As the Space Shuttle rises from its launch pad into the Florida afternoon sky, a cheer rises from the thousands gathered to witness the power and spectacle of the event. A second cheer arises as the Orbiter detaches from its booster to continue its way into space. A third cheer erupts minutes later as the booster flies overhead, with the mighty roar of jet engines drowning out the crowd as it makes its way to the landing strip. Whoa! The booster flies back? In the early design concepts of the Space Shuttle it did! How the Shuttle evolved in design to the current configuration was the subject of last night's Live Chat which I had the pleasure to present to 61 members of the INSPIRE Online Learning Community.
We had lots of questions, and I was unable to get to them all. Here are the questions (and answers!) from last night:
Q. Regarding your "What's Next" slide...Why are we stopping the space shuttle four years from the planned deorbit of the ISS (keeping in mind political threats)? In addition, if NASA hopes to continue manned missions, why is it eliminating the two initial and necessary steps for the developement of anything further: LEO and the space shuttle?You can hear more questions, answers and the rest of the presentation in the Live Chat Archives beginning on Monday. Thanks to all the students who attended!
A. When President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration in 2005, the idea was to build new launchers and spacecraft (Constellations) to service the ISS, build a Moon base, and travel to Mars. The funds for that would come from the elimination of the Space Shuttle, which was a large part of the NASA budget. Though Constellation was canceled, the cost savings of eliminating the Shuttle will be diverted to other programs, including the development of a Multi-Purpose Crewed Vehicle (Orion) that could be launched commercially. NASA is also seeking out and spurring on commercial crewed vehicles like SpaceShipTwo and Dragon. Oh, and the ISS will remain active until 2020.
Q. Is it possible to make a shuttle or rocket land like a helicopter?
A. Yes, but it was not NASA that accomplished it. A small company called Rotary Rocket designed a test article called the Roton that would take off with rockets and then descend and land using a retractable rotor. Read more at http://www.astronautix.com/craft/roton.htm
Q. How long did it take for NASA to come up with the shuttle design?
A. Official work began by NASA in 1968, but it was not until 1972 when NASA chose the North American (Rockwell) proposed configuration. Changes continued until the first Shuttle flight in 1981.
Q. When the shuttle was launched today, it appeared that something fell off like maybe foam. Do you forsee any problems with that?
A. Foam from the External Tank was seen falling after the critical phase of flight. Launch video will be examined. Astronauts took video and images of the ET after separation that will also be analyzed.
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