@@dkdanis1340 That's not what the OP meant. The Discovery was left with the wear and tear of flight on it. And, NO, the shuttle cannot be reused. It cannot fly again in its current condition. NASA removed certain items from the vehicle and deactivated certain systems. The payload bay doors of ALL the space shuttles were deactivated when they were decommissioned. The motors that moved those doors in orbit were removed or disabled -- and that's only one thing NASA admitted they did when the orbiters were decommissioned. The US military does the same for planes when they're grounded for good; they will actually cut certain structural elements of the airframe so that the planes can't fly again! They would repaint the shuttles and scrub off all the carbonization soot from re-entry when they began preparing shuttles for new flights but the museum staff chose NOT to remove that cosmetic damage, to leave Discovery as it was after the final flight. A lot of times museums will repaint vehicles to "preserve them." You can preserve things without altering the paint job. They leave things "as is" for some artifacts, they alter other things for various reasons. If some vehicle is going to be on display outdoors, they will repaint them to protect them better against the elements. Weather-proofing for outdoors exhibit is understandable. It's when a vehicle is going to be on display indoors in a controlled environment that repainting makes less sense.
@@Ladco77 The exterior of the tiles, the signage, anything that had faded or been carbonized during re-entry. The paint takes a beating during re-entry. One of the toughest things to come up with is paint that doesn't peel off or get burned off by high heat. It just doesn't exist for anything that travels much faster than Mach 3! They repainted the X-15s, XB-70s and Blackbird planes after their flights, too. The paint jobs just didn't survive highspeed flights!
Discovery was always my favourite vehicle. I love how they've preserved it with the "straight from orbit" look. To this day I still enjoy watching the old STS launches, especially when those SSMEs fire up, the flow dynamics are mesmerising.
I remember as a child growing up in California during the 70s, my class went on a field trip to where the tiles were made. They had a display set up and would take a blow torch to the tiles and they would be unharmed. I remember learning that each tile was unique and had its own individual spot on the orbiter. Thanks for a well-researched and well- presented tour.
David, I graduated from North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, NC where Ron McNair (Space Shuttle Challenger Tragedy) attended school. My physics professor had a collection of NASA items given to him by McNair and a sample of those tiles was one of them. He (my professor) did the exact same exercise in class one day and put a blow torch to one of the tiles. It was not only unharmed, it had no residual evidence of a flame of that magnitude being on it, no color change, no shape change and obviously wasn't consumed. It was amazing! I tell people that story often because I remain amazed by the technology to this day.
I vividly remember the same demo in my school growing up in the northeast. It’s sad and a reminder of our limitations as humans that it essentially didn’t work.
Thanks for watching everyone! I should clarify there were 6 Orbiters built but one (Enterprise OV-101) was not fitted with engines or a heat-shield. It was used for testing). Have you seen one of these Orbiters (or trainers) in the metal? Don't forget to subscribe too as I've got heaps of videos to come once I get around to editing them! The 747 SCA, F-14, B-47, B-58, F117, F-22, YF-12, YF-23, first Boeing 747/727/737 and others!
I feel like the term “Canadarm” is slightly incorrect as for as long as I can remember, it’s been the SSRMS, SRMS, or simply the RMS. What’s the origin of that term or has it just been tacked on cause we couldn’t tell who made it? 😂 “Can we get the font bigger, eh?”
I watched a zillion Orbiter videos before, but this was the first one to give a real impression on the size and non-roomy-ness of the crew compartment. Thank you for showing this tour!
@@PaulStewartAviation When I was there they parked Discovery and Enterprise in a fashion that made them appear to be nose-to-nose from a distance. The original plan was to allow us to walk beneath the orbiters for photos but something happened that caused security officers to go running through the crowd and nobody was allowed near the orbiters. Still, the scene reminded me of the famous Promentory Point photo of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. I had a digital camera (remember those?) and took the picture with a black and white filter.
The amount of engineering is phenomenal. The first space-worthy Space Shuttle was Columbia, which first launched in 1981. These were basically designed and built using technology from the 1970s with relatively few updates like a heads up display, a parachute, and making the external fuel tank lighter as time went on.
No duh. There's a trash organization called "NASA" here in souther cali that operates in JPL territory. It's no joke. NASA literally had to comb trash to replace components of those ancient computer systems on the shuttles.
The biggest one was the glass cockpit replacing most of the analog gauges with flat panel displays. The payloads, like Spacehab, would continue upgrades for Columbia, since that was the only bird that could take the Spacehab. Spacehab was used to supply the Russian Mir.
Endeavour which first flew in 1992 had upgraded avionics systems that included advanced general purpose computers, improved inertial measurement units and tactical air navigation systems, enhanced master events controllers and multiplexer-demultiplexers, a solid-state star tracker and improved nose wheel steering mechanisms. An improved version of the Auxiliary Power Units (APUs) that provided power to operate the Shuttle's hydraulic systems.
I wonder if they'll ever make something like this again in the future but with modern technology to make it better and more reliable. It's always amazing to see how vastly superior we can make something from the past but using modern tech.
In my opinion the greatest space vehicle ever built. Watching launches on TH-cam still brings me chills and also crank up the your sound system. Amazing all around. I miss the Space Shuttle program
Space shuttles have never been to space because space starts at 62 miles high and rockets can not produce thrust in a vacuum so the rocket just falls back down at the 62 mile mark
Terrific addition to your video library. Thanks to you, I have a better understanding now of the Space Shuttle's working interior. I've never seen a video that's done that better. Thank you.
Lovely video. I saw this shuttle launch in 1998 with John Glenn. I was also in New York in 2012 a few piers down from the Intrepid aircraft carrier. We were waiting to go on the ferry ride around Manhattan right at the time Enterprise was coming up the Hudson River to be loaded onto the carrier. Got some lovely pics of that
Watching a night launch from my deck on the coast of North Carolina in the early 2000s was the coolest thing I've witnessed in my 52 years with the homecoming or National Victory Celebration as it's called in 1991 at the Mall in DC being the other. Now I'm watching the coolest aviation channel on TH-cam so thank you for that.
Thank you for the amazing tour! At the Gus Grissom exhibit Spring Mill Park Mitchell Indiana, They have a mockup/actual spaceship he flew, It literally is a metal can with toggle switches-how brave the original astronaut's were!
I'm a massive fan of the Orbiters and have seen Atlantis at Kennedy, Discovery at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy and Endeavour at the California Science Center! I've even got the Lego Space Shuttle Discovery set on my desk which I was looking at as you were touring in person and it brought a smile to my face to see all the little details on the model reflected in real life. Thank you for the tour and for giving me a little nostalgia to when I last visited them.
I’m a crazy fanatic of the shuttle program as well. My mom let me stay home from school to watch many of those early launches and landings live on tv. I first saw Enterprise on display atop the SCA during a layover at our local airport once in ‘85. I saw Enterprise again in 2009 perhaps when it was on floor display at the Smithsonian. In 2010 my dreams came true as my parents and my family witnessed one of Discovery’s last launches live from the causeway at Cape Canaveral. 2022, another family trip to KSC to see Atlantis on display. And a few months ago, a short trip to Houston to see the mock orbiter displayed, mounted to the SCA there. My wife’s sister lives outside of L.A. so I hope on our next trip we all go to see the orbiter (Endeavor?) on display at their museum.
I was a big fan of the Space Shuttle and its missions, and remember the tragedies well. I finally saw it in person in 2010 when the Enterprise was on display at Udvar Hazy. Thanks for the interior tour.
Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at Dulles Airport outside DC in Virginia. The engine bells are mock-ups. The originals were removed and rebuilt for the Artemis project. The large spindley thing hanging from the ceiling is a TDRS communications satellite. A cluster of these were used to provide continuous high speed communications for the shuttle and Space station.
The fusion of tours from multiple different displays, really helps provide all the details! I've seen the one in the Air & Space, but I've not seen the interior before, and it's really quite neat. Thanks for the tour!
The Shuttle on re-entry would feel heat of around 10,000+ degrees Fahrenheit from what I recall. The Tiles could not withstand that, so somehow through a bunch of brilliant scientists they figured out how fluid physics work in space. This led to the use of the shuttles smooth shape to make a boundary layer. This boundary layer was a mix of two waves that collided to form one in the front of the shuttle. I know this stuff is old and was used on Capsules thru the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. But jeez, how did they figure all that out??
I don't think the surface ablative was the same across all those different vehicles, especially between the STS missions and those older ones. Not to discount your boundry layer comment... Here's what I found... 'AVCOAT was used for the heat shield on NASA's Apollo command module.[5] In its final form, this material was called AVCOAT 5026-39. Although AVCOAT was not used for the Space Shuttle orbiters, NASA is using the material for its next generation Orion spacecraft.[6] The Avcoat to be used on Orion is reformulated to meet environmental legislation that has been passed since the end of Apollo.'
Always wondered how the crew compartment was laid out, your tour answered that question! What really impressed me when I seen Enterprise on the Intrepid was how quickly they went from just managing to get something the size of a trash can in to orbit to something the size of the shuttle! The size comparison was breath taking. Very impressive engineering.
Sweet video of a serious space machine. The acronym OMS was pronounced like Ohms the electrical measurement. Hand controls on the left side of the aft flight deck were used by the pilots to maneuver the Orbiter during rendezvous & docking. Robot arm controls were on the right side. Starting in the mid 90’s the LES suits were replaced by the Advanced Crew Escape & Survival suit which was a full pressure suit. Source: My dad was an Orbiter Technician from 1982-2007 and my mom worked in Safety Ops & Engineering from 1990-2011
Loved this video. Cutting together the two different exhibits from two locations was really nicely done. Made a great sense of the space and scale of things.
I went on a tour of the Kennedy Space Center in May 1981, about 3 weeks after the first flight of Columbia. I remember a demonstration of the heat shielding tiles where the guy at the front of the room would heat a cube of the the material with a handheld propane torch while talking about how light they were and didn't absorb heat. The cube would glow red. He would then put down the propane torch and almost immediately pick up the cube with his bare fingers. Great memories!
Yes, picked up by only touching the cubes corners, that had already shed the heat. They did a demo at my school and I remember that the center was still glowing.
I’m a geek about so many things. Always enjoyed coming to limited understanding of Earth sciences, Space sciences, history, mechanical creations in all its various forms. Really enjoyed this tour of the orbiter. Makes you ponder just how amazing it was and as we all know it’s vulnerabilities. Make me yearn for a 2.0 version to keep us exploring and learning.
I recommend keep up with the Artemis program of NASA. Their vehicle (SLS) give me nostalgia of the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle. Shape wise it reminds of the Saturn V, about the same lenght too. But the parts and colors remind me of the Space Shuttle. It has 2 big white solid rocket boosters, the tank has the same color too. Just a reminder that we are currently living a good age of space exploration as well.
She was 1 of 6 Enterprise, Challenger, Discovery, Columbia, Atlantis, Endeavour and if I am not mistaken there's a 7th Pathfinder at Space Camp in Huntsville Alabama that never flew.
"Pathfinder" was a mockup that was not a functional orbiter. It was originally just a steel and plywood model that was generally correct dimension and mass-wise, but not detailed. It was only ever used in the program for workers to practice lifting the orbiter and other procedures so as not to risk the flight-worth real orbiters. Once that job was done, it was given a makeover and used for various publicity functions, eventually winding up in Huntsville for display. What was real was the aft fuselage, Main Propulsion Test Article (MPTA-098), which was a fully functional with the disconnects, plumbing and engines, and was attached to a prototype ET, and the engines fired off to carry out full-duration test firings.
I remember seeing Discovery when I visited the museum during a Washington D.C. trip on Thanksgiving in 2021. She's a beautiful machine and having seen her 3 living service sisters (Endeavor and Atlantis), they're truly some of the greatest things I've ever seen
It's hard to imagine travelling at 17,500 miles per hour in this craft! That is near 4.8 miles per second! (near 8 kilometres per second!). Again some great videoing and interesting commentary Paul.
@@JacobLM42 - Wait, you think there's a sPaCe StAtiOn floating around in space? lol, oh boy, you've got a lot of homework to do. Buckle up Dorthy, Kansas is going bye-bye...
@@ItsMeScareCro You can literally see it? Even other Flat Earthers admit that they have seen it. It's orbital patterns are very well publicised. Just because you have even bothered fact checking does not mean nobody else does. Why don't you take a look at NASAs Spot the Station?
I was one of the many, many proud Americans that went to LAX and watch one of the Shuttles to 2 fly by's on it's way up and down the Cal. coast to let people see it. It then landed. There were a great many people with me on Imperial Hwy just to the side of the runway on a hill. Perfect spot to see it land. Then a few nights later traveled with the shuttle as it made its way to the LA science center. Even got some pictures at night with it parked next to "Randy's Doughnut" store. The Iconic 30' dia. doughnut. Just last week I went to March air force base museum where they have a huge collection of planes. SR71, B-52 B-29. C-141, many cargo. F series from the beginning up to F-15. No F-117 or F-35. But they did have a Shuttle SRB which was cool. Have no idea how they got it there. C-5 Galaxy?
That was Endeavor and I also saw it on its way to CA. It flew piggyback on a plane and flew right over my house in Tucson. A few years later we went to CA to see it on display. Was the air museum you went to the Pima Air and Space Museum? I know they have an srb.
Another fantastic tour. Footage from the various mockups as well as the real orbiter really gives you an insight into this fantastic spacecraft. Very well done!
Nice video! That's my favorite museum! They have every aircraft someone would want to see. And they have a lot of engines on display, which are really cool too. Especially the cut away jet engine they have. I would highly recommend it to anyone!
I have been in the Udivar hazy center and it is an amazing building! Really recommend going. Btw, discovery is in the Hazy Center and bunch of other cool historical planes.
Six. There were six Space Shuttle orbiters built. Enterprise OV-101 was intended originally to be retrofitted as a spaceflight-capable vehicle after the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT) and then the Mated Vertical Ground Vibration Testing (MGVT) was done. But lessons learned in building Enterprise resulted in changes to the subsequent orbiters which meant far work had to be done to bring her up to spec and thus more money spent. So, instead OV-099 Challenger was built out of a test article airframe in place of Enterprise.
Excellent tour Paul, thank you! When viewing the orbiter cockpit it’s incredible to think how advanced and ‘digital’ it is given they started designing it in the latter ‘60s, during the Apollo program… what astonishing feats this gliding vehicle was capable of! Looking forward to the 747-100 video, particularly the mods needed to support the Orbiter :-)
That’s the upgraded digital “glass” cockpit. The avionics were upgraded beginning in 1999 and completed on all the shuttles over the course of about 5-6 years
Although being extremely inefficient economically, very dangerous for the crews (complete lack of emergency abort system), very problematic at maintenance (inspection/replacement of all ceramic tiles, complete disassembly of engines etc.), space shuttles remain to be the sample of how genius human beings are - especially once you realize all this was designed in 70's ♥ Fun fact: The overall design of the orbiter (and the space shuttle of course), including the shape and size of the wings, was determined by a SINGLE theoretical short polar-orbit mission requested by D.O.D. that actually NEVER took place! If not this single requirement, Space Shuttle would probably be much more efficient and many issues would simply disappear... But would they be still THAT beautiful? 😍 Loved Space Shuttles, they were the most beautiful peace of hardware that ever happened in space exploration. Thank you for this amazing tour. Hope one day I'd be able to take my kids to the USA and show them this peace of art and technology! ☺ Have a wonderful day! 😁
Paul--good one. The last mission--Space Shuttle Atlantis completed STS-135, its 33rd and final mission landing on Runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility on the morning of Thursday, July 21, 2011.
I was at Udvar-Hazy last month; was absolutely incredible seeing Discovery in person. Thanks for the tour and explaining in detail what everything is and does!
Nice tour of a truly astounding vehicle, considering it was designed in the 70s. I was lucky enough to work on the Shuttle Mission Simulator complex at the Johnson Space Center for 38 years, from "cradle to grave". Over those years I probably spent several hundred hours in the simulators. I can attest to the fact that there was not much room in the cockpit, hardly enough room to turn around in the aft station area behind the pilot seats. The only way in was up a ladder through a hatch in the floor, just like the real vehicle. One can visit one of the simulator cockpits at the Lone Star Flight Museum in Houston, although it only has the forward part of the cockpit due to logistical limitations. Thanks for the memories.
I've had the privilege of being able to play with one of the used tiles from Shuttle Columbia. What this video doesn't capture is just how thick and beefy they are, yet how ultra-light-weight they are! Going from memory, the tile weighs less than my Roku remote control.
Five years a go I could see the Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center, it’s beautifully displayed hanging on a steel structure at the same angle that it would be in orbit, it looks so impressive, sadly there’s no walk through replica in there but there’s a bunch of cool things to se also like the Saturn V
Great video! Mixing both exterior views and shots from the interior was really innovative and it helped to understand how complex this machine was. If I could make a small correction, it could be said that the main use of the body flap was to help trimming the shuttle during reentry.
I've always wondered, for years, what the insides of theses beasts looked like. This is an amazing video that details the stations and the inside of the craft. Amazing video paul, I really do love your content. Keep up the amazing work and have fun traveling!
Hi Paul. That was really cool to see. I love how you "delicately" described deposits of solids and liquid into the loo ! The crew quarters are far more cramped than I realised, although , once a payload has been off-loaded, the cargo bay ( when pressurized) would provide a little more room to stretch out !
They can't pressurize the cargo bay actually. Strengthening the doors and seals and carrying additional oxygen would add a bunch of unnecessary weight to launch.
The payload bay couldn't be pressurized but there were pressurized modules like Spacelab that were sometimes flown in the bay and connected to the airlock.
The most greatest thing made by humans. I miss space shuttles, i wish they couldnt gone Rip to space shuttle challenger and columbia and their magnificent crew 😢
The reusable vehicle idea is good but if 2 of the 5 shuttles explode killing 14 astronauts then it's over with them. Maybe they can try again in a distant future.
@@Plamkata69 True... but in both incidences the main point of failure were not caused by the space shuttle itself. For Challenger, the O-rings malfunctioned due to poor planning/launching in the cold. For Columbia, there was a piece of foam that fell off the external tank which then broke the silica panels on the wing, which then caused it to disintegrate during re-entry.
@@PaulStewartAviation Honesty, the U.S. is a superpower because of the freedoms we have, this includes guns for all. I don't think this is the issue, I think the issue is complacency and the lack of competition. Now a days politicians are in bed with every other country, no more rivalry, no race to anything of value anymore. It seems we're deeply focused on population control and making everyone as lazy as humanly possible. No one likes hard-work and discovery anymore, we just want easy money and easy living - even if it costs all our freedoms eventually.
Very very nice video. I think we all have the deepest respect for what was achieved with the space shuttle. Only an imperfect system because humans are imperfect and they were also learning all the whole way through the program. As a Canadian I feel the honour of the Canada Arm forever near its big brother the Space Shuttle. What they achieved together including the construction of the international space station still amazes me. One wonders what a new shuttle could be like if a shuttle era ever comes again. May the souls of those who perished, within this program, rest in peace, and may light perpetual shine upon them. AMEN. ( AMEN is the following, Very Truly, It is so & Let it be so)
1:00 great spec's on the structure of the *Space shuttle* angles! This cradt could've been around today, if it just had those temporay *heat sheild paint* coat, used during the attempted long cruise of the X-15A, surround, under the decal paint ( with windows having re-enter HS roof lids), that imbalance dive would not have been so fatal of only short travel paint burns. • Hs paint coat add on. • folding main wings. • *Plus* a Stratophere flat sting-ray form carrier to replace that bulk oramge tin. • Thus a huge cargo exo orbit craft *to still around* today. Still recomend something like that, for Dream Chaser & surround of Starship 2nd stage, under the HS tiles.
3:16 - More importantly, the Orbiter is empty of fuel on touchdown, so there is nothing to start the RS-25 main engines with. This was the one really smart thing about the STS and Orbiter system; it's a man-rated space plane which is very safe to land, because it's not fuelled, and the engines aren't running. To give you some idea of the sorts of energies involved with the RS-25 (SSME) engines... each of the fuel turbo-pumps were roughly the size of large V8 motors, but at 100% throttle they each produced as much power as 40 diesel locomotives. If you placed the inlet in an average American swimming pool, and pointed the outlet straight up, it would empty the pool in around 20 seconds, and it would pump a column of water 50km into the air. Now THAT is a pump! It's often said that a rocket is merely a turbo-pump with a nozzle attached. :P
For those that were wondering, the main engines were only used in the atmosphere because they guzzled down fuel (as all first-stage engines do). They drained the entire external fuel tank in just a few minutes, but output enough thrust to directly counteract gravity. Once the shuttle is at the edge of space with enough momentum to carry it upward against gravity, it can use the OMS engines (which output tiny amounts of thrust but at very high efficiency.) Because there is no air or gravity at this point, any amount of thrust you add essentially permanently adds to the speed, meaning you can use engines that output tiny amounts of thrust but at high efficiency to add up to tremendous speed. The OMS engines essentially accelerate the orbiter horizantally to the point where it is flung around the earth like a pendulum by gravity (this is how orbit works.)
You have the right idea, but the SSMEs were indeed intended to provide the horizontal acceleration to orbital velocity. The Solid Rocket Boosters' job was to get the stack high enough to reduce the air resistance to virtually nothing. The SSMEs' nozzle were sized for exoatmospheric expansion ratios, which is why the flames coming out of those engines at launch were so small (they're being pressed close by the thick atmosphere at sea level). The OMS pods gave the final kick to get the Space Shuttle into orbit, but the SSMEs did most of the work at speeding it up in the stratosphere.
Strange that they never went out of low Earth orbit,was it the radiation belts that kept them from doing anything extra,or they didn't know how to,they forgot how to get to the Moon lol!
@@BogeyTheBear Thanks for saving me the trouble lol. I guess an easier way of thinking about it is that the SRBs basically lifted the fuel for the SSMEs and shuttle; once it was out of the atmosphere and the majority of gravity, the SRBs would be spent and separated. There’s a more interesting side of the OMS that I can’t seem to find at the moment, but essentially the entire shuttle stack was designed to get the orbiter to a velocity just below a sustainable orbit, it was done for safety reasons that I can’t find now (I think Scott Manley discussed this a while ago.) Basically there were safety concerns during development, and using OMS for circularization / orbital insertion was deemed safer.
Mate, I have to say, I was literally glued to this vid. I guess anything about space is fascinating but having a tour of the space shuttle was awesome, especially taking into account the various extreme conditions the vehicle needed to weather. Really enjoyed it and thanks for sharing!
Привет из России! Спасибо за экскурсию. Мне особенно было интересно смотреть это видео, потому что в 1995 году командир STS -1 ''Колумбия'' астронавт Джон Янг ответил мне на мое письмо. Спасибо за Вашу работу и удачи!
@@TinyHouseHomestead Nah actually the rockwell booster would have had to be covered with tps because of how high and fast it would be going at separation so it would have just increased the turnaround time
Does anyone ever enter Discovery?? Like ever? Workers at the museum or people to maintain it?? Possibly astronauts who have flown on it? Do they get permission?
I loved working at NASA Johnson Space Center in the tank where we would take the astronauts down underwater in their suits so they could rehearse if they had to manually deploy a satellite outside the cargo Bay to get them neutral in the water was the closest thing to space
4:16 I've always wondered what those holes were called. RCS thrusters. I love watching the way the coverings burst open during launch.
It's great that they've kept the Orbiter in it's original condition with the partially worn skin. Nice tour Paul, as always.
It's not really worn it can be used again.
@@dkdanis1340 That's not what the OP meant.
The Discovery was left with the wear and tear of flight on it.
And, NO, the shuttle cannot be reused. It cannot fly again in its current condition. NASA removed certain items from the vehicle and deactivated certain systems. The payload bay doors of ALL the space shuttles were deactivated when they were decommissioned. The motors that moved those doors in orbit were removed or disabled -- and that's only one thing NASA admitted they did when the orbiters were decommissioned. The US military does the same for planes when they're grounded for good; they will actually cut certain structural elements of the airframe so that the planes can't fly again!
They would repaint the shuttles and scrub off all the carbonization soot from re-entry when they began preparing shuttles for new flights but the museum staff chose NOT to remove that cosmetic damage, to leave Discovery as it was after the final flight.
A lot of times museums will repaint vehicles to "preserve them." You can preserve things without altering the paint job.
They leave things "as is" for some artifacts, they alter other things for various reasons. If some vehicle is going to be on display outdoors, they will repaint them to protect them better against the elements.
Weather-proofing for outdoors exhibit is understandable.
It's when a vehicle is going to be on display indoors in a controlled environment that repainting makes less sense.
It’s worth going to see it at Dulles. We saw it last year and yes the “battle scars” add to the experience of seeing the real thing.
@@AvengerII What did they repaint on the shuttles when preparing it for new flights?
@@Ladco77 The exterior of the tiles, the signage, anything that had faded or been carbonized during re-entry.
The paint takes a beating during re-entry. One of the toughest things to come up with is paint that doesn't peel off or get burned off by high heat. It just doesn't exist for anything that travels much faster than Mach 3!
They repainted the X-15s, XB-70s and Blackbird planes after their flights, too. The paint jobs just didn't survive highspeed flights!
Space craft are always so impressive to see. Very cool stuff.
Discovery was always my favourite vehicle. I love how they've preserved it with the "straight from orbit" look. To this day I still enjoy watching the old STS launches, especially when those SSMEs fire up, the flow dynamics are mesmerising.
Atlantis the oldest and most used shuttle.
When those engines go into open loop 👌🏼
Team Columbia here, but Discovery is a fine vehicle. One of the finest
I remember as a child growing up in California during the 70s, my class went on a field trip to where the tiles were made. They had a display set up and would take a blow torch to the tiles and they would be unharmed. I remember learning that each tile was unique and had its own individual spot on the orbiter. Thanks for a well-researched and well- presented tour.
David, I graduated from North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, NC where Ron McNair (Space Shuttle Challenger Tragedy) attended school. My physics professor had a collection of NASA items given to him by McNair and a sample of those tiles was one of them. He (my professor) did the exact same exercise in class one day and put a blow torch to one of the tiles. It was not only unharmed, it had no residual evidence of a flame of that magnitude being on it, no color change, no shape change and obviously wasn't consumed. It was amazing! I tell people that story often because I remain amazed by the technology to this day.
I vividly remember the same demo in my school growing up in the northeast. It’s sad and a reminder of our limitations as humans that it essentially didn’t work.
@@FFE-js2zp huh? they worked just fine
@@amvlabs5339
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The sand for the tiles came from a beach in Brazil. NASA had two people permanently stationed there. Tough duty!
Thanks for watching everyone!
I should clarify there were 6 Orbiters built but one (Enterprise OV-101) was not fitted with engines or a heat-shield. It was used for testing).
Have you seen one of these Orbiters (or trainers) in the metal? Don't forget to subscribe too as I've got heaps of videos to come once I get around to editing them! The 747 SCA, F-14, B-47, B-58, F117, F-22, YF-12, YF-23, first Boeing 747/727/737 and others!
Your welcome and I look forward to more videos.
How was Dulles?
Really enjoyed this, thanks! Also look forward to seeing the 747-100 SCA video.
I feel like the term “Canadarm” is slightly incorrect as for as long as I can remember, it’s been the SSRMS, SRMS, or simply the RMS. What’s the origin of that term or has it just been tacked on cause we couldn’t tell who made it? 😂 “Can we get the font bigger, eh?”
I watched a zillion Orbiter videos before, but this was the first one to give a real impression on the size and non-roomy-ness of the crew compartment. Thank you for showing this tour!
You're welcome! Hopefully as the channel gets bigger, I'll get more pull and be allowed inside the originals!
The overall size is close to a 737, but most of the length is the cargo bay.
@@PaulStewartAviation When I was there they parked Discovery and Enterprise in a fashion that made them appear to be nose-to-nose from a distance. The original plan was to allow us to walk beneath the orbiters for photos but something happened that caused security officers to go running through the crowd and nobody was allowed near the orbiters. Still, the scene reminded me of the famous Promentory Point photo of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. I had a digital camera (remember those?) and took the picture with a black and white filter.
The amount of engineering is phenomenal. The first space-worthy Space Shuttle was Columbia, which first launched in 1981. These were basically designed and built using technology from the 1970s with relatively few updates like a heads up display, a parachute, and making the external fuel tank lighter as time went on.
No duh. There's a trash organization called "NASA" here in souther cali that operates in JPL territory. It's no joke. NASA literally had to comb trash to replace components of those ancient computer systems on the shuttles.
how about the 60s apollo tech.: still unable to be duplicated… 😉 😂
The biggest one was the glass cockpit replacing most of the analog gauges with flat panel displays. The payloads, like Spacehab, would continue upgrades for Columbia, since that was the only bird that could take the Spacehab. Spacehab was used to supply the Russian Mir.
Endeavour which first flew in 1992 had upgraded avionics systems that included advanced general purpose computers, improved inertial measurement units and tactical air navigation systems, enhanced master events controllers and multiplexer-demultiplexers, a solid-state star tracker and improved nose wheel steering mechanisms.
An improved version of the Auxiliary Power Units (APUs) that provided power to operate the Shuttle's hydraulic systems.
Yes I believe its a very advanced piece of engineering, especially when it can go to outer space, land on different planets, and the moon! Amazing
One of the most amazing vehicles ever made by humans.
…and they abandoned it.
@@jooei2810 sad
But now we have the dream chaser!
@@jooei2810 because it was the deadliest and most expensive orbital vehicle ever made
I wonder if they'll ever make something like this again in the future but with modern technology to make it better and more reliable. It's always amazing to see how vastly superior we can make something from the past but using modern tech.
Not even close
I didn't realise just how small the command and living quarters are! Thanks for the tour, Paul!
Yes, indeed.
With seven crew on board it must have been quite claustrophobic at times.
and pee and poo with everyone looking
In my opinion the greatest space vehicle ever built. Watching launches on TH-cam still brings me chills and also crank up the your sound system. Amazing all around. I miss the Space Shuttle program
I agree! Not being able to view a space shuttle launch live will always be one of my biggest regrets in life!
The Earth is Flat ,Space is Fake and Globalism is Done.
Space shuttles have never been to space because space starts at 62 miles high and rockets can not produce thrust in a vacuum so the rocket just falls back down at the 62 mile mark
@@James-zp5po sigh
@@James-zp5po Yes and newtons 3rd law of motion is funded by jewish space laser pyramids
Yeah, two weeks ago we was also there and i can say, it is really impressive !!
Terrific addition to your video library. Thanks to you, I have a better understanding now of the Space Shuttle's working interior. I've never seen a video that's done that better. Thank you.
Lovely video. I saw this shuttle launch in 1998 with John Glenn. I was also in New York in 2012 a few piers down from the Intrepid aircraft carrier. We were waiting to go on the ferry ride around Manhattan right at the time Enterprise was coming up the Hudson River to be loaded onto the carrier. Got some lovely pics of that
Watching a night launch from my deck on the coast of North Carolina in the early 2000s was the coolest thing I've witnessed in my 52 years with the homecoming or National Victory Celebration as it's called in 1991 at the Mall in DC being the other. Now I'm watching the coolest aviation channel on TH-cam so thank you for that.
Thank you for the amazing tour! At the Gus Grissom exhibit Spring Mill Park Mitchell Indiana, They have a
mockup/actual spaceship he flew, It literally is a metal can with toggle switches-how brave the original
astronaut's were!
I'm a massive fan of the Orbiters and have seen Atlantis at Kennedy, Discovery at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy and Endeavour at the California Science Center! I've even got the Lego Space Shuttle Discovery set on my desk which I was looking at as you were touring in person and it brought a smile to my face to see all the little details on the model reflected in real life. Thank you for the tour and for giving me a little nostalgia to when I last visited them.
Glad you enjoyed it!
What's the 1 on the Intrepid in NY went there to see SR71
I saw space shuttle Atlantis in person less than a year ago. It was so much larger than I imagined. Thanks for the vid Paul
I’m a crazy fanatic of the shuttle program as well. My mom let me stay home from school to watch many of those early launches and landings live on tv.
I first saw Enterprise on display atop the SCA during a layover at our local airport once in ‘85. I saw Enterprise again in 2009 perhaps when it was on floor display at the Smithsonian. In 2010 my dreams came true as my parents and my family witnessed one of Discovery’s last launches live from the causeway at Cape Canaveral. 2022, another family trip to KSC to see Atlantis on display. And a few months ago, a short trip to Houston to see the mock orbiter displayed, mounted to the SCA there.
My wife’s sister lives outside of L.A. so I hope on our next trip we all go to see the orbiter (Endeavor?) on display at their museum.
That was my first “trip” through a space shuttle. Top video - Cheers!
I was a big fan of the Space Shuttle and its missions, and remember the tragedies well. I finally saw it in person in 2010 when the Enterprise was on display at Udvar Hazy. Thanks for the interior tour.
Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at Dulles Airport outside DC in Virginia.
The engine bells are mock-ups. The originals were removed and rebuilt for the Artemis project.
The large spindley thing hanging from the ceiling is a TDRS communications satellite. A cluster of these were used to provide continuous high speed communications for the shuttle and Space station.
The fusion of tours from multiple different displays, really helps provide all the details! I've seen the one in the Air & Space, but I've not seen the interior before, and it's really quite neat. Thanks for the tour!
You're covering some serious ground through America. Hope you're enjoying your stay here. Thanks for coming and thanks for the videos.
The Shuttle on re-entry would feel heat of around 10,000+ degrees Fahrenheit from what I recall. The Tiles could not withstand that, so somehow through a bunch of brilliant scientists they figured out how fluid physics work in space. This led to the use of the shuttles smooth shape to make a boundary layer. This boundary layer was a mix of two waves that collided to form one in the front of the shuttle.
I know this stuff is old and was used on Capsules thru the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. But jeez, how did they figure all that out??
I don't think the surface ablative was the same across all those different vehicles, especially between the STS missions and those older ones. Not to discount your boundry layer comment...
Here's what I found...
'AVCOAT was used for the heat shield on NASA's Apollo command module.[5] In its final form, this material was called AVCOAT 5026-39.
Although AVCOAT was not used for the Space Shuttle orbiters, NASA is using the material for its next generation Orion spacecraft.[6] The Avcoat to be used on Orion is reformulated to meet environmental legislation that has been passed since the end of Apollo.'
What an awesome piece of equipment , human ingenuity , technology , great stuff .
Always wondered how the crew compartment was laid out, your tour answered that question! What really impressed me when I seen Enterprise on the Intrepid was how quickly they went from just managing to get something the size of a trash can in to orbit to something the size of the shuttle! The size comparison was breath taking. Very impressive engineering.
Sweet video of a serious space machine.
The acronym OMS was pronounced like Ohms the electrical measurement.
Hand controls on the left side of the aft flight deck were used by the pilots to maneuver the Orbiter during rendezvous & docking. Robot arm controls were on the right side.
Starting in the mid 90’s the LES suits were replaced by the Advanced Crew Escape & Survival suit which was a full pressure suit.
Source: My dad was an Orbiter Technician from 1982-2007 and
my mom worked in Safety Ops & Engineering from 1990-2011
Loved this video. Cutting together the two different exhibits from two locations was really nicely done. Made a great sense of the space and scale of things.
Thanks for your video. 👍
I liked the interior tour of the Space Shuttle. 🚀
I went on a tour of the Kennedy Space Center in May 1981, about 3 weeks after the first flight of Columbia. I remember a demonstration of the heat shielding tiles where the guy at the front of the room would heat a cube of the the material with a handheld propane torch while talking about how light they were and didn't absorb heat. The cube would glow red. He would then put down the propane torch and almost immediately pick up the cube with his bare fingers. Great memories!
Yes, picked up by only touching the cubes corners, that had already shed the heat.
They did a demo at my school and I remember that the center was still glowing.
Great video mate! 😎 I loved it! I hope to return and make a Detailed Tour video there someday!
I’m a geek about so many things. Always enjoyed coming to limited understanding of Earth sciences, Space sciences, history, mechanical creations in all its various forms. Really enjoyed this tour of the orbiter. Makes you ponder just how amazing it was and as we all know it’s vulnerabilities. Make me yearn for a 2.0 version to keep us exploring and learning.
I recommend keep up with the Artemis program of NASA. Their vehicle (SLS) give me nostalgia of the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle. Shape wise it reminds of the Saturn V, about the same lenght too. But the parts and colors remind me of the Space Shuttle. It has 2 big white solid rocket boosters, the tank has the same color too. Just a reminder that we are currently living a good age of space exploration as well.
She was 1 of 6 Enterprise, Challenger, Discovery, Columbia, Atlantis, Endeavour and if I am not mistaken there's a 7th Pathfinder at Space Camp in Huntsville Alabama that never flew.
"Pathfinder" was a mockup that was not a functional orbiter. It was originally just a steel and plywood model that was generally correct dimension and mass-wise, but not detailed. It was only ever used in the program for workers to practice lifting the orbiter and other procedures so as not to risk the flight-worth real orbiters. Once that job was done, it was given a makeover and used for various publicity functions, eventually winding up in Huntsville for display.
What was real was the aft fuselage, Main Propulsion Test Article (MPTA-098), which was a fully functional with the disconnects, plumbing and engines, and was attached to a prototype ET, and the engines fired off to carry out full-duration test firings.
I love that museum, it never gets old!
I remember seeing Discovery when I visited the museum during a Washington D.C. trip on Thanksgiving in 2021.
She's a beautiful machine and having seen her 3 living service sisters (Endeavor and Atlantis), they're truly some of the greatest things I've ever seen
Brilliant tour! Loved the views inside the replica.
I am a space geek and have been there at the discovery in DC. Thanks so much ror such a detaield narriaion about Discovery-
It's hard to imagine travelling at 17,500 miles per hour in this craft! That is near 4.8 miles per second! (near 8 kilometres per second!). Again some great videoing and interesting commentary Paul.
That's because it's not possible. Nothing modern man has made can travel that fast with men inside it.
@@JacobLM42 - Prove me wrong. 😘
@@JacobLM42 - Wait, you think there's a sPaCe StAtiOn floating around in space? lol, oh boy, you've got a lot of homework to do. Buckle up Dorthy, Kansas is going bye-bye...
@@ItsMeScareCro You can literally see it? Even other Flat Earthers admit that they have seen it. It's orbital patterns are very well publicised. Just because you have even bothered fact checking does not mean nobody else does. Why don't you take a look at NASAs Spot the Station?
I was one of the many, many proud Americans that went to LAX and watch one of the Shuttles to 2 fly by's on it's way up and down the Cal. coast to let people see it. It then landed. There were a great many people with me on Imperial Hwy just to the side of the runway on a hill. Perfect spot to see it land.
Then a few nights later traveled with the shuttle as it made its way to the LA science center. Even got some pictures at night with it parked next to "Randy's Doughnut" store. The Iconic 30' dia. doughnut.
Just last week I went to March air force base museum where they have a huge collection of planes. SR71, B-52 B-29. C-141, many cargo. F series from the beginning up to F-15. No F-117 or F-35. But they did have a Shuttle SRB which was cool. Have no idea how they got it there. C-5 Galaxy?
That was Endeavor and I also saw it on its way to CA. It flew piggyback on a plane and flew right over my house in Tucson. A few years later we went to CA to see it on display. Was the air museum you went to the Pima Air and Space Museum? I know they have an srb.
Another fantastic tour. Footage from the various mockups as well as the real orbiter really gives you an insight into this fantastic spacecraft. Very well done!
Thanks Michael
Nice video! That's my favorite museum! They have every aircraft someone would want to see. And they have a lot of engines on display, which are really cool too. Especially the cut away jet engine they have. I would highly recommend it to anyone!
I have been in the Udivar hazy center and it is an amazing building! Really recommend going. Btw, discovery is in the Hazy Center and bunch of other cool historical planes.
Six. There were six Space Shuttle orbiters built. Enterprise OV-101 was intended originally to be retrofitted as a spaceflight-capable vehicle after the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT) and then the Mated Vertical Ground Vibration Testing (MGVT) was done. But lessons learned in building Enterprise resulted in changes to the subsequent orbiters which meant far work had to be done to bring her up to spec and thus more money spent. So, instead OV-099 Challenger was built out of a test article airframe in place of Enterprise.
Thanks for another great video and for the explanation of the difference between the Space Shuttle and the Space Shuttle Orbiter.
Excellent tour Paul, thank you! When viewing the orbiter cockpit it’s incredible to think how advanced and ‘digital’ it is given they started designing it in the latter ‘60s, during the Apollo program… what astonishing feats this gliding vehicle was capable of! Looking forward to the 747-100 video, particularly the mods needed to support the Orbiter :-)
That’s the upgraded digital “glass” cockpit. The avionics were upgraded beginning in 1999 and completed on all the shuttles over the course of about 5-6 years
When that mock-up was at the KSC Visitor Center years ago it had the stock ADI/HSI/CRT displays. Guess Houston changed to the MEDS displays
Hey thank younso much for to male this phantastic video.
Amazing view from the shuttles.
Thanks and sty safe
Although being extremely inefficient economically, very dangerous for the crews (complete lack of emergency abort system), very problematic at maintenance (inspection/replacement of all ceramic tiles, complete disassembly of engines etc.), space shuttles remain to be the sample of how genius human beings are - especially once you realize all this was designed in 70's ♥
Fun fact: The overall design of the orbiter (and the space shuttle of course), including the shape and size of the wings, was determined by a SINGLE theoretical short polar-orbit mission requested by D.O.D. that actually NEVER took place! If not this single requirement, Space Shuttle would probably be much more efficient and many issues would simply disappear...
But would they be still THAT beautiful? 😍
Loved Space Shuttles, they were the most beautiful peace of hardware that ever happened in space exploration.
Thank you for this amazing tour. Hope one day I'd be able to take my kids to the USA and show them this peace of art and technology! ☺
Have a wonderful day! 😁
Paul--good one. The last mission--Space Shuttle Atlantis completed STS-135, its 33rd and final mission landing on Runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility on the morning of Thursday, July 21, 2011.
I was at Udvar-Hazy last month; was absolutely incredible seeing Discovery in person. Thanks for the tour and explaining in detail what everything is and does!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Gracias por mostrar esas hermosas maquinas
Santiago dsd San Luis, Argentina 🇦🇷🇦🇷🇦🇷🇦🇷
Love your vids, and the info you provide in them. Very fascinating, especially this one since I loved shuttles as many did as kids.
What an amazing video. I would love to visit one day. Just amazing.
As always mate, a great presentation. Incredible the detail within the tiles and the size of the orbiter. Interesting facts as always.
Some of us will never get to see this awesome Aviation gold. Glad I found your channel !!
Seriously fascinating stuff Paul 👏 👌 👍
Nice tour of a truly astounding vehicle, considering it was designed in the 70s. I was lucky enough to work on the Shuttle Mission Simulator complex at the Johnson Space Center for 38 years, from "cradle to grave". Over those years I probably spent several hundred hours in the simulators. I can attest to the fact that there was not much room in the cockpit, hardly enough room to turn around in the aft station area behind the pilot seats. The only way in was up a ladder through a hatch in the floor, just like the real vehicle. One can visit one of the simulator cockpits at the Lone Star Flight Museum in Houston, although it only has the forward part of the cockpit due to logistical limitations. Thanks for the memories.
Fascinating insight. I always admired the orbiter’s capability 🚀
Saw the Shuttle Endeavour at the Cali Science center some time back,,,,blown away.
I've had the privilege of being able to play with one of the used tiles from Shuttle Columbia. What this video doesn't capture is just how thick and beefy they are, yet how ultra-light-weight they are! Going from memory, the tile weighs less than my Roku remote control.
Fantastic video. Very well done and informative. Thanks Paul!
These orbiters were a marvel of engineering at their time. Just awesome. Thanks for the tour Paul
@Funky Monk I’m so sorry Karen, your right and I am wrong. How can I be so silly. I didn’t even check the facts before sharing my opinion.
How did that go?@FunkyMonk6
This video was out of the world!
IDK about you, but I had a blast watching this video!
sorry about bad puns
Glad you enjoyed it :)
Five years a go I could see the Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center, it’s beautifully displayed hanging on a steel structure at the same angle that it would be in orbit, it looks so impressive, sadly there’s no walk through replica in there but there’s a bunch of cool things to se also like the Saturn V
wow I missed this video when you uploaded it. Thanks for the tour! it would be great to see inside a real shuttle but this is the next best thing!
Great video! Mixing both exterior views and shots from the interior was really innovative and it helped to understand how complex this machine was.
If I could make a small correction, it could be said that the main use of the body flap was to help trimming the shuttle during reentry.
its really awesome man imagine all knowledge and technology developed by the humanity since 4000 b.c. gathered in this single vehicle
Absolutely bonkers engineering
Just went here last week, what an AMAZING museum!
It really is!
I've always wondered, for years, what the insides of theses beasts looked like. This is an amazing video that details the stations and the inside of the craft. Amazing video paul, I really do love your content. Keep up the amazing work and have fun traveling!
Glad you enjoyed it!
The use of cork in the nose cones of the boosters has always fascinated me!
Next video : Detailed tour of Titanic.
👌
Thank you for this, Living in New Zealand , the chances of seeing this great exhibit first hand are near zero so well done
Glad you enjoyed it! But if it's any consolation, you have a south island with incredible views! :)
Hi Paul.
That was really cool to see.
I love how you "delicately" described deposits of solids and liquid into the loo !
The crew quarters are far more cramped than I realised, although , once a payload has been off-loaded, the cargo bay ( when pressurized) would provide a little more room to stretch out !
They can't pressurize the cargo bay actually. Strengthening the doors and seals and carrying additional oxygen would add a bunch of unnecessary weight to launch.
The payload bay couldn't be pressurized but there were pressurized modules like Spacelab that were sometimes flown in the bay and connected to the airlock.
Extreme engineering .What a machine.Excellent video.
The most greatest thing made by humans.
I miss space shuttles, i wish they couldnt gone
Rip to space shuttle challenger and columbia and their magnificent crew 😢
I’ve visited orbiter discovery once in 2022.
She’s just amazing
The US needs this program back. it was our pride and joy.
Yes the USA used to be a great super power. Now they’re too busy giving guns to angry young men so that they can shoot school kids. 😢
The reusable vehicle idea is good but if 2 of the 5 shuttles explode killing 14 astronauts then it's over with them. Maybe they can try again in a distant future.
@@Plamkata69 True... but in both incidences the main point of failure were not caused by the space shuttle itself. For Challenger, the O-rings malfunctioned due to poor planning/launching in the cold. For Columbia, there was a piece of foam that fell off the external tank which then broke the silica panels on the wing, which then caused it to disintegrate during re-entry.
@@PaulStewartAviation Honesty, the U.S. is a superpower because of the freedoms we have, this includes guns for all. I don't think this is the issue, I think the issue is complacency and the lack of competition. Now a days politicians are in bed with every other country, no more rivalry, no race to anything of value anymore. It seems we're deeply focused on population control and making everyone as lazy as humanly possible. No one likes hard-work and discovery anymore, we just want easy money and easy living - even if it costs all our freedoms eventually.
The shuttle program was ultimately a failure
Paul thank you so much for this beautiful video!!!💯
Very very nice video. I think we all have the deepest respect for what was achieved with the space shuttle. Only an imperfect system because humans are imperfect and they were also learning all the whole way through the program. As a Canadian I feel the honour of the Canada Arm forever near its big brother the Space Shuttle. What they achieved together including the construction of the international space station still amazes me. One wonders what a new shuttle could be like if a shuttle era ever comes again. May the souls of those who perished, within this program, rest in peace, and may light perpetual shine upon them. AMEN. ( AMEN is the following, Very Truly, It is so & Let it be so)
check out the Dream Chaser built by Sierra Space. A modern space shuttle with a different launch system. Based on the space plane by NASA
The video was absolutely amazing. I learnt so much. Thanks for going to the effort in making it.
You’re welcome
That place is like a dream for every aerospace engineer...
OH! This was fun! l always thought it would be cozy in that shuttle while orbiting around earth! Same with the space station, and skylab.
1:00 great spec's on the structure of the *Space shuttle* angles! This cradt could've been around today, if it just had those temporay *heat sheild paint* coat, used during the attempted long cruise of the X-15A, surround, under the decal paint ( with windows having re-enter HS roof lids), that imbalance dive would not have been so fatal of only short travel paint burns.
• Hs paint coat add on.
• folding main wings.
• *Plus* a Stratophere flat sting-ray form carrier to replace that bulk oramge tin.
• Thus a huge cargo exo orbit craft *to still around* today.
Still recomend something like that, for Dream Chaser & surround of Starship 2nd stage, under the HS tiles.
Brilliant presentation, highly interesting to watch. Thank you very much and take care.
3:16 - More importantly, the Orbiter is empty of fuel on touchdown, so there is nothing to start the RS-25 main engines with. This was the one really smart thing about the STS and Orbiter system; it's a man-rated space plane which is very safe to land, because it's not fuelled, and the engines aren't running.
To give you some idea of the sorts of energies involved with the RS-25 (SSME) engines... each of the fuel turbo-pumps were roughly the size of large V8 motors, but at 100% throttle they each produced as much power as 40 diesel locomotives. If you placed the inlet in an average American swimming pool, and pointed the outlet straight up, it would empty the pool in around 20 seconds, and it would pump a column of water 50km into the air. Now THAT is a pump!
It's often said that a rocket is merely a turbo-pump with a nozzle attached. :P
Thanks for the extra info! Yes they're pretty amazing engines! I was impressed with the pump rate of that little X-15 rocket motor!
I’m so glad I stumbled upon this channel a couple weeks ago. Great content
i love the way they put the tiles around the bases of the RS-25 engines, a work of art
Just saw this video in my feed. Absolutely wonderful. Thank you.
Cheers, glad you enjoyed it
For those that were wondering, the main engines were only used in the atmosphere because they guzzled down fuel (as all first-stage engines do). They drained the entire external fuel tank in just a few minutes, but output enough thrust to directly counteract gravity. Once the shuttle is at the edge of space with enough momentum to carry it upward against gravity, it can use the OMS engines (which output tiny amounts of thrust but at very high efficiency.)
Because there is no air or gravity at this point, any amount of thrust you add essentially permanently adds to the speed, meaning you can use engines that output tiny amounts of thrust but at high efficiency to add up to tremendous speed. The OMS engines essentially accelerate the orbiter horizantally to the point where it is flung around the earth like a pendulum by gravity (this is how orbit works.)
You have the right idea, but the SSMEs were indeed intended to provide the horizontal acceleration to orbital velocity.
The Solid Rocket Boosters' job was to get the stack high enough to reduce the air resistance to virtually nothing. The SSMEs' nozzle were sized for exoatmospheric expansion ratios, which is why the flames coming out of those engines at launch were so small (they're being pressed close by the thick atmosphere at sea level).
The OMS pods gave the final kick to get the Space Shuttle into orbit, but the SSMEs did most of the work at speeding it up in the stratosphere.
@@BogeyTheBear I was simplifying it down lmao
@@gelatinous6915 nice that you make it simple for me thanks
Strange that they never went out of low Earth orbit,was it the radiation belts that kept them from doing anything extra,or they didn't know how to,they forgot how to get to the Moon lol!
@@BogeyTheBear Thanks for saving me the trouble lol. I guess an easier way of thinking about it is that the SRBs basically lifted the fuel for the SSMEs and shuttle; once it was out of the atmosphere and the majority of gravity, the SRBs would be spent and separated.
There’s a more interesting side of the OMS that I can’t seem to find at the moment, but essentially the entire shuttle stack was designed to get the orbiter to a velocity just below a sustainable orbit, it was done for safety reasons that I can’t find now (I think Scott Manley discussed this a while ago.)
Basically there were safety concerns during development, and using OMS for circularization / orbital insertion was deemed safer.
Mate, I have to say, I was literally glued to this vid. I guess anything about space is fascinating but having a tour of the space shuttle was awesome, especially taking into account the various extreme conditions the vehicle needed to weather. Really enjoyed it and thanks for sharing!
Glad you enjoyed it my friend! My 747 SCA and Saturn V rocket videos are coming soon :)
dont know whats more impressive the craft or the men who flew it
This has become one of my favorite channels. You’ve done it again Paul!
Cheers!
Привет из России! Спасибо за экскурсию. Мне особенно было интересно смотреть это видео, потому что в 1995 году командир STS -1 ''Колумбия'' астронавт Джон Янг ответил мне на мое письмо. Спасибо за Вашу работу и удачи!
You’re welcome. I hope you’ve seen my An22 and Buran videos too :)
@@PaulStewartAviation I will definitely watch them, as well as other videos.🤛👍
this has to be one of the best aviation channels right now, nice one Paul
Nice, but we should have built the "fully reusable version"! 😁👍
Nah TAOS was the way to go
@@aviationlover3613 nah, the Rockwell fully reusable version was and is still the best! Hands up or down! 😁👍
@@TinyHouseHomestead Nah actually the rockwell booster would have had to be covered with tps because of how high and fast it would be going at separation so it would have just increased the turnaround time
@@aviationlover3613 nah, not talkin bout that one, talkin bout the dual flyback one! Bestes EVA! 😁🤪👍✌
Fantastic video Paul. One of your best.
Does anyone ever enter Discovery?? Like ever? Workers at the museum or people to maintain it?? Possibly astronauts who have flown on it? Do they get permission?
Yes sometimes crew go in for maintenance
Crazy how much goes into these things man
I loved working at NASA Johnson Space Center in the tank where we would take the astronauts down underwater in their suits so they could rehearse if they had to manually deploy a satellite outside the cargo Bay to get them neutral in the water was the closest thing to space