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Chinney
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Ottawa, ON
 
2012-05-28, 23:07

Slate has an series of short excerpts from past news stories about space travel here.

This is my favourite - from the Washington Monthly in 1980, as it brought home just what an achievement the Space Shuttle was in its time:

Quote:
To truly grasp the challenge of building a space shuttle, think about its flight. The ship includes a 60-by-15-foot open space, narrow wings, and a large cabin where men must be provided that delicately slender range of temperatures and pressures they can endure. During ascent, the shuttle must withstand 3 Gs of stress--inertial drag equivalent to three times its own weight. While all five engines are screaming, there will be acoustic vibrations reaching 167 decibels, enough to kill an unprotected person. In orbit, the shuttle will drift through -250°F. vacuum, what engineers call the ’cold soak.’ It's cold enough to embrittle and shatter most materials. During reentry, the ship's skin goes from cold soak to 2,700°F., hot enough to transform many metals into Silly Putty. Then the shuttle must glide along, under control, at speeds up to Mach 25, three times faster than any other piloted aircraft has ever flown. After reentry, it cascades through the air without power; finally thunking down onto the runway at 220 m.p.h. The like-sized DC-9 lands, with power, at 130 m.p.h. Rockets are throwaway contraptions in part so that no one piece ever has to endure such a wild variety of conditions. The shuttle's design goal is to take this nightmare ride 100 times.
That the Shuttle program had trouble along the way fully meeting its objectives is not a surprise. What is a surprise is that it got off the ground at all.

When there's an eel in the lake that's as long as a snake that's a moray.
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