't in orbit. And then it would begin
Speaker 1: its descent and as it would descend and re enter
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere, it would encounter increased air density and
Speaker 1: that would provide lift, enough lift for the aircraft to
Speaker 1: fly up in another arc. And so you would go
Speaker 1: from Germany to the United States across the Atlantic Ocean
Speaker 1: in a series of arcs, sort of like bouncing on
Speaker 1: the way over. You fly up into that orbital altitude,
Speaker 1: start to come down, hit the dead ser air use
Speaker 1: that to bank off of and go back up again
Speaker 1: and continue your flight that way. Now, it never got built,
Speaker 1: but the designs were part of the research that Americans
Speaker 1: seized as part of Operation paper Clip. And again that
Speaker 1: was when the United States grabbed up a bunch of
Speaker 1: scientific assets from Germany, including scientists, and brought them back
Speaker 1: to the United States. Sunger's concepts would become one of
Speaker 1: the inspirations for the design of the Space Shuttle. And
Speaker 1: while some engineers were working on rockets designed to either
Speaker 1: put stuff into orbit or more violently, served as a
Speaker 1: delivery system for a nuclear weapon, others were developing rocket planes.
Speaker 1: These aircraft would travel faster than any previous air vehicles,
Speaker 1: and one such rocket plane, the Bell X one, was
Speaker 1: the first vehicle to break the sound barrier when Charles E.
Speaker 1: Chuck Yeager made history on October fourteenth, nineteen. The X
Speaker 1: one was just the first in a series of rocket planes.
Speaker 1: One of them, one of the really famous ones, was
Speaker 1: the hypersonic X fifteen. In the nineteen sixties, while the
Speaker 1: Mercury and Gemini missions were going on, the X fifteen
Speaker 1: rocket plane was smashing records for both altitude and speed.
Speaker 1: Those rocket planes became important testing grounds and brought back
Speaker 1: valuable data for engineers who were interested in creating a
Speaker 1: spacecraft that could return to Earth by flying back through
Speaker 1: the atmosphere instead of plummeting to Earth and deploying a parachute,
Speaker 1: or maybe plummeting the Earth, deploying a parachute and firing
Speaker 1: off a last second breaking booster. Those were spacecraft that
Speaker 1: fell into a category that generally speaking, we could call
Speaker 1: lifting body vehicles, meaning they were required some sort of
Speaker 1: launch vehicle to lift them into outer space, and then,
Speaker 1: like ballistics, they would return to Earth on re entry.
Speaker 1: So they might have limited capabilities in orienting themselves properly
Speaker 1: for re entry, but they wouldn't fly under their own
Speaker 1: power and land at a designated landing space. They would
Speaker 1: come in like like a falling rock and deployed parachutes
Speaker 1: and maybe a breaking thruster, depending upon whether it was
Speaker 1: the U S or the Soviet versions. It was around
Speaker 1: this time that NASA and the Air Force decided that
Speaker 1: the edge of space was actually about eighty and a
Speaker 1: half kilometers above mean sea level, or fifty miles. Because,
Speaker 1: of course, the US always likes to measure things in
Speaker 1: a way different from everybody else. That puts the edge
Speaker 1: of space a little lower by US measurements than the
Speaker 1: international standard, because the international standard is the CARM online,
Speaker 1: which is at one kilometers above mean sea level. And
Speaker 1: it also means that any pilot who flew an aircraft
Speaker 1: that went above fifty miles altitude would receive the honor
Speaker 1: of being able to wear astronaut wings. So eight different
Speaker 1: fifteen pilots earned their astronaut wings in that way. By
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, the US Air Force started work on
Speaker 1: a new vehicle called the X twenty, also sometimes called
Speaker 1: the Dina Sore Sore spelled s o A r Hardy
Speaker 1: har Harror, and it was in many ways similar in
Speaker 1: design to the later Space Shuttle, and if it had
Speaker 1: been built, the Air Force would have used it to
Speaker 1: do stuff like satellite maintenance. The operation got as far
Speaker 1: as some early construction, but it was ultimately canceled, so
Speaker 1: no X twenties were ever finished. The idea of a
Speaker 1: space plane or a reusable vehicle fit into a general
Speaker 1: series of steps that the engineer Werner von Braun had recommended.
Speaker 1: Von Braun was one of the German engineers who had
Speaker 1: been brought over to the US as part of Operation
Speaker 1: paper Clip. Though the steps towards establishing a permanent presence
Speaker 1: in space said this is this is how they should work.
Speaker 1: According to von Broun, he said, this is this is
Speaker 1: the way we should go about this. First, we've got
Speaker 1: to figure out how to put a person into space.
Speaker 1: That's our first step. Second step is to figure out
Speaker 1: the design for a reusable spacecraft, because that's going to
Speaker 1: bring down the expense and the time it takes to
Speaker 1: get someone into space. Now, you have probably heard various
Speaker 1: essiments about how much money it takes to put a
Speaker 1: certain amount of stuff into space. Like a common one
Speaker 1: I hear is it costs ten thou dollars to put
Speaker 1: one pound of stuff up into space. But really it's
Speaker 1: way more complicated than that because it all depends upon
Speaker 1: multiple factors. So those factors include like which launch vehicle
Speaker 1: are you using and where in space are you going.
Speaker 1: Different launch vehicles use different types of fuel and that
Speaker 1: can cost different amounts. Also different amounts of fuel that
Speaker 1: also also will impact the cost of launch. They also
Speaker 1: have different payload capabilities, So if you pick a rocket
Speaker 1: that can carry more stuff, then it may mean that
Speaker 1: overall it costs less per unit of mass to send
Speaker 1: that stuff up there because you're able to send more
Speaker 1: up at once, and most launch vehicles are one use only,
Speaker 1: so you have to build a whole new launch vehicle
Speaker 1: every time you want to go up in space. So
Speaker 1: if you wanted to send material up on say the
Speaker 1: Atlas five rocket, that would cost you about twenty thousand
Speaker 1: two d per kilogram of stuff, and that's if you
Speaker 1: wanted to send it into lower th orbit. But if
Speaker 1: you wanted to use the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle from SpaceX,
Speaker 1: then it would cost more like one thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 1: dollars per kilogram, And that's for several reasons. One is
Speaker 1: that the Falcon Heavy has reusable components. Not the whole thing,
Speaker 1: but parts of it are reusable. That helps cut down
Speaker 1: some costs. And it has an incredible carrying capacity, so
Speaker 1: it can carry more stuff up. So the more stuff
Speaker 1: you carry, the more you have to divide that cost
Speaker 1: up by right, And so that's why the Falcon Heavy
Speaker 1: is relatively inexpensive when you compare it against other launch vehicles.
Speaker 1: When you're looking at, you know, the cost of kilogram
Speaker 1: to put it in lower th orbit. The further out
Speaker 1: you want to go. However, the more expensive it will
Speaker 1: be because if you want the Falcon heavy to send
Speaker 1: stuff to say Mars, well it can't carry as much.
Speaker 1: It needs more of its fuel just to propel the
Speaker 1: spacecraft towards Mars. So then you start seeing the cost
Speaker 1: go up because you have you can only pack so
Speaker 1: much stuff onto the launch vehicle before you have exceeded
Speaker 1: the carrying capacity for that destination. So, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's a little more complicated than just ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: per pound. Uh. After reusable spacecraft, von Brown envisioned building
Speaker 1: a space station in orbit to act as a base
Speaker 1: from which you could then launch expedittions too places like
Speaker 1: the Moon or Mars. And in fact, that was the
Speaker 1: plan that engineers had in the nineteen fifties. They said,
Speaker 1: this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna build a
Speaker 1: reusable spacecraft. It's going to be kind of a rocket plane.
Speaker 1: We're going to use this to construct a space station
Speaker 1: out in orbit, and from there we're going to launch
Speaker 1: missions to places like the Moon. And then in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven, the Soviets launched spot Nick into orbit, and
Speaker 1: that messed everything up. So the original plan of working
Speaker 1: on this sort of gradual development toward building a reusable
Speaker 1: spacecraft in the space station meant that it was just
Speaker 1: not going to be acceptable. There was now a very
Speaker 1: tighter deadline because the United States and the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: were now in a space race to prove that each
Speaker 1: country had the technological and military superiority over the other one.
Speaker 1: Because if you could put something in orbit, it means
Speaker 1: you could also potentially put a missile at the other
Speaker 1: country on the other side of the world. You could
Speaker 1: make it impact the other country. So there was a
Speaker 1: very strong political and military urgency behind the development of
Speaker 1: the space race, and the use of a reusable spacecraft
Speaker 1: in a in a space station didn't really fit into
Speaker 1: that narrative. It was going to take too long. So
Speaker 1: that's why they looked at the more simple approach of
Speaker 1: these liftoff vehicles that would have the ballistic re entry
Speaker 1: strategy instead of that gliding technology like a space plane.
Speaker 1: And you know, Kennedy had declared in nineteen sixty one
Speaker 1: that America was gonna put a man on the Moon
Speaker 1: and bring that man back before the end of the decade,
Speaker 1: so they had to skip that whole reusable spacecraft in
Speaker 1: space station part of the plan and go straight to
Speaker 1: how do we get to the Moon and back without
Speaker 1: this space station mid step, So the focus switched to
Speaker 1: the liftoff carrier programs. But engineers had not yet given
Speaker 1: up hope on a reusable spacecraft. They still had some
Speaker 1: pretty big plans, which I will tell you about in
Speaker 1: just a second, but first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. The early version of those plans
Speaker 1: that I mentioned before the break didn't involve a Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle attached to an enormous pair of solid fuel booster
Speaker 1: rockets like the Space Shuttle ultimately had. Instead, the original
Speaker 1: space Shuttle design would consist of a two stage vehicle,
Speaker 1: and each stage of the vehicle had its own pilot crew.
Speaker 1: So the first stage was a large hypersonic aircraft and
Speaker 1: it would carry the smaller Shuttle orbiter on its back
Speaker 1: piggyback style. So the concept we had the hypersonic plane
Speaker 1: achieve an altitude of at least fifty thousand feet and
Speaker 1: travel at incredible speeds before the second stage would launch
Speaker 1: off of the back of the first stage and then
Speaker 1: ignite its engines and take the orbiter the rest of
Speaker 1: the way out into space. The first stage would then
Speaker 1: return to Earth and land just like a normal plane would,
Speaker 1: and it would be completely reusable, and the orbiter, once
Speaker 1: it had concluded its mission, would re enter the Earth's
Speaker 1: atmosphere and likewise return to Earth. Which sounds like a
Speaker 1: supremely cool idea. You would have these re usable components.
Speaker 1: They would obviously need to be you know, refurbished after
Speaker 1: every single mission, but you would get to use them
Speaker 1: over and over again. It was a brilliant and elegant
Speaker 1: kind of approach, and there have been many proposed spacecraft
Speaker 1: designs that have followed in this model. The design was
Speaker 1: also uh to address one of the big challenges that
Speaker 1: NASA faced, which was that a winged vehicle made sense right.
Speaker 1: They wanted a winged vehicle where you could have a
Speaker 1: controlled glide back to Earth, where you could glide to
Speaker 1: a predetermined landing spot, a very precise landing spot, not
Speaker 1: just a general area where you're going to splash down
Speaker 1: in the ocean. But wings on a spacecraft are a
Speaker 1: big challenge. They're a critical part of the vehicle design.
Speaker 1: But whatever you make them out of has to be
Speaker 1: really really sturdy stuff, and the forces of re entry
Speaker 1: are incredible. That's intense pressure and heat, So conventional wings
Speaker 1: would be really difficult to build in such way that
Speaker 1: they would be reliable. The fear was that if you
Speaker 1: made conventional wings like wings attached to a fuselage, they
Speaker 1: would just rip off or or at least be so
Speaker 1: damaged as to be inoperable upon re entry. The solution
Speaker 1: was to design the body of the shuttle in such
Speaker 1: a way that the body is kind of molded so
Speaker 1: that the wings kind of mold out from the body,
Speaker 1: and the shuttle has what is called a double delta
Speaker 1: wing configuration. So a delta wing is a wing that's
Speaker 1: in the form of a triangle. It's triangular in shape,
Speaker 1: and it's called delta because it resembles the Greek letter delta,
Speaker 1: which is a little triangular shape. A double delta wing
Speaker 1: has a leading edge wing like the the edge that's
Speaker 1: closest to the front of the aircraft isn't straight on
Speaker 1: a double delta wing. So with the case of the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle, it's got a slight curve to it. If
Speaker 1: you look at a picture of a space shutter, you'll
Speaker 1: see what I'm saying. It's not just a uh, it's
Speaker 1: not just a flat line that extends out from the
Speaker 1: sides of the Space Shuttle. At the rear edge of
Speaker 1: the wings, the backside of the wings, there are special
Speaker 1: control surfaces called elevants, and these are sections that are
Speaker 1: kind of like flaps, and they could change their orientation
Speaker 1: to affect the shuttles pitch, which is what an elevator
Speaker 1: does on a traditional airplane, not the kind of elevator
Speaker 1: you get in in a building, but an airplane. Elevator
Speaker 1: is typically a part of the horizontal stabilizer on the
Speaker 1: ill section of an airplane, and you can adjust that
Speaker 1: to adjust the airplane's pitch. This was built into the
Speaker 1: wings of the Space Shuttle, but it also could work
Speaker 1: not just as an elevator, but as an aileron. And
Speaker 1: ailerons are used to affect the role motion of an aircraft.
Speaker 1: So the role is you know, pitches is up or down,
Speaker 1: nose up or nose down. Role is leaning left or
Speaker 1: leaning right essentially, and then the yaw, which is sort
Speaker 1: of the turning left or turning right, not leaning but turning.
Speaker 1: The yaw of the shuttle would be controlled using a rudder,
Speaker 1: and that was part of the tail fin in the
Speaker 1: back the rudder was actually a split rudder, and it
Speaker 1: could act as a speed brake. It's called a split
Speaker 1: rudder because it has a left half and a right half.
Speaker 1: If you were looking at the rudder from behind, you
Speaker 1: would see that there's a vertical line splitting right down
Speaker 1: the center of this rudder, and it could split apart
Speaker 1: and open kind of like a book like just imagine
Speaker 1: a book opening its covers. And it would do this
Speaker 1: on landing in order to act as sort of an
Speaker 1: air brake to help slow down the shuttle as part
Speaker 1: of the breaking system when you were returning to the
Speaker 1: landing site. Of course, all the airplane like designs of
Speaker 1: the shuttle are only important whenever it's in the Earth's
Speaker 1: atmosphere because in space, there's no atmosphere, so there's no lift,
Speaker 1: there's no air to break against, so none of those
Speaker 1: systems that work so well in Earth's atmosphere would do
Speaker 1: you any good at all once you're in space. To
Speaker 1: maneuver in space, the shuttle has a couple of different systems.
Speaker 1: Has the Orbital Maneuvering System or o MS, and it
Speaker 1: also had i should say had not has the Reaction
Speaker 1: Control System or r c S. And those are reaction engines,
Speaker 1: also known as thrusters. They appear as a collection of
Speaker 1: rocket engines on the back side of the shuttle. There's
Speaker 1: also one in the forward part of the the shuttle,
Speaker 1: near the nose uh they're used by the shuttle crew
Speaker 1: to change the shuttles orbit and rendezvous with other spacecraft
Speaker 1: or space stations, and the OMS also allows a shuttle
Speaker 1: to exit orbit for re entry. The RCS is used
Speaker 1: to control roll, pitch and yaw when the orbiter is
Speaker 1: re entering the atmosphere. So having the right orientation with
Speaker 1: regard to the Earth is of critical importance, obviously, because
Speaker 1: you want to direct the part of the spacecraft that
Speaker 1: has the heaviest heat shielding uh in uh in in
Speaker 1: in such a way that that's what's taking the brunt
Speaker 1: of all the heat and pressure of re entry. NASA
Speaker 1: started developing the O M S engines as early as
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, so it's good to remember that when
Speaker 1: you look at a space shuttle, what you're really looking
Speaker 1: at is a collection of hundreds of different subsystems, and
Speaker 1: each of those had their own teams of designers, engineers,
Speaker 1: and technicians, all working largely independently of one another. They
Speaker 1: had to make certain that everything was compatible with each other.
Speaker 1: But you had all these different teams working around the
Speaker 1: same time on these different systems. It was It's an
Speaker 1: incredibly complicated piece of machinery. So are a lot of
Speaker 1: different projects. They're all going on during the same time
Speaker 1: of development. So why didn't NASA proceed with this piggyback
Speaker 1: design that they had suggested before with the hypersonic plane
Speaker 1: carrying the orbital Shuttle. Well, the main problem was budget cutbacks.
Speaker 1: So in order to keep the Shuttle program alive in
Speaker 1: the wake of these smaller budgets that NASA was able
Speaker 1: to secure, they had to make some big compromises. So,
Speaker 1: just as the Space Agency had to switch gears and
Speaker 1: focus on a capsule based space program to meet the
Speaker 1: goal that Kennedy had laid out in nineteen one, they
Speaker 1: now had to work on a different means of getting
Speaker 1: the Shuttle up into space because they just weren't gonna
Speaker 1: have the budget to pursue this hypersonic plane approach. Uh,
Speaker 1: So they set that aside, although they would do a
Speaker 1: glider test that would be somewhat similar to the approach
Speaker 1: that they had suggested with the hypersonic plane, except, of course,
Speaker 1: the glider test would be aboard a plane that could
Speaker 1: not achieve hypersonic travel. I'll talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: that towards the end of the episode. So instead, the
Speaker 1: decision was made to go with rocket boosters to put
Speaker 1: the Shuttle into a position where it could enter orbit.
Speaker 1: But it wouldn't involve putting the Shuttle on a full
Speaker 1: launch vehicle the way the Apollo or the Mercury or
Speaker 1: the Gemini space capsules were. The shuttle itself would be
Speaker 1: one component of this overall launch system. So if you
Speaker 1: were to look at a space shuttle on a launchpad,
Speaker 1: you're at a distance, you're looking at the shuttle. It's
Speaker 1: attached to all of its components. It would look like
Speaker 1: the shuttle was piggybacked onto a very large rocket on
Speaker 1: the other side, the far side of the shuttle, and
Speaker 1: then there'd be two big rocket thrusters on either side
Speaker 1: of that middle rocket. But that middle rocket isn't a
Speaker 1: rocket at all. That central cylinder is the external tank.
Speaker 1: It's a fuel tank. It's just a gigantic fuel tank
Speaker 1: that carried the rocket fuel necessary for the shuttle's own
Speaker 1: primary engines to fire those three main engines. Now, I
Speaker 1: mentioned in the Rocket Science episode that solid fuel rockets
Speaker 1: cannot be turned off. Once you ignite them, they burn
Speaker 1: until there's nothing to burn. So the Space Shuttle booster
Speaker 1: rockets were two enormous solid fuel rocket boosters, and they
Speaker 1: were just used for liftoff. Obviously, the orbiter itself had
Speaker 1: three main engines which used liquid fuel, so they can
Speaker 1: be turned on and turned off. The external tank held
Speaker 1: all that liquid fuel and the oxidizer, so collectively these
Speaker 1: rocket engines provided millions of pounds of thrust, which was
Speaker 1: necessary to propel the Shuttle into orbit to achieve that
Speaker 1: eleven kilometers per second necessary to escape the Earth's gravity.
Speaker 1: In a bit, I'm going to talk about the launch process,
Speaker 1: but first let me give you a few more specifications
Speaker 1: about the Shuttle itself. A typical crew on a Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle mission was six or seven astronauts, but the first
Speaker 1: few missions had a crew of just two astronauts, so
Speaker 1: you had a commander and a pilot, and two of
Speaker 1: the missions actually had a crew of eight astronauts, though
Speaker 1: the second of those, the STS seventy one mission, started
Speaker 1: with seven crew members. So where did the eighth come from.
Speaker 1: How did that happen? Well, the mission went to the
Speaker 1: Mere Space Station and they brought up to relief cosmonauts
Speaker 1: who came aboard the space station, and they brought home
Speaker 1: two cosmonauts plus an astronaut in addition to their regular
Speaker 1: crew of five crew members. So that added up to
Speaker 1: eight on the trip home, seven on the way up,
Speaker 1: eight on the way back. There were three pressurized areas
Speaker 1: for the crew in the space shuttle. The flight deck
Speaker 1: was where the commander and pilot would sit. That's where
Speaker 1: the forward and rear flight controls existed. So all these
Speaker 1: switches and and and control sticks and everything that you
Speaker 1: would see, that's all in the flight deck section. It
Speaker 1: also could have two seats set behind the commander and
Speaker 1: the pilot that would give seating for up to four
Speaker 1: in the flight deck section for takeoff and landing. Then
Speaker 1: there was the mid deck. The mid deck normally had
Speaker 1: three more seats in it, so that's where your additional
Speaker 1: three astronauts could sit. With your full component of seven
Speaker 1: for the mission I just mentioned above, in which two
Speaker 1: cosmonauts returned home two additional ones, so you had eight
Speaker 1: instead of seven. The crew actually would install two special
Speaker 1: chairs in the mid deck that were in a sort
Speaker 1: of reclined position. Because the two cosmonauts had been aboard
Speaker 1: the Mere Space Station for a long time, I think
Speaker 1: more than a hundred days, and they were there was
Speaker 1: concern about how their bodies would react upon being re
Speaker 1: introduced to Earth's gravity, so they were put in a
Speaker 1: special reclined chair that had been made specifically for that purpose.
Speaker 1: Both of them were in reclined chairs in that mid
Speaker 1: deck section. Before taking off, there's a group of astronauts
Speaker 1: that are not going on that mission who are part
Speaker 1: of the process. They verify that every person who is
Speaker 1: going is properly strapped into his or her respective chair,
Speaker 1: because frequently, apparently when you're getting ready to go on
Speaker 1: a Space Shuttle mission, you've got a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff on your mind, like all the things you need
Speaker 1: to check before you take off and your mission parameters
Speaker 1: and things like that, and sometimes that means you forget
Speaker 1: to strap yourself in. So this crew had the official
Speaker 1: designation of the Astronauts Support Personnel or ASP, but some
Speaker 1: of them were called Cape Crusaders because they did their
Speaker 1: launches at at Kate Kennedy Kipe Canaveral and astronaut Chris Hadfield,
Speaker 1: that's the Canadian astronaut. He became famous when he UH
Speaker 1: shared a YouTube video of him aboard the International Space
Speaker 1: Station and he was playing the song Space Oddity. He
Speaker 1: served as a cape crusader a couple of times before
Speaker 1: he actually went up in a Shuttle mission. Now, if
Speaker 1: you look at the top side of a Space Shuttle,
Speaker 1: you see that split that goes down a large section
Speaker 1: of the top side. That's the cargo doors. It's a
Speaker 1: pair of doors, huge cargo doors. They open up to
Speaker 1: the shuttles cargo bay. The cargo bay is sixty ft long.
Speaker 1: That's about eighteen meters and fifteen feet wide or four
Speaker 1: and a half meters. The heaviest payload the Shuttle ever
Speaker 1: had to carry up in a mission was twenty five tons,
Speaker 1: and that was for the Chandra X ray observatory and
Speaker 1: the upper stage booster for that observatory. The cargo bay
Speaker 1: on the Space Shuttle also had a robotic manipulator arm
Speaker 1: that would allow Shuttle crew to deploy or retrieve satellites.
Speaker 1: So just a giant articulated arm that could that could
Speaker 1: grab a satellite, pull it from the cargo bay and
Speaker 1: place it gently off into space. Pretty cool. Also, it
Speaker 1: had the docking capability to dock with the International Space
Speaker 1: Station as well as the Russian Space Station mirror. The
Speaker 1: shuttle had its own airlock which two astronauts could fit
Speaker 1: into at a time in order to go into the
Speaker 1: cargo section where they would work with the satellites and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Uh. But if they were docking with
Speaker 1: a space station, then they would rely upon the space
Speaker 1: station's air dock that it would connect to a connector
Speaker 1: inside the cargo bay. But the astronauts wouldn't pass through
Speaker 1: an airlock from the shuttle side. They passed through an
Speaker 1: airlock on the space station side. Electricity on the Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle was generated by fuel cells. I love talking about
Speaker 1: fuel cells. I've got a future episode of tech Stuff
Speaker 1: planned where I will be talking about fuel cells with
Speaker 1: regard to cars and and uh, you know, terrestrial vehicles
Speaker 1: and comparing them against electric vehicles, which they're they're very
Speaker 1: closely related but super interesting. And they were used as
Speaker 1: the power source on the Space Shuttle missions. The heat
Speaker 1: shielding was primarily while he was all over the shuttle.
Speaker 1: On the entire shuttle was covered by heat shield material,
Speaker 1: but some of the most potent stuff that The black
Speaker 1: tiles were on the bottom side of the shuttle and
Speaker 1: were incredibly efficient and absorbing heat that had a very
Speaker 1: high capacity for heat. The shuttle had a couple of
Speaker 1: forward control thrusters near the nose of the spacecraft. I
Speaker 1: mentioned that earlier, and on landing, of course, they shuttle
Speaker 1: would deploy not just the landing gear, but once it
Speaker 1: touched down, it would deploy a parachute to help it
Speaker 1: slow down. So the Space Shuttle had a breaking system
Speaker 1: that included a parachute, It included that split rudder I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, It included other breaks because it was traveling
Speaker 1: really fast even as it was coming down now after
Speaker 1: descending through our atmosphere. Now, when we come back from
Speaker 1: the break, I'm going to talk about the lift off
Speaker 1: and landing process that the Space Shuttle went through on
Speaker 1: its missions and the various shuttles that were in the program,
Speaker 1: and of course will spend a moment to talk about
Speaker 1: the two tragic UH Space Shuttle missions that that ended
Speaker 1: in the loss of the entire crew for both missions.
Speaker 1: That will come up after this ad break. So let
Speaker 1: us take a quick break to thank our sponsors. All right,
Speaker 1: on the launch pad. If you were looking at the shuttle,
Speaker 1: the shuttle is upright, so it's it's with the nose
Speaker 1: facing in the air and the engine facing towards the ground.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, right, But that also means that all
Speaker 1: the chairs inside are such that if you were sitting
Speaker 1: in the shuttle and you're ready for launch, you're essentially
Speaker 1: on your back looking up, which is a good position
Speaker 1: because you're braced for a liftoff, but it also means
Speaker 1: that when you are coming in for landing, the chairs
Speaker 1: are in the normal upright position that we Earthlings tend
Speaker 1: to be in, which makes sense, and the bottom of
Speaker 1: the shuttle will make contact with the ground. If you've
Speaker 1: ever watched a launch, you've likely heard the countdown and
Speaker 1: probably a whole lot of chatter as various people go
Speaker 1: through an exhaustive checklist to verify that everything is a
Speaker 1: go for launch, and technicians, all of their in charge
Speaker 1: of their various systems technically had the power to give
Speaker 1: a go or no go based off the readings they
Speaker 1: were getting from their individual respective sensors and equipment. So
Speaker 1: if something looked wrong, they could say no go, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a problem, and then the process would stop.
Speaker 1: If it was a fixable problem, technicians would try to
Speaker 1: fix it and verify that the fix worked and the
Speaker 1: process would start up again. Otherwise thelaunch would have to
Speaker 1: be scrapped. The same was true about whether if the
Speaker 1: weather was not right for a launch, they could hold
Speaker 1: for a little bit. But there's a limited window for
Speaker 1: a launch to happen where the shuttle is going to
Speaker 1: enter orbit at the proper spot in order for it
Speaker 1: to conduct its mission, So bad weather can completely scrap
Speaker 1: a launch as well and force everyone to go for
Speaker 1: the next day. On the launch pad, an orbiter access
Speaker 1: arm provides a walkway to the shuttle's cabin. That's how
Speaker 1: you board the shuttle. So the launch pad has a
Speaker 1: tower and that tower has an orbiter access arm or
Speaker 1: walkway that connects to the shuttle. So at tea minus
Speaker 1: seven minutes thirty seconds, the order would be given to
Speaker 1: retract that arm. At team minute team minus five minutes,
Speaker 1: so five minutes up from liftoff, the commander of the
Speaker 1: shuttle would give the order to start the auxiliary power
Speaker 1: units aboard the shuttle. They would receive this order from
Speaker 1: ground control and then they would start to power up
Speaker 1: the auxiliary power units on the shuttle itself. At TEA
Speaker 1: minus two minutes, the crew would give be given the
Speaker 1: order to close their visors for their launch and entry suits,
Speaker 1: the pressurized suits that they would wear in case of
Speaker 1: some emergency de pressurization so that they could survive such
Speaker 1: a thing. At team minus thirty one seconds, assuming everything
Speaker 1: is cool, the go command is issued and the auto
Speaker 1: sequence start begins, which hands off primary control of the
Speaker 1: countdown to the shuttles computers from ground control to shuttle.
Speaker 1: At team minus sixteen seconds, they would activate these sound
Speaker 1: suppression water system. And I mentioned this earlier, So the
Speaker 1: system absorbs sound to help prevent acoustic damage to the shuttle.
Speaker 1: So it's not just thinking, oh what about the neighbors,
Speaker 1: it's literally the engines create so much vibration, so much sound,
Speaker 1: that it could potentially damage the spacecraft itself, and so
Speaker 1: this water system is meant to absorb some of that vibration.
Speaker 1: It's flowing water through a big system that can accept
Speaker 1: that vibration and thus dampen it a little bit. At
Speaker 1: T minus uh six seconds, the engines all fire up.
Speaker 1: Each of the three engines on the main orbiter start
Speaker 1: I should say all the engines on the orbiter start
Speaker 1: up the main engines at tea zero seconds. That's when
Speaker 1: the solid fuel boosters ignite. So those rocket boosters on
Speaker 1: either side ignite their solid The thrust is incredible. The
Speaker 1: bolts holding the shuttle to the ground are released in
Speaker 1: a little explosion, and the bolts all pop off and
Speaker 1: the Shuttle takes off into the sky through the power
Speaker 1: of rocket science. Now at the end of a mission,
Speaker 1: so during the mission, the Shuttle crew does whatever they're
Speaker 1: supposed to do, like maybe they're deploying a satellite. Maybe
Speaker 1: they're doing repair work on the Hubble Space telescope which
Speaker 1: was wired a couple of times. Maybe they're visiting the
Speaker 1: International Space Station, maybe they're changing crew out on the
Speaker 1: space station, whatever the parameters might be. At the conclusion
Speaker 1: of a mission, the Space Shuttle orbiter, once it's in
Speaker 1: the proper uh position relative to the Earth, would close
Speaker 1: its cargo bay doors. It would fire the RCS engines
Speaker 1: in order to maneuver into the proper orientation so that
Speaker 1: would be facing tail first toward the Earth, and then
Speaker 1: it would fire the O M S engines to slow
Speaker 1: down the orbiter, and by slowing down it causes your
Speaker 1: orbit to decay. Right, if you're no longer going orbital speed,
Speaker 1: you start to descend and you begin to re enter
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere. It actually would take about twenty five
Speaker 1: minutes from that reorientation uh to actually make contact with
Speaker 1: the upper atmosphere. So it's not like they reordered ordered themselves.
Speaker 1: Tell first fired an engine and then immediately they were falling.
Speaker 1: I mean technically they were kind of falling, but not
Speaker 1: in the Earth's atmosphere. It would take another twenty five
Speaker 1: minutes to get there. During that process, the crew would
Speaker 1: fire the RCS engines several more times to adjust the
Speaker 1: shuttle's orientation again so that the bottom of the shuttle
Speaker 1: would face the Earth. So while they would be tail
Speaker 1: first for the essentially the breaking process, they would reorient
Speaker 1: to be bottom facing the Earth for the re entry process,
Speaker 1: and they would also point the shuttle so that it
Speaker 1: was nose first again. The crew would also burn any
Speaker 1: leftover fuel in the forward RCS engine as a safety precaution,
Speaker 1: because the nose section of the shuttle was going to
Speaker 1: end up being the the site for a lot of
Speaker 1: heat and they didn't want to have any accidental ignitions.
Speaker 1: Of any leftover fuel, so they burn off the fuel
Speaker 1: the excess fuel on purpose. At that point, the heat
Speaker 1: shielding absorbs that intense heat with getting too hot themselves.
Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing the heat capacity of those those tiles
Speaker 1: that were used on the Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle
Speaker 1: had aft steering jets that would help keep the shuttle
Speaker 1: at the proper forty degree attitude upon landing or re entry,
Speaker 1: i should say, and once the orbit was low enough
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere, it could start to glide. Once the
Speaker 1: atmosphere and once it reached a density that was sufficient
Speaker 1: to provide lift, the shuttle could go into glide mode
Speaker 1: at about two thousand feet altitude. The commander would pull
Speaker 1: up on the nose, which helps slow the descent of
Speaker 1: the shuttle, and the pilot would deploy the landing gear.
Speaker 1: Upon touchdown on the landing strip, the uh the pilot
Speaker 1: would engage the brakes and deploy a parachute, and the
Speaker 1: vertical split rudder would open up to act as an
Speaker 1: air brake, and the shuttle would come to a halt
Speaker 1: somewhere maybe halfway to three quarters down the landing strip.
Speaker 1: Then the crew would go through a power down sequence
Speaker 1: powering down all the different systems aboard the shuttle. That
Speaker 1: would take another twenty minutes or so, and at that
Speaker 1: point they could finally get out and touch foot back
Speaker 1: down to Earth. The shuttles in the program included one
Speaker 1: called the Enterprise. That one was never designed to go
Speaker 1: into orbit. It was a test vehicle. Uh it was
Speaker 1: used for gliding tests, and it piggybacked on a specially
Speaker 1: outfitted seven forty seven. So this is the one I
Speaker 1: mentioned that was close to that original design for the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle, except, of course a seven forty seven is
Speaker 1: not a hypersonic aircraft, so it never would have been
Speaker 1: able to launch off a seven seven in the way
Speaker 1: that the original engineers had planned, but it did use
Speaker 1: one to launch from for gliding tests. The shuttles that
Speaker 1: were in active use were the Discovery, the Endeavor, the Atlantis,
Speaker 1: the Challenger, and the Columbia. And the Challenger in Columbia
Speaker 1: were two of the awful tragedies in the United States
Speaker 1: Space Program. I had talked about a few of the
Speaker 1: others and some of the other episodes. These two were
Speaker 1: also terrible, terrible losses, and they both resulted in the
Speaker 1: death of the entire crew aboard on each of their
Speaker 1: respective missions. The Challenger exploded during STS five one l
Speaker 1: It was the tenth mission for the Challengers. The Challenger
Speaker 1: had already been on nine other missions successfully. A seal
Speaker 1: on one of its rocket boosters failed and that allowed
Speaker 1: hot gas to burn through and pierce the external tank,
Speaker 1: the one carrying all the fuel and oxidizer and propellant,
Speaker 1: and it caused an explosion and the loss of all aboard.
Speaker 1: The Columbia broke apart during re entry on the mission
Speaker 1: STS one oh seven. That was the twenty mission for
Speaker 1: the Columbia. The Endeavor would be entered into service after
Speaker 1: the Challenger and all in all, through the entire space program,
Speaker 1: there were one five Space Shuttle missions that took place
Speaker 1: between and when the program ended in two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: The Discovery now calls the Dvar Hazy Center at the
Speaker 1: Smithsonian Home. The Endeavor is over at the California Science
Speaker 1: Center in Los Angeles. The Atlantis is at the Kennedy
Speaker 1: Space Center, and you can see a full sized replica
Speaker 1: of the Space Shuttle at Space Center Houston. That one
Speaker 1: is called the Independence, but it's a replica. It did
Speaker 1: not go into space. UM now I'm going to take
Speaker 1: a quick tangent to talk about the launch vehicles developed
Speaker 1: by SpaceX. I mentioned this in the last episode, but
Speaker 1: that episode was raring super long, so instead it's going
Speaker 1: to go in this one, which I'm sure we'll also
Speaker 1: run super long. But the last two launch vehicles that
Speaker 1: I need dimension uh, that were are will be responsible
Speaker 1: for taking crude as in manned missions up into space
Speaker 1: are the Falcon nine and the Falcon Heavy from SpaceX. Now,
Speaker 1: before I do, I also have to stress there were
Speaker 1: a lot of launch vehicles that were planned but never built,
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of launch vehicles that were
Speaker 1: designed for unmanned payloads going into space. And there are
Speaker 1: tons of countries besides the United States and Russia that
Speaker 1: have developed launch vehicles, but I focused on US and
Speaker 1: the uss are because of the Space race angle, and
Speaker 1: I also focused on the manned missions for the purpose
Speaker 1: of these podcasts, because again, to go into all of
Speaker 1: these different launch vehicles would take just take a podcast
Speaker 1: series all by itself. So let's finish up with the
Speaker 1: Falcons and rise up, so to speak. The Falcon nine
Speaker 1: is a two stage launch vehicle. It's classified as a
Speaker 1: medium lift vehicle The current version has the designation of
Speaker 1: Falcon nine Full Thrust, and it is a partially reusable spacecraft.
Speaker 1: The reusability of components helps bring down those costs, right.
Speaker 1: That's what I've mentioned before, and so that was one
Speaker 1: of the big selling points of SpaceX launch vehicles was
Speaker 1: that they would be at least partially reusable, and um
Speaker 1: the earliest versions of the Falcon nine rocket launched in June.
Speaker 1: The Falcon nine full thrust is two thirty feet tall
Speaker 1: or seventy meters. It is twelve feet in diameter or
Speaker 1: three point seven meters. I can carry payloads of up
Speaker 1: to four thousand, twenty ms or eight thousand, hundred sixty
Speaker 1: pounds if you want to go to Mars. If you
Speaker 1: think Mars is too far and you just want to
Speaker 1: go to low Earth orbit, you can actually pack up
Speaker 1: to twenty two thousand, eight hundred kilograms or fifty thousand,
Speaker 1: three hundred pounds worth of stuff on it. So I
Speaker 1: mentioned that earlier too, is that the amount of stuff
Speaker 1: you can carry on a launch vehicle also depends on
Speaker 1: where you want to go. The further out you want
Speaker 1: to go, the less stuff you can take. The Falcon
Speaker 1: heavy like the Falcon nine is partially reusable, and it's
Speaker 1: crazy big. So if you look at a Falcon nine
Speaker 1: launch vehicle, just imagine having two other first stage Falcon
Speaker 1: nine launch vehicles next to the middle one and and
Speaker 1: strapping them together, and you've got yourself a Falcon Heavy.
Speaker 1: The Falcon Heavy is essentially a Falcon nine at the core,
Speaker 1: flanked by two Falcon nine first stages as booster rockets.
Speaker 1: It's one of the most powerful launch vehicles ever designed.
Speaker 1: It currently is the the only or currently it can
Speaker 1: carry the heaviest payload out of all active launch vehicles. Um,
Speaker 1: it's the fourth most powerful of all time. It's right
Speaker 1: behind the Saturn five. The Saturn five was the launch
Speaker 1: craft that was responsible for taking astronauts to the Moon,
Speaker 1: and so it had a little bit more oomph than
Speaker 1: the Falcon Heavy. Uh. There are a couple of other
Speaker 1: launch vehicles in the past that would also outperform the
Speaker 1: Falcon Heavy on paper, but none of those are in
Speaker 1: active service right now. The Falcon Heavy is the same
Speaker 1: height as the Falcon nine because it's using that same
Speaker 1: rocket essentially as its core, but those two extra first
Speaker 1: stages make it much wider because you know, it's got
Speaker 1: one on either side of it. Its capacity means it
Speaker 1: can carry sixty three thousand, eight hundred kilograms or one
Speaker 1: hundred forty thousand, seven hundred pounds to low Earth orbit,
Speaker 1: an enormous payload. Now, if you want to go to Mars,
Speaker 1: you gotta slim down a little bit. You can have
Speaker 1: a payload of sixteen thousand, eight hundred kilograms or thirty
Speaker 1: seven thousand pounds. Let's say you want to go all
Speaker 1: the way out to Pluto. Well, then you have to
Speaker 1: slim down even more. You know, you could have as
Speaker 1: much as three thousand, five hundred kilograms of payload, which
Speaker 1: is the same as seven thousand, seven hundred pounds. A
Speaker 1: lot of that better be lunches, because it's gonna take
Speaker 1: you a really long time to get to Pluto. The
Speaker 1: Falcon Heavy has had only one test flight as of
Speaker 1: the recording of this podcast. Asked that was when Elon
Speaker 1: Musk sent his Tesla Roadster on a trip to Mars.
Speaker 1: I guess he got tired of the mechanics, saying they
Speaker 1: couldn't replicate whatever the problem was or something. But in
Speaker 1: the driver's seat of this Tesla Roadster was a dummy
Speaker 1: wearing a SpaceX space suit and it had the name
Speaker 1: star Man, and the cars sound system was set to
Speaker 1: play a loop of space Oddity and Life on Mars
Speaker 1: to David Bowie songs. Uh, although I have to admit
Speaker 1: in space no one can hear you listen to clam Rock.
Speaker 1: And that wraps up are huge block of content about
Speaker 1: space travel. Obviously, there are a lot of other things
Speaker 1: we could talk about. Space sales, we could talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, the gravity towing. There's tons of different stuff
Speaker 1: in space that's super cool. But some of it I've
Speaker 1: covered before, and other topics I'm sure i'll cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes. If you have any suggestions for topics I
Speaker 1: should cover, please let me know. Send me an email.
Speaker 1: The address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Don't forget, We've got a merch store over at t
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