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Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/20/09
11/20/09
There is nothing in the world like hearing these engines at full throttle. Even at several miles away, the roar was amazingly intense, like standing in a blast furnace.
I can remember thinking at the time how amazed I was that we as humans could create this. We've got a ways to go before we can actually be considered a space-faring race, but just the fact that we're willing and capable of building machinery like this says a lot.
11/20/09
You can see the system in operation - it's the water spray that starts up a bit before the main engines light off.
11/20/09
11/20/09
11/20/09
Jesus is trying too hard to make a joke.
11/20/09
11/20/09
11/16/09
See here for HD videos of launch. Great detail and awesome engine-start and booster separation. #space
11/16/09
I do wish nasa had a site where it would have multiple camera views and you could watch one, or them all. Instead of watching 3 webcams, the one you provided, nasa's webcam, and the nasa channel on the tv.
And hopefully they will put a camera on one of the astronaut's helmet, so we can see from their view. #space
11/16/09
About time they get some damn cupholders in the ISS #space
11/16/09
11/16/09
11/16/09
07/02/09
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06/02/09
06/02/09
06/02/09
06/02/09
The 747-100s used by NASA are almost completely stripped out on the inside (they're basically the cargo versions without the cargo-handling hardware). The shuttle is below -- actually, quite a bit below -- the maximum lifting capacity of the airframe. The takeoff weight of the 747 with the shuttle is actually less than the takeoff weight of a passenger 747 with a full 460+ passenger load fueled for a SFO-Tokyo run.
The trick with the shuttle ferry configuration is the greatly increased drag and the change in the overall vehicle's center of gravity -- not the weight.
06/02/09
06/02/09
Nobody has ever claimed that the shuttle is "enviro-friendly".
They don't launch it from California because you can't launch things over populated areas. You maximize your lifting capacity if you launch in the direction that the Earth is spinning -- i.e. to the east. East of Florida is about 6000 miles of open ocean. East of California is all of America. You can launch into a polar orbit from California -- and the Air Force does exactly that from Vandenberg AFB -- but that's less efficient. There was a shuttle launching facility built at Vandenberg, but (a) it was only going to be used for military shuttle payloads -- spy satellites, which use polar orbits or sun-synchronous orbits (which are a specific type of polar orbit), and (b) the military decided to remove its payloads from the shuttle after Challenger, which eliminated the need for California launches.