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Picture of the day -
November 20, 2006
Spectators Witnessing A Space Shuttle Launch
Photo courtesy of
NASA.
America's space shuttles are amazing vehicles. When all goes as
planned, they lift off from Cape Canaveral to carry a crew of
astronauts and a load of cargo into earth orbit, and then bring them back
"down" to the earth's surface after the mission has been completed.
While this might sound like a simple procedure, it is actually quite
difficult and extremely dangerous.
First of all, the shuttle must break free of almost all of the earth's
gravitational force, a task that requires attaining a speed of approximately
17,500 miles per hour! In order to do that, NASA literally straps the
shuttle onto the backs of two Solid Rocket Boosters, each of which
weighs an enormous 1.3 million pounds! Just imagine riding into space
in a vehicle that is traveling with over 2 million pounds of highly
flammable fuel on board!
But leaving the earth is only half of the dangerous job - coming back
down poses its own set of problems and dangers. When a meteor
"falls" through the earth's atmosphere at a high speed, it
compresses the air in front of it causing it to reach temperatures
approaching 3,000 degrees leaving little if anything left of it by
the time it reaches the earth's surface.
That same fate would befall the space shuttle were it not for a
layer of thermal tiles that completely covers the underside of the
craft. If a few of those tiles fall off, the shuttle will overheat
and burn up just like a meteor. Large chunks of it might make it to
the ground, but everyone aboard will perish.
As you can see, taking a ride on a space shuttle is quite dangerous
indeed, and several lives have already been lost on shuttle missions
gone awry. It takes a crew of very courageous individuals to climb
aboard such a dangerous vehicle, but there is a long list of
adventurous souls eagerly awaiting their chance to do just that!
About the photo: A group of spectators watch in awe on September
9, 2006 as the Space Shuttle Atlantis lifts off from Cape
Canaveral on mission STS-115. This mission was the first "assembly
mission" to the International Space Station after the Columbia
disaster.
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