WEBVTT - TechStuff Boards the Space Shuttle Program 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.920 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:16.560 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:22.200 How Stuff Works and love all things tech. So listener 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:26.080 Limb asked that I do an episode about the Space Shuttle, 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:30.800 and little did lim know what journey that would set 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:33.840 me upon. It sent me to create that huge block 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:37.080 of shows about space travel and spacecraft, and it actually 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:40.360 has me thinking about pitching a series to my bosses 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:44.559 about kind of a more in depth exploration of the 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:48.720 stories behind the various space programs out there, going into 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:52.040 more detailed because even though I've done multiple episodes, I've 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:55.920 really only scratched the surface of the stories. So if 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:58.600 you would like to hear a mini series, you know, 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:03.000 not a ongoing podcast, but maybe a mini series episode 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:06.520 or a series of episodes all about the space race 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:09.200 and the development of spacecraft and launch vehicles and that 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:13.479 sort of stuff. Let me know. There's no guarantee I'll 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:16.560 get it greenlit, but if you guys have an interest 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:19.840 in something like that, I can certainly pitch it, particularly 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:21.520 if it means I might get to go do stuff 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:25.080 like take parabolic flights to experience micro gravity, or or 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:29.479 to talk with astronauts and engineers and technicians and rockets scientists. 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:32.560 I would love to do all of that, but I'm 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:35.800 not gonna continue doing that on this show. That would 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:38.520 be excessive. And there's so much more tech than just 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:42.280 the space program, obviously, So we're going to conclude this 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.679 power block of space material with a discussion about the 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:51.640 space shuttle program. The Apollo Soyo's mission that happened in 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:58.400 nine was the last we put people up into space 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:02.960 until and that's when the first space shuttle flight took place. 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:08.400 But just like there was overlap between Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:12.320 the space shuttle program actually overlapped with other space efforts. 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:16.080 It wasn't like the Apollo Sayer's mission ended and then 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:19.080 everyone said, well that was fun, Let's go make a 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:23.480 space shuttle. For one thing, Richard Nixon announced that NASA 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:26.440 was working on what would become the space shut program 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:30.040 way back in nineteen seventy two. But you could actually 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:33.000 argue the history of the space shuttle program goes back 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:36.800 way before the Space race. That means to look at 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:40.440 the origin of the space shuttle, we once again have 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:44.119 to look at World War Two. So much of what 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:47.520 came out of the space race, the space age really 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:50.640 got started in World War Two. One of the projects 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:53.800 that the Nazis pursued during World War two was the 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:57.239 design of an aircraft that could take off from Germany 0:02:57.320 --> 0:02:59.800 and fly all the way to the United States with 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:05.280 the intent of dropping a bomb on US cities. One guy, 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:10.480 an engineer named Eugen Sunger, submitted a proposal for an 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:14.959 aircraft that he called the Silver Vocal or Silver Bird. 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:20.160 The aircraft was essentially a rocket with wings, and it 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:23.839 was meant to take off to fly to a suborbital 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:28.400 altitude but above the Karmen line, so it's technically in space, 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:31.800 it just wasn't in orbit. And then it would begin 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:35.800 its descent and as it would descend and re enter 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:40.760 the Earth's atmosphere, it would encounter increased air density and 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:44.880 that would provide lift, enough lift for the aircraft to 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:49.160 fly up in another arc. And so you would go 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:53.720 from Germany to the United States across the Atlantic Ocean 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:56.840 in a series of arcs, sort of like bouncing on 0:03:56.880 --> 0:04:01.240 the way over. You fly up into that orbital altitude, 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:03.920 start to come down, hit the dead ser air use 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:06.040 that to bank off of and go back up again 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:09.640 and continue your flight that way. Now, it never got built, 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:13.120 but the designs were part of the research that Americans 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:17.200 seized as part of Operation paper Clip. And again that 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:19.240 was when the United States grabbed up a bunch of 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:24.440 scientific assets from Germany, including scientists, and brought them back 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:28.240 to the United States. Sunger's concepts would become one of 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:31.040 the inspirations for the design of the Space Shuttle. And 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:33.960 while some engineers were working on rockets designed to either 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:37.800 put stuff into orbit or more violently, served as a 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:42.120 delivery system for a nuclear weapon, others were developing rocket planes. 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:46.960 These aircraft would travel faster than any previous air vehicles, 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:50.400 and one such rocket plane, the Bell X one, was 0:04:50.440 --> 0:04:53.760 the first vehicle to break the sound barrier when Charles E. 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:59.440 Chuck Yeager made history on October fourteenth, nineteen. The X 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:02.440 one was just the first in a series of rocket planes. 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:06.200 One of them, one of the really famous ones, was 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:10.640 the hypersonic X fifteen. In the nineteen sixties, while the 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:14.760 Mercury and Gemini missions were going on, the X fifteen 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:18.600 rocket plane was smashing records for both altitude and speed. 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:22.159 Those rocket planes became important testing grounds and brought back 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:25.200 valuable data for engineers who were interested in creating a 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:28.720 spacecraft that could return to Earth by flying back through 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:33.120 the atmosphere instead of plummeting to Earth and deploying a parachute, 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:35.960 or maybe plummeting the Earth, deploying a parachute and firing 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:40.839 off a last second breaking booster. Those were spacecraft that 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:43.400 fell into a category that generally speaking, we could call 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:47.440 lifting body vehicles, meaning they were required some sort of 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:51.039 launch vehicle to lift them into outer space, and then, 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:55.039 like ballistics, they would return to Earth on re entry. 0:05:56.000 --> 0:06:00.880 So they might have limited capabilities in orienting themselves properly 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:04.400 for re entry, but they wouldn't fly under their own 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:09.280 power and land at a designated landing space. They would 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:13.280 come in like like a falling rock and deployed parachutes 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.440 and maybe a breaking thruster, depending upon whether it was 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:20.640 the U S or the Soviet versions. It was around 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:24.080 this time that NASA and the Air Force decided that 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:26.680 the edge of space was actually about eighty and a 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:30.599 half kilometers above mean sea level, or fifty miles. Because, 0:06:30.640 --> 0:06:33.680 of course, the US always likes to measure things in 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:37.680 a way different from everybody else. That puts the edge 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:41.560 of space a little lower by US measurements than the 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:44.720 international standard, because the international standard is the CARM online, 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:48.000 which is at one kilometers above mean sea level. And 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:51.040 it also means that any pilot who flew an aircraft 0:06:51.279 --> 0:06:55.800 that went above fifty miles altitude would receive the honor 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:59.839 of being able to wear astronaut wings. So eight different 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:03.480 fifteen pilots earned their astronaut wings in that way. By 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:06.880 the nineteen sixties, the US Air Force started work on 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:11.120 a new vehicle called the X twenty, also sometimes called 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:15.800 the Dina Sore Sore spelled s o A r Hardy 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:19.120 har Harror, and it was in many ways similar in 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.840 design to the later Space Shuttle, and if it had 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.280 been built, the Air Force would have used it to 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:29.000 do stuff like satellite maintenance. The operation got as far 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:32.960 as some early construction, but it was ultimately canceled, so 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:36.800 no X twenties were ever finished. The idea of a 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:40.240 space plane or a reusable vehicle fit into a general 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:44.400 series of steps that the engineer Werner von Braun had recommended. 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:46.520 Von Braun was one of the German engineers who had 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:49.000 been brought over to the US as part of Operation 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:53.720 paper Clip. Though the steps towards establishing a permanent presence 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:57.640 in space said this is this is how they should work. 0:07:58.240 --> 0:07:59.960 According to von Broun, he said, this is this is 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:03.120 the way we should go about this. First, we've got 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:05.000 to figure out how to put a person into space. 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:07.880 That's our first step. Second step is to figure out 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.560 the design for a reusable spacecraft, because that's going to 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:16.000 bring down the expense and the time it takes to 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:20.440 get someone into space. Now, you have probably heard various 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:23.040 essiments about how much money it takes to put a 0:08:23.080 --> 0:08:26.480 certain amount of stuff into space. Like a common one 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:28.640 I hear is it costs ten thou dollars to put 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:32.600 one pound of stuff up into space. But really it's 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:35.520 way more complicated than that because it all depends upon 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:40.480 multiple factors. So those factors include like which launch vehicle 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:43.200 are you using and where in space are you going. 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:48.120 Different launch vehicles use different types of fuel and that 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:52.000 can cost different amounts. Also different amounts of fuel that 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:55.400 also also will impact the cost of launch. They also 0:08:55.440 --> 0:08:59.240 have different payload capabilities, So if you pick a rocket 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:03.880 that can carry more stuff, then it may mean that 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:08.560 overall it costs less per unit of mass to send 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:11.040 that stuff up there because you're able to send more 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:15.240 up at once, and most launch vehicles are one use only, 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:17.559 so you have to build a whole new launch vehicle 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:20.120 every time you want to go up in space. So 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:23.360 if you wanted to send material up on say the 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:27.160 Atlas five rocket, that would cost you about twenty thousand 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:30.559 two d per kilogram of stuff, and that's if you 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:33.200 wanted to send it into lower th orbit. But if 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:37.679 you wanted to use the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle from SpaceX, 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:41.160 then it would cost more like one thousand, seven hundred 0:09:41.200 --> 0:09:45.400 dollars per kilogram, And that's for several reasons. One is 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:48.880 that the Falcon Heavy has reusable components. Not the whole thing, 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:51.559 but parts of it are reusable. That helps cut down 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:55.800 some costs. And it has an incredible carrying capacity, so 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:58.600 it can carry more stuff up. So the more stuff 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:02.000 you carry, the more you have to divide that cost 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:06.240 up by right, And so that's why the Falcon Heavy 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:11.000 is relatively inexpensive when you compare it against other launch vehicles. 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:13.199 When you're looking at, you know, the cost of kilogram 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:15.640 to put it in lower th orbit. The further out 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:17.559 you want to go. However, the more expensive it will 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:20.959 be because if you want the Falcon heavy to send 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:26.640 stuff to say Mars, well it can't carry as much. 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:30.240 It needs more of its fuel just to propel the 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:34.240 spacecraft towards Mars. So then you start seeing the cost 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:38.120 go up because you have you can only pack so 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:42.520 much stuff onto the launch vehicle before you have exceeded 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:45.880 the carrying capacity for that destination. So, like I said, 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:48.520 it's a little more complicated than just ten thousand dollars 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:53.760 per pound. Uh. After reusable spacecraft, von Brown envisioned building 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:56.800 a space station in orbit to act as a base 0:10:56.960 --> 0:11:01.040 from which you could then launch expedittions too places like 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:03.920 the Moon or Mars. And in fact, that was the 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:06.280 plan that engineers had in the nineteen fifties. They said, 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:08.800 this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna build a 0:11:08.840 --> 0:11:11.760 reusable spacecraft. It's going to be kind of a rocket plane. 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:16.080 We're going to use this to construct a space station 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:19.040 out in orbit, and from there we're going to launch 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:23.360 missions to places like the Moon. And then in nineteen 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:27.120 fifty seven, the Soviets launched spot Nick into orbit, and 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:31.960 that messed everything up. So the original plan of working 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:36.599 on this sort of gradual development toward building a reusable 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:40.560 spacecraft in the space station meant that it was just 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:43.040 not going to be acceptable. There was now a very 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:46.760 tighter deadline because the United States and the Soviet Union 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:51.040 were now in a space race to prove that each 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:54.880 country had the technological and military superiority over the other one. 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:57.080 Because if you could put something in orbit, it means 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:00.880 you could also potentially put a missile at the other 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:03.400 country on the other side of the world. You could 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:06.320 make it impact the other country. So there was a 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:11.960 very strong political and military urgency behind the development of 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:17.719 the space race, and the use of a reusable spacecraft 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:20.840 in a in a space station didn't really fit into 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:23.920 that narrative. It was going to take too long. So 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:29.000 that's why they looked at the more simple approach of 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:33.160 these liftoff vehicles that would have the ballistic re entry 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:36.560 strategy instead of that gliding technology like a space plane. 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.520 And you know, Kennedy had declared in nineteen sixty one 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:42.280 that America was gonna put a man on the Moon 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:45.520 and bring that man back before the end of the decade, 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:49.319 so they had to skip that whole reusable spacecraft in 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:51.640 space station part of the plan and go straight to 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:54.280 how do we get to the Moon and back without 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:58.400 this space station mid step, So the focus switched to 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:03.080 the liftoff carrier programs. But engineers had not yet given 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:06.120 up hope on a reusable spacecraft. They still had some 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:08.560 pretty big plans, which I will tell you about in 0:13:08.600 --> 0:13:11.560 just a second, but first let's take a quick break 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:22.400 to thank our sponsor. The early version of those plans 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:25.839 that I mentioned before the break didn't involve a Space 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:29.439 Shuttle attached to an enormous pair of solid fuel booster 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:33.360 rockets like the Space Shuttle ultimately had. Instead, the original 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:36.840 space Shuttle design would consist of a two stage vehicle, 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:40.520 and each stage of the vehicle had its own pilot crew. 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:46.080 So the first stage was a large hypersonic aircraft and 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:50.000 it would carry the smaller Shuttle orbiter on its back 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:53.800 piggyback style. So the concept we had the hypersonic plane 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:58.280 achieve an altitude of at least fifty thousand feet and 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:02.600 travel at incredible speeds before the second stage would launch 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:05.960 off of the back of the first stage and then 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:08.800 ignite its engines and take the orbiter the rest of 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:11.679 the way out into space. The first stage would then 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:14.920 return to Earth and land just like a normal plane would, 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:17.760 and it would be completely reusable, and the orbiter, once 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:20.360 it had concluded its mission, would re enter the Earth's 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:23.320 atmosphere and likewise return to Earth. Which sounds like a 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:26.960 supremely cool idea. You would have these re usable components. 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:30.040 They would obviously need to be you know, refurbished after 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:33.520 every single mission, but you would get to use them 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:36.119 over and over again. It was a brilliant and elegant 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:41.160 kind of approach, and there have been many proposed spacecraft 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:44.680 designs that have followed in this model. The design was 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:48.440 also uh to address one of the big challenges that 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:53.040 NASA faced, which was that a winged vehicle made sense right. 0:14:53.160 --> 0:14:55.840 They wanted a winged vehicle where you could have a 0:14:55.920 --> 0:15:00.760 controlled glide back to Earth, where you could glide to 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:05.480 a predetermined landing spot, a very precise landing spot, not 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:08.520 just a general area where you're going to splash down 0:15:08.520 --> 0:15:11.600 in the ocean. But wings on a spacecraft are a 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:14.640 big challenge. They're a critical part of the vehicle design. 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:17.960 But whatever you make them out of has to be 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:21.440 really really sturdy stuff, and the forces of re entry 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:26.960 are incredible. That's intense pressure and heat, So conventional wings 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:28.880 would be really difficult to build in such way that 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:31.680 they would be reliable. The fear was that if you 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:36.000 made conventional wings like wings attached to a fuselage, they 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:38.720 would just rip off or or at least be so 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:42.400 damaged as to be inoperable upon re entry. The solution 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:44.880 was to design the body of the shuttle in such 0:15:44.920 --> 0:15:48.440 a way that the body is kind of molded so 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:51.400 that the wings kind of mold out from the body, 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:54.160 and the shuttle has what is called a double delta 0:15:54.240 --> 0:15:58.000 wing configuration. So a delta wing is a wing that's 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:01.120 in the form of a triangle. It's triangular in shape, 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:05.080 and it's called delta because it resembles the Greek letter delta, 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:08.840 which is a little triangular shape. A double delta wing 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:12.840 has a leading edge wing like the the edge that's 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:17.160 closest to the front of the aircraft isn't straight on 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:19.280 a double delta wing. So with the case of the 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:23.560 Space Shuttle, it's got a slight curve to it. If 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:25.040 you look at a picture of a space shutter, you'll 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:27.480 see what I'm saying. It's not just a uh, it's 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:31.040 not just a flat line that extends out from the 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:35.400 sides of the Space Shuttle. At the rear edge of 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:39.360 the wings, the backside of the wings, there are special 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:43.240 control surfaces called elevants, and these are sections that are 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:46.400 kind of like flaps, and they could change their orientation 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:50.440 to affect the shuttles pitch, which is what an elevator 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:53.520 does on a traditional airplane, not the kind of elevator 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:56.080 you get in in a building, but an airplane. Elevator 0:16:56.560 --> 0:16:59.760 is typically a part of the horizontal stabilizer on the 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:02.800 ill section of an airplane, and you can adjust that 0:17:02.880 --> 0:17:05.919 to adjust the airplane's pitch. This was built into the 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:10.200 wings of the Space Shuttle, but it also could work 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:13.480 not just as an elevator, but as an aileron. And 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:18.480 ailerons are used to affect the role motion of an aircraft. 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:23.160 So the role is you know, pitches is up or down, 0:17:23.240 --> 0:17:26.879 nose up or nose down. Role is leaning left or 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:31.160 leaning right essentially, and then the yaw, which is sort 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:35.280 of the turning left or turning right, not leaning but turning. 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:38.159 The yaw of the shuttle would be controlled using a rudder, 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:40.399 and that was part of the tail fin in the 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:44.080 back the rudder was actually a split rudder, and it 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:46.439 could act as a speed brake. It's called a split 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:49.399 rudder because it has a left half and a right half. 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:52.399 If you were looking at the rudder from behind, you 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:55.600 would see that there's a vertical line splitting right down 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:59.919 the center of this rudder, and it could split apart 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:03.000 and open kind of like a book like just imagine 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:06.760 a book opening its covers. And it would do this 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:08.960 on landing in order to act as sort of an 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:12.240 air brake to help slow down the shuttle as part 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:15.600 of the breaking system when you were returning to the 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:18.960 landing site. Of course, all the airplane like designs of 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:21.720 the shuttle are only important whenever it's in the Earth's 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:25.800 atmosphere because in space, there's no atmosphere, so there's no lift, 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:29.640 there's no air to break against, so none of those 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:33.679 systems that work so well in Earth's atmosphere would do 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:35.800 you any good at all once you're in space. To 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:39.200 maneuver in space, the shuttle has a couple of different systems. 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:43.159 Has the Orbital Maneuvering System or o MS, and it 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:46.400 also had i should say had not has the Reaction 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:51.679 Control System or r c S. And those are reaction engines, 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:55.439 also known as thrusters. They appear as a collection of 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:57.520 rocket engines on the back side of the shuttle. There's 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:01.080 also one in the forward part of the the shuttle, 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:03.960 near the nose uh they're used by the shuttle crew 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:07.560 to change the shuttles orbit and rendezvous with other spacecraft 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:10.320 or space stations, and the OMS also allows a shuttle 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:13.280 to exit orbit for re entry. The RCS is used 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:16.000 to control roll, pitch and yaw when the orbiter is 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:20.880 re entering the atmosphere. So having the right orientation with 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:24.160 regard to the Earth is of critical importance, obviously, because 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:27.639 you want to direct the part of the spacecraft that 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:32.439 has the heaviest heat shielding uh in uh in in 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:34.639 in such a way that that's what's taking the brunt 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:39.080 of all the heat and pressure of re entry. NASA 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:41.840 started developing the O M S engines as early as 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:46.080 nineteen seventy three, so it's good to remember that when 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:48.080 you look at a space shuttle, what you're really looking 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:52.840 at is a collection of hundreds of different subsystems, and 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:56.400 each of those had their own teams of designers, engineers, 0:19:56.400 --> 0:20:00.600 and technicians, all working largely independently of one another. They 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:03.320 had to make certain that everything was compatible with each other. 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:06.399 But you had all these different teams working around the 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:10.159 same time on these different systems. It was It's an 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:13.679 incredibly complicated piece of machinery. So are a lot of 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:16.640 different projects. They're all going on during the same time 0:20:16.640 --> 0:20:20.200 of development. So why didn't NASA proceed with this piggyback 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:23.680 design that they had suggested before with the hypersonic plane 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:28.679 carrying the orbital Shuttle. Well, the main problem was budget cutbacks. 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:31.600 So in order to keep the Shuttle program alive in 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:35.160 the wake of these smaller budgets that NASA was able 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:38.520 to secure, they had to make some big compromises. So, 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:41.760 just as the Space Agency had to switch gears and 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:45.119 focus on a capsule based space program to meet the 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:48.560 goal that Kennedy had laid out in nineteen one, they 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:51.240 now had to work on a different means of getting 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.240 the Shuttle up into space because they just weren't gonna 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:58.640 have the budget to pursue this hypersonic plane approach. Uh, 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:02.040 So they set that aside, although they would do a 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:06.400 glider test that would be somewhat similar to the approach 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:09.280 that they had suggested with the hypersonic plane, except, of course, 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:12.800 the glider test would be aboard a plane that could 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:15.800 not achieve hypersonic travel. I'll talk a little bit about 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:18.399 that towards the end of the episode. So instead, the 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:22.200 decision was made to go with rocket boosters to put 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:24.600 the Shuttle into a position where it could enter orbit. 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:28.200 But it wouldn't involve putting the Shuttle on a full 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:33.080 launch vehicle the way the Apollo or the Mercury or 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:36.919 the Gemini space capsules were. The shuttle itself would be 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:41.760 one component of this overall launch system. So if you 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:43.840 were to look at a space shuttle on a launchpad, 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:46.200 you're at a distance, you're looking at the shuttle. It's 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:49.840 attached to all of its components. It would look like 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:54.680 the shuttle was piggybacked onto a very large rocket on 0:21:55.160 --> 0:21:57.439 the other side, the far side of the shuttle, and 0:21:57.480 --> 0:22:01.960 then there'd be two big rocket thrusters on either side 0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:06.520 of that middle rocket. But that middle rocket isn't a 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:10.919 rocket at all. That central cylinder is the external tank. 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:15.080 It's a fuel tank. It's just a gigantic fuel tank 0:22:15.160 --> 0:22:18.720 that carried the rocket fuel necessary for the shuttle's own 0:22:18.800 --> 0:22:22.639 primary engines to fire those three main engines. Now, I 0:22:22.680 --> 0:22:25.840 mentioned in the Rocket Science episode that solid fuel rockets 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:28.600 cannot be turned off. Once you ignite them, they burn 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:33.240 until there's nothing to burn. So the Space Shuttle booster 0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:37.720 rockets were two enormous solid fuel rocket boosters, and they 0:22:37.720 --> 0:22:41.560 were just used for liftoff. Obviously, the orbiter itself had 0:22:41.600 --> 0:22:44.320 three main engines which used liquid fuel, so they can 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:47.639 be turned on and turned off. The external tank held 0:22:47.680 --> 0:22:51.160 all that liquid fuel and the oxidizer, so collectively these 0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:54.800 rocket engines provided millions of pounds of thrust, which was 0:22:54.840 --> 0:22:58.000 necessary to propel the Shuttle into orbit to achieve that 0:22:58.040 --> 0:23:01.360 eleven kilometers per second necessary to escape the Earth's gravity. 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:04.320 In a bit, I'm going to talk about the launch process, 0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:06.880 but first let me give you a few more specifications 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:10.960 about the Shuttle itself. A typical crew on a Space 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:15.280 Shuttle mission was six or seven astronauts, but the first 0:23:15.280 --> 0:23:17.760 few missions had a crew of just two astronauts, so 0:23:17.800 --> 0:23:20.840 you had a commander and a pilot, and two of 0:23:20.880 --> 0:23:25.320 the missions actually had a crew of eight astronauts, though 0:23:25.440 --> 0:23:29.119 the second of those, the STS seventy one mission, started 0:23:29.480 --> 0:23:32.719 with seven crew members. So where did the eighth come from. 0:23:32.800 --> 0:23:35.600 How did that happen? Well, the mission went to the 0:23:35.640 --> 0:23:40.200 Mere Space Station and they brought up to relief cosmonauts 0:23:40.200 --> 0:23:43.399 who came aboard the space station, and they brought home 0:23:43.760 --> 0:23:48.440 two cosmonauts plus an astronaut in addition to their regular 0:23:48.480 --> 0:23:52.240 crew of five crew members. So that added up to 0:23:52.359 --> 0:23:54.479 eight on the trip home, seven on the way up, 0:23:54.680 --> 0:23:58.680 eight on the way back. There were three pressurized areas 0:23:58.720 --> 0:24:01.600 for the crew in the space shuttle. The flight deck 0:24:01.680 --> 0:24:04.240 was where the commander and pilot would sit. That's where 0:24:04.280 --> 0:24:08.280 the forward and rear flight controls existed. So all these 0:24:08.400 --> 0:24:11.960 switches and and and control sticks and everything that you 0:24:11.960 --> 0:24:15.399