@8:00m Comms Blackout was actually not a thing for the STS Missions after they got a certain set of satellites up ! Comms blackout only affects Ground to Craft Direct Comms, but if you route the signal ABOVE the orbiter, then send it to it, comms blackout doesn't happen since the top half of the craft is not engulfed in a plasma bubble, only the bottom half.
Professional idiot. 😂 Simple example. "NASA mission control are anticipating a nervous six minutes of blackout during the peak heating phase of Crew Dragon’s return - if anything goes wrong during this time, it’s in the hands of the astronauts."
Earlier than that. The program started in 1972 and not all of the technology was started 'from scratch'. First launch was in 1981. Quite an accomplishment if you think about the engineering process back then (no CAD or workflow automation tech).
More like late 60's. Alot of the engineering for the shuttle started in the late 60's and manufacturing and testing happened in the 70's with testing being finalized in 81
As a kid I got an opportunity to see and touch a demonstration of the amazing heat shedding shuttle tiles were capable. They brought in a used shuttle tile, heated it to glowing hot orange with a blowtorch, then the moment they took the heat away told us "Touch it." Both times I tried touching it the thing was room temperature. Not even the slightest bit of residual warmth remained. Still blows my mind the level of materials science brought about by the shuttle program.
The tiles are actually still extremely hot when you touch them. It's their extremely low thermal conductivity that allows you to do it safely, as they won't transfer enough energy to your skin to burn you.
When I was a kid, I saw a documentary on those tiles before the first flight of the shuttle, and that's what they did. They put it in some kind of furnace, it came out glowing red hot, and the dude just picked it up with his bare hands. Incredible, just doesn't begin to describe it.
The time between the Wright Flyer and the Space Shuttle was 77 years. It is possible for a human being to see the Wright Flyer go 250ft down a beach and watch a plane land from freaking space in one lifetime. Thats pretty incredible.
Think about the difference between an 8 year old in 1903 seeing the Wright Brothers flight and maybe not even seeing a car...and him at 45 years old seeing near 400mph p51s with 1500hp and B-29 super fortresses, and at 68 years old he couldve taken a supersonic jet across the Atlantic to visit a european country, and driven a 425hp Corvette as his daily!
There were a few Civil War vets at WWII victory parades. Those guys went from muzzle loaded muskets to jet fighter and nuclear weapons in their lifetimes.
That shot of the orbiter in space with the wing root sections popping out scared the crap out of me, I thought I was watching actual footage. If your wings ever did that in real life you are in big trouble.
20:04 When I was in 5th grade my grandpa, who was a retired Air Force pilot, flew me from CA to FL to attend Space Camp. As we were somewhere over AZ my grandpa brought me up front and told me to listen to the controller. We were being told to move over. He had me go look out one of the windows. At first I didn’t see anything interesting as we were above the clouds. Then all of a sudden the Space Shuttle comes through the clouds! It had previously landed at Edwards and was being carried back to FL on the back of a 747. We were left in the dust very quickly, however, those moments were incredible. (Edit: 737 -> 747)
In fourth grade, a NASA engineer was invited to come to my school to hold an assembly where he demonstrated some of the advanced technology NASA was using at that time. At one point, he held up one of the insulating tiles, describing it's function on the space shuttle. He then proceeded to get it brightly glowing hot with a large blow torch. As the tile was heating up, he asked for a volunteer. I immediately raised my hand, and he motioned me to come forward. I stood there for a moment in awe of the glowing white-hot brick in front of me. He picked it up using a thermal glove and asked if I wanted to touch it. I shook my head, no, no, no, and everyone laughed. He winked at me and took my hand and guided it above the still glowing tile. He told me to pick it up off his gloved hand, and to the shock and awe of myself and the rest of the school, I picked it up. It was only slightly warm, and sort of made a slight hissing sound when my skin made contact with it. I was scared, but the fear quickly turned into amazement at what I had just experienced. One of my fondest memories, for sure. It left a lasting impression, to say the least.
When I was in fifth grade, they had a similar demonstration, except the way I remember it was they had a little stand for the blow torch, which was going full blast, then they had kids line up and each one could put their hand on the cool side of the tile - while the torch was still wailing away. It's a vague memory without the detail you have, so perhaps I'm wrong - or maybe they changed it over time or had different setups. I remember being amazed by it - it happened shortly before the Challenger disaster - which I do remember clear, being in west central Florida we went outside that morning to watch the launch, saw the puff ball, the boosters disengage, literally no one thought anything about it - it wasn't until we got inside that we realized the puff ball we saw was an explosion. What I don't understand about that whole situation is how every kid, coast to coast, all knew the "What does NASA stand for" ... "Need Another Seven Astronauts" joke. Seriously, how in a time before internet, when long distance dialing was really expensive, how did everyone know the joke within days? It's not something they'd have ever said on TV or radio back then. That deserves its own investigative series.
@@rodmunch69 I got to do that when I visited the Glenn Research Center for an open house. It was amazing to think of something so frail that did its job so well. Definitely had to get over my brain yelling, "That's glowing white hot!!"
One small thing: 177°C = 450K; 980°C = 1253K. So Inconel X can withstand a little less than 3 times the temperature of Aluminium, not more than 5!!! That’s why we always do temperatures in Kelvin 😅
Or Rankine if you are working in America's private sector. But honestly, once you get outside of the everyday units and ranges its almost always easier to just use metric. (Imperial is a pile of legacy units, that are pretty good in context but once you leave that context and have to convert it just gets gross. I still hate that i know what a pound-mol is.)
my dad worked at the company that made those parachutes! I remember him telling a story about testing some of them early in the development period, they went out to a local airfield and tested a scaled down design by attaching it to the rear frame of my dads blazer. From his telling it stopped the car dead in its tracks and nearly tore apart the frame! Side bonus for me as a kid was all expense paid corporate visits to Canaveral to shuttle launches and landings!
I love this story! Very cool. Old school methodology, the experiment was the goal and how you did it and if it was a bit unsafe wasn't a worry. Imagine OSHA nowadays. But on the flip side we have computers now lol and that's pretty darned cool, so it all evens out in the end
I made those thermal blankets with my fellow "Sew Sisters." The correct range of temperatures for those blankets were roughly 650-1200 degrees. The majority of the blankets were about 1/2" thick -Class 4. Most of the orbiter was covered in that thickness. The OMS Pods were covered with Class 10 or 11- approx 1,000-1,200 protection. The blankets were thick in the area because the OMS Pod skin was made of composite materials. NASA required the blankets in that area to be that thickness because the temperature couldn't exceed 350 degrees. Otherwise, it could soften the airframe there.
One of the best quotes about the shuttle in the Atlantis exhibit as you go in is "it was like bolting a butterfly to a bullet" in describing its launch configuration
one of my favorites quotes when describing the shuttle during re-entry is that its a "flying brick on approach" from the Clint Eastwood film "Space Cowboys"
I absolutely believe the space shuttle is one of the single most impressive feats of engineering in human history. In addition to the Apollo missions, it's incredible we could do what we did with the tech of that time and have such a high success rate.
It absolutely was an impressive feat of engineering. But most of that engineering would've been completely unnecessary if NASA hadn't been forced to bow to the Air Force's demands when they were designing it.
@AndyFerr Most of that can be blamed on Congress forcing NASA to partner with the Air Force when designing and building it because of their budget cuts. If NASA had more control over the requirements, a lot of the problems with the Shuttle could've been avoided.
Love your videos. They are a great source of joy for those of us who are curious about technology! Forgive me for being pedantic, but at 12:04 you state that Inconel is mostly made of steel. Unless this is an alloy I am not familiar with, Inconel is a Nickel based alloy, typically >50% of the composition being Nickel. Thanks again for all your great work in these videos!
Was flying back from Miami Fl. to NYC when the captain of our airliner announced the space shuttle would be departing off our right side miles away. I got to see it climb from below and then above our cruising altitude until I couldn't see it anymore. One of the coolest things I've ever seen.
The first time I saw an orbiter in person I was completely taken back by the thermal protection system. As a kid, I would write to NASA to get information on the STS (no internet at the time) and would read it over and over, so I knew that the shuttle was not just a painted aluminum aircraft (like it appeared on 80's television). When I first saw it in person at Kennedy the first thing I thought was 'it looks dirty' and pieced together, and not as refined as it did in the photos that I had. It gave me a better appreciation for the careful design, engineering and fabrication that went into it.
If you love this stuff you might enjoy a great video on LTT and Everyday Astronaut covering the flight control computers from Apollo. Or maybe the mechanical fire control computers from battleship days or even early naval clocks.. Mind bendingly complicated devices made from innumerable problem solving mixed with artisanal levels of precision and craftsmanship. Then again, parts of modern screens are produced using ink dot printing, which is Wizardry of another order on it's own.
I remember a funny and disturbing quote, "The space shuttle has over 1,000,000 components that all needed to work perfectly, supplied by contractors with the lowest bid"
@@dzzopeif we're talking modern engineering techniques, cutting edge lithography for making the most advanced microchips is just complete fucking wizardry
As a child of the 1980s the Shuttle will always have a huge place in my heart. What the kids in the 60s loved about the Apollo missions, I loved as a kid in the 80s with the Shuttle.
It was a poorly thought out design. There is no reason to use a glider to return to earth. It is vastly more difficult to make a plane that wont melt, than a space capsule. They added solid rocket boosters, which cannot be shut down. And can also detonate instantaneously, if anything goes wrong. Saturn V > Soyuz > Space Shuttle
Chefs know steel is a poor heat conductor compared to copper or aluminum. Fancy pans are copper (for thermal conductivity) clad in stainless steel (for non-reactivity)
Copper conducts heat about 20x faster than steels and nickel alloys. But compared to polymers and ceramics any metal is vastly more conductive of heat.
@@petervillano3484 My favourite pan is one made from stainless steel. Looks like just another pot, but the base is almost 1cm thick. Base provides and retains a more even spread of heat.
Great point, space stuff has ever been so expensive I suppose it becoming economically viable is why spacex and other private space companies popped up.
We went from using horses as a main mode of transportation prior to 1897, to landing on the moon 72 years later & in another 12 years we were flying reusable space shuttles.
the Buran was even more advanced , sadly the soviets really only made it because they thought the space shuttle was a threat from a military standpoint
It was just completely pointless. It had a payload of 25 tonnes, but the orbiter weighed 75 tonnes. Let's consider for the moment not reusing anything. Well you can get rid of the wings obviously, don't need them, and the thermal protection system. And the crew compartment , now nobody needs to land. And the payload bay, just a simple fairing will do. By this point you are down to the engines and orbital thrusters, only you've saved so much mass you only need one engine, smaller thrusters, and smaller fuel tanks for those... Now you are lifting so much less mass into orbit, you need an external tank a third the size, and only one SRB. Oh, and no point reusing that, because doing so costs the same as building a new one. What was the point of reusing it? Everything they reused was only there to be reused. Complete waste of hundreds of billions of dollars.
13:10 - on orbit, the shuttle was oriented with the top side facing earth meaning the black underside was the side which faced the sun. The choice of white on top was driven almost entirely by reentry considerations. Because the upper side is only receiving heat radiatively rather than directly, white is the better choice to reject it. Also the vast majority of the white TPS was changed to thermal fabric blankets made of either woven silica fibers or nomex fibers depending on temperature - rigid tiles were almost entirely replaced on the upper side in the 80's.
Only Columbia and Challenger had LRSI tiles on the midbody and payload bay doors. The latter three, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour all made extensive use of Advanced Felt Reusable Insulation (AFRSI, the quilted thermal blankets) replacing both the LRSI tiles and the smooth Felt Reusable Insulation (FRSI) thermal blankets. During extensive downtime between STS-51L and STS-28R, all of the LRSI tiles on Columbia's midbody and PLBDs were replaced with AFRSI blankets, leaving only the Forward Fuselage with LRSI tiles. For the ISS missions, alot of the original AFRSI blankets on Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour were replaced with FRSI blankets for weight saving reasons as every pound counted when lifting heavy payloads into the challenging 51.62° inclination orbit that had been chosen for the ISS (lowest possible inclination available to the Russians). This was in late-90's.
well... the LA's exhibit shuttle was just up righted recently... in launch config... couldn't that be the point? there's always a date that's inauspicious for certain things...
What I wish more people would understand is that neither of the two Shuttle losses were due to the orbiter (what everyone thinks of as “the shuttle”). The first was destroyed by the SRB’s, and the second by foam fatally damaging it. The orbiter itself did everything it was asked.
One of my favorite videos of yours. The editing, storytelling, info shared, and the phenomenal renders and animations make this far better than most professional space docs I've seen... and I've seen a lot. Incredible all around!
20:26 Not just the Cape! The USAF wanted it to have the same once-around capability from Vandenberg, too. That's much tougher because the orbital inclination is about double what you get launching from Frorida. In other words, you still need to fly the same distance sideways, but you have to pull twice as hard to make the turn.
Man, I thought I knew a decent amount about the Shuttle but you taught me a lot on this one! The crossrange considerations of single orbit missions, the deployable Air Data Sensors, how the tiles were made, the inconel intermediate connections, the nomex felt base layer, etc. But especially the reversed aileron control at those speeds and AoA! Outstanding video!
I don’t know why but I cried watching this. As an aerospace engineer I can say without a doubt that this is one of the coolest videos I’ve ever seen. It makes me proud to be in the field I’m in. Thank you for this ✈️🚀
Considering the Space Shuttle, Concorde and SR-71 were designed in the ‘60’s and 70’s, I feel like we’ve stagnated in the last few decades in terms of progressing space and flight vehicle development. Why are these 50+ year old platforms still seen as such technological marvels? If the pace of experimentation and development had continued, they should be seen as absolute relics given what should be flying today.
it's a mix of more cautiousness and lack of funding. USA just likes funding war more than anything. But NASA is still going strong, in my opinion even better than before, just at a slower pace(bc of funding). More consideration, more experimenting instead of fixating on a concept, even if other solutions might be better, just to get something working more quickly... Wish our world would stop fixating so much on profits and funding the rich, and finally start focusing on improving people's lifes and eventually go beyond just surviving and exploring the mysteries of our Universe.
Would also posit that lacking the Cold War dimension of political competition with respect to aeronautics and space flight, the drive behind stretching these technologies to their limits in a flashy way diminished considerably. Concorde could be worth it to prove it could be done for a coolness factor, and show off to the Soviets, but it wasn't commercially viable, and lacked enough material improvement on ordinary jet airliner travel with the technologies that built it. Not that surprising that it lasted barely more than a decade beyond the fall of the Soviet Union Similarly, while NASA may have discontinued the shuttle program, it's doing more interesting science than ever before, and being wildly successful putting robots on Mars, and telescopes in far-off space. The Cold War really influenced priorities in these fields towards a specific kind of national prestige, and without it, priorities changed
I don't like how this is worded because the Saturn V was designed and made in the 60's yet it's still the most powerful rocket to launch a payload into orbit. But Starship is quickly closing the gap and it's the most advanced and optimistic rocket ever created. Once it reaches orbit early next year, is there anything that could catch up to it? It's only a matter of time before we get a ship catch. Only a matter of time before boosters are reflown again and only a matter of time until Starship launches multiple times per month
It’s videos like these which remind me how absolutely incredible human ingenuity and intelligence truly are. We’ve gone from cave-dweller fashioning crude tools from sticks and stones to a space-faring species capable of designing and building machines to carry us into the most inhospitable and uninhabitable environments within our local universe. It truly is mind blowing.
Describing the banking procedure of re-entry as "the fastest drift in history" has forever etched in my brain the image of the crew switching on Gas Gas Gas during those portions.
What a lot of people don't know is that in the majority of later missions the shuttles landing was completely autonomous. The commanders insisted on having a role so they were given the task to press the button to lower the landing gear. Of course in an emergency they could take control and were certainly over qualified to land these things manually but the automated system worked so well they most just lowered the landing gear. I loved the Spaced shuttle, John Young and Bob Crippen are still my heroes from 1981.
@18:33 this is a phenomena of high degrees of AOA not necessarily high altitude or high speed, it has a specific name called adverse yaw. modern flight control systems are now designed to, in high performance planes mostly, to have differential aileron control higher degrees of AOA. the effects of this have actually been mapped by the advisory group for aerospace research and development, AGARD in 1979. their white paper called "high angle of attack aerodynamics" in section 2-6 sub 4.1.1 and accompaning fig 15 for the chart. adverse yaw in traditional configuration begins to happen around 30d of aoa/alpha. before flight control systems basically solved the input problem, pilots were actually trained to change control regime at high alpha, most notably in the F-4 phantom where rudder was used for roll authority in high alpha regimes. a period training video also showing this effect is on youtube called "F-4 flight characteristics TF-6771" and the section on adverse yaw starts at around 10min.
I think my fav thing I learned in this was around 8:40. I’ve never seen (read:noticed) the rear body flap on the shuttle, let alone knew it even existed. That’s awesome
Even though the shuttle didnt achieve its main objective (reuseable shuttle with cheap access to space), it was a massive achievement in Engineering and Aerodynamics. The biggest surprise and something new I learnt from this video was the hypersonic re entry profile and behaviour or airflow in such profile.
Yeah, hypersonics are weird. Also in the video they show it making turns while hypersonic. In reality it was only a couple degrees side to side. You cant actually maneuver at hypersonic speeds, all you can do is point in a new direction and increase drag.
After the end of the Apollo program and the massive cost cut backs for NASA, the Shuttle was seen as a downgrade, in what people thought would be a program culminating in sending a manned mission to Mars. Still, engineering something that went to space, and then returned as a sort of airplane is insane indeed. The things we learned from this machine are of huge value.
7:18 The region between a bow show and the body which generates that shock in a supersonic flow is not low pressure. It is actually very high pressure, depending on Mach number. At Mach 7 the pressure in this region is 57 times that of the free stream. At Mach 20, it’s 466 times that of the free stream. This is an elementary concept in supersonic flows. Blunt bodies produce normal shocks and do experience much less aerodynamic heating. But this is primarily due to a reduction in viscous dissipation heating. Source: Fundamentals of Aerodynamics, John D Anderson 12:10 Inconel is not mostly made of steel. Steels are alloys of iron. Inconel is a family of nickel alloys, none of which are mostly steel.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed the mistake at 7:18 regarding the bow shock pressure change. He even states that this air gap "reduces heat transfer", which is wildly incorrect. It makes me wonder where he got this information, as any compressible fluids textbook covering shockwaves should clearly state how high pressure and high temperature the region between the bow shock and nose is.
Thank you for the video. I just wanted to comment that this is the first time I not only watched the sponsor video, but found your pitch appealing enough to give it a try. I usually use solidworks, but it has it limitations, let's see how onshape measures up. Kudos!
@@BottleOfCoke The scope of the crafts abilities was entirely too wide! Don’t get me wrong here, as a mechanical engineer myself I can appreciate the mind boggling level of science and engineering at play here and like I said, it’s a beautiful finely tuned machine. My point though is that they would have been better off creating multiple variants rather than trying to make everyone happy with one do it all craft, and like I said it really is shocking we didn’t see more failures of the system given its complexity. Truly speaks to the skill of the fab and maintenance teams involved.
15:09 communication blackouts were only an issue early in the program. TDRS (tracking and data relay satellites) - launched during early missions - allowed communication upwards, via an antenna in the tail, during entry.
For certain orbital inclinations the last abort base short of orbit was Kadina AB, Okinawa. In 1982 I helped save a shuttle launch. The Tacan (Tactical Air Navigation System) at Kadina went down and base supply did not have a replacement part. I was working Communications Job Control and Navaids Communications Management Office at Yokota AB, Japan. NCMO Kadina called me to see if we had the part. I woke the NCOIC of Supply in the Communications Group, Elmer Troxel, up in the middle of the night. While Trox worked on getting the part, I called in some IOUs and got it a ride to Kadina. We were working against the clock. If the TACAN at Kadina was not back up in time they would have to scrub that launch. Trox got me the part and I got it a ride. The guys at Kadina got the TACAN back up with 2 hours to spare so the launch proceeded as scheduled. Instead of some sort of commendation medal Trox and I got a letter read at Commander's call. Bit Whoop!
I went the whole video waiting for you to credit the Dyna-Soar/X-20 program for the basics of the shuttle's mission performance. I'm amazed that you failed to mention it once, and seemed to think it was an outgrowth of the X-15. 2:40 The X-15 may have experimentally proven the thermal techniques, but the entire reentry sequence was developed during the Dyna-Soar program. Dyna-Soar did not use ablatives nor the super-fragile tiles. It's main body was made from a Rene 41 (a nickel alloy developed for gas turbine blades, not that different from Inconel) truss covered with Rene 41 panels. On the bottom surface were additional, non-load-bearing panels of columbium that would last ~4 flights before needing replacement. Also, there were only a couple dozen panels, rather than the thousands of tiles on the shuttle. 20:12 The shuttle got it's delta wings from Dyna-Soar as well. Even North American's X-20 proposal was basically an upgraded X-15 with delta wings since that design requirement was already well understood at the time. This let the shuttle designers use the 14,000 hours of wind tunnel testing done on the Dyna-Soar as a starting point, saving years of basic research. 20:55 The whole cross-range requirement was another Dyna-Soar legacy. It's mission was to launch from Florida, fly over the "area of interest" anywhere in the world, gather its intel, then land at Edwards AFB. For the reason you mention, this required a large cross-range capability, and Dyna-Soar could land 1,500 miles (2.500 km) to either side of the ballistic trajectory This is all covered in the book "Dyna-Soar" by Roy Houchin, available on amazon or directly from the publisher: www.arapress.com/dyna-soar-book/
Bit of a nitpick but the primary amount of radiative heating during reentry wouldn't come from solar radiation but from radiation coming from the reentry plasma.
20:39 talks about how shuttle's design was dictated by a mission from cape Canaveral mission but i think that this is supposed to be refrencing a mission from Vandenberg AFB? Scott Manley has a great video about it
To be more precise, the mission requirement was to launch into a polar orbit, rendezvous with a satellite, retrieve it, then land back at Vandenberg. The cross range was required to account for the rotation of the Earth. There is no physics reason why such a mission couldn't be performed from the Cape -- but it would require dropping SRBs on the East Coast or on Cuba. Politically speaking, this was never going to happen.
It does. It brothered me, that's why i clicked.... It's not like I don't know what the space shuttle goes through at re-entry or how it's built. As a kid of the 80s i watched so many videos about it on the old Discovery channel... Back when it was actually a good cience channel.
We need a supercut of this series. Long form content is suprisingly well performing in yt for revenue. Especially if there is decent retention / premium viewers.
I just want to say I’ve always watched your videos but just recently I started watching them to fall asleep and it’s amazing and that’s not me calling your videos boring quite the opposite I find it stimulating enough that it actually relaxes me and I end up having a good night sleep I’ll definitely be subscribing to your other platforms in the near future keep at it !
Not these videos specifically, but I have been using the same technique for a couple months now and I have always been a shit sleeper. These documentaries sooth my racing brain! You should give "Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles" a try!
The cross-range requirement was 1100 miles by the Air Force because they wanted the capability to launch into polar trajectory from Vandenberg AFB and land after a single orbit, by which time, Vandenberg would have been 1100 miles further east. This polar orbit requirement was driven by the USAF desire to be able to deploy reconnaissance satellites to cover the Soviet Union, much of which was at high latitudes (which would not be fully covered by the the approx max orbital inclination of about 62 degrees w/ a "dog-leg" maneuver up the east coast), and then land again before the shuttle's presence was detected. Amazing video BTW!
As a pilot I was thinking the same thing. All the alarm bells are going off in my head. Especially flying with reverse thrust and upward Flaps. If that happened on my plane I'd be shitting bricks!
8:07 ionisation radio blackout was only a problem in the early years. Once the TDRSS satellites were launched, the orbiters could communicate, via antennas on the tail, upwards to those satellites, which relayed to the ground.
I remember watching the shuttle enter the atmosphere, it was at night here, and looked like a fireball passing over Calgary, watching it enter the atmosphere was the most amazing thing I even saw. I also watched live as the shuttle exploded during launch in February of '86, was so shocking it took me a few days to process, I was only 16 years old and had never felt those emotions before. Keep up the awesome videos, your one of the few you tubers I trust the information from.
My mom worked for nasa from the 80s to the mid 90s. When she passed away, I found some of her awards she got for her contributions to the space shuttle program.
Yeah I doubt most pilots would be experienced in upper atmosphere hypersonic flight haha. Unintuitive details like this are something that stand out and I really appreciate them going through the details as to why in the video.
Canadian forces base Edmonton used to be a reserve runway for the space shuttle back when it was an airforce base. It's an army base now and that 4Km long runway now has been used as a foundation for a bunch of buildings and the rest of it is a scrap yard. Kind of sad honestly.
In proper english, 500,000ft to ground in 1 hour, 19,200kmh in orbit To 800kmh or 500mph at 40,000ft, falling at terminal velocity, at 40,000ft 1 minute from landing they enter the heading alignment cone and do the turn onto the final approach at 500 ft they drop the landing gear at 300ft they start their flare. The tail has an air brake that controls speed in the final 100,000ft. The final minutes are flown by manual control and the computer for the whole mission are only 16 kb. Take a picture of a white wall and that uses more memory on your phone than the whole of the space shuttle. Truely amazing.
That is Edwards Airforce Base. White Sands Missile Range was used one for STS-3 Space Shuttle Columbia. And was lost on the day of upload 21 years ago.
I remember going to Kennedy Space Center when I was a kid in the 90s. They did a live demonstration of a space shuttle tile. The guy turned on a blow torch on one side of the tile and put his hand on the other side.
What blows my mind about all the cold war era tech between the 60's and 80's is that it was all designed by a group of brilliant engineers working with nothing but a pencil, some draft paper and a calculator. CAD was just in its infancy and may have been used for little 2d sketches here and there but that's about it. Today an engineer could open a cad file, change the heat absorbing material or shape of a wing on a shuttle and run a re-entry simulation in a couple of hours. Make another little tweak then run again. Back then all of that math had to be worked out by hand, hand crafted models built from hand made drawings having tests done in wind tunnels. There was no previous space technology to base your designs on. Everything was all original, you had an idea in a dream, you wrote it down and spent months sketching it out. Engineers in the space program truly must have been some of the most influential geniuses of our time. There is probably so much mechanical tech we use everyday that has its roots in some drawing for some obscure part of a shuttle and we don't even realize it. As JFK once famously said "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard" That spirit is lost on us today and we desperately need it back.
I love the shuttle program. Seeing a launch today generates the same chills and tears it did in the 80s when it first took flight. I have seen numerous documentaries on the shuttle program, and this was one of THE most in-depth analyses of material design and reentry that I have seen to date. Great work. Earned a like and a sub.
This series is infuriating. 177C is NOT "five times lower" than 980C, because the base of the scale is not zero C, it's zero Kelvin. Zero C is merely where water boils at sea level, an utterly irrelevant floor for the comparison here. I expect better.
If you enjoyed this, i'd highly recommend "how to land the space shuttle.... from space" by bret. really fun little presentation and gives some nice pieces of context, like how the shuttle's descent path falls at the same rate as the terminal velocity of a skydiver in freefall (imagine the earth coming at you at 120mph!). Frigging mindblowing stuff.
This was a great series. I knew the Shuttle was complex but wow this makes it even that much more incredible this thing was built and worked. Truly amazing machine.
The human ingenuity, craftsmanship, perseverance and teamwork that has to go into a project like this is something that gives me hope for humanity. Despite all the disagreements that they can have, when they want to, people can come together and make something like this. Even airliners, fighter jets, space telescopes etc. It's amazing that we manage to do these things. Also your videos on these things are epic. Doing Ireland proud :)
I've been spending the last few weeks reading into the early shuttle designs and it was great to see you touch on them here. The straight-wing orbiter designs came in even steeper and got more of the blunt-body effect. And while it may seem precarious to only have a single shot to land a gliding shuttle, tests with powered lifting bodies showed the speed management and extra mass for landing engines was not viable.
It always impresses me that the pinnacles of aerospace technology, the shuttle, concorde, blackbird and even the 747 were designed in the 60s. A time when even calculators weren't available and computing power was a fraction of what we are holding on our palms. 60 years on, nothing has come overtaking them. Except the 380.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for not repeating the widely-circulated myth that re-entry heating is caused by friction. An excellent and informative video, indeed.
@8:00m Comms Blackout was actually not a thing for the STS Missions after they got a certain set of satellites up ! Comms blackout only affects Ground to Craft Direct Comms, but if you route the signal ABOVE the orbiter, then send it to it, comms blackout doesn't happen since the top half of the craft is not engulfed in a plasma bubble, only the bottom half.
See The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_and_Data_Relay_Satellite_System
Professional idiot. 😂
Simple example.
"NASA mission control are anticipating a nervous six minutes of blackout during the peak heating phase of Crew Dragon’s return - if anything goes wrong during this time, it’s in the hands of the astronauts."
You so dumb. 👍
Thank you
@@CarlosAM1
Not a true statement.
But ok. 🤗
It's truly incredible that the Space Shuttle even existed considering it was late 70's early 80's technology.
Earlier than that. The program started in 1972 and not all of the technology was started 'from scratch'. First launch was in 1981.
Quite an accomplishment if you think about the engineering process back then (no CAD or workflow automation tech).
More like late 60's. Alot of the engineering for the shuttle started in the late 60's and manufacturing and testing happened in the 70's with testing being finalized in 81
We can do anything we put our minds to… just turned into airheads lately and can’t put out minds to anything
We are doing plenty. From sending probes to touch the sun to detecting ripples in the fabric of reality to flying drones on Mars. @@Rkcuddles
We had nuclear submarines in the 50s
As a kid I got an opportunity to see and touch a demonstration of the amazing heat shedding shuttle tiles were capable. They brought in a used shuttle tile, heated it to glowing hot orange with a blowtorch, then the moment they took the heat away told us "Touch it." Both times I tried touching it the thing was room temperature. Not even the slightest bit of residual warmth remained. Still blows my mind the level of materials science brought about by the shuttle program.
The tiles are actually still extremely hot when you touch them. It's their extremely low thermal conductivity that allows you to do it safely, as they won't transfer enough energy to your skin to burn you.
@@TeKnOShEePsource?
@@TeKnOShEeP And after the shuttle landed they were still radiating heat for a good while just sitting there on the runway.
When I was a kid, I saw a documentary on those tiles before the first flight of the shuttle, and that's what they did. They put it in some kind of furnace, it came out glowing red hot, and the dude just picked it up with his bare hands. Incredible, just doesn't begin to describe it.
@@Jimtheneals i wish our politicians would focus on such things. instead we have tanks that can shoot a fly at 4.5km...
The time between the Wright Flyer and the Space Shuttle was 77 years.
It is possible for a human being to see the Wright Flyer go 250ft down a beach and watch a plane land from freaking space in one lifetime. Thats pretty incredible.
My grandfather lived to see it and as a child his family had no radio, no phone, no TV, and no electricity.
Think about the difference between an 8 year old in 1903 seeing the Wright Brothers flight and maybe not even seeing a car...and him at 45 years old seeing near 400mph p51s with 1500hp and B-29 super fortresses, and at 68 years old he couldve taken a supersonic jet across the Atlantic to visit a european country, and driven a 425hp Corvette as his daily!
@@Shadow0fd3ath24 My grandfather went from horses and wagons to seeing the moon landing.
There were a few Civil War vets at WWII victory parades. Those guys went from muzzle loaded muskets to jet fighter and nuclear weapons in their lifetimes.
@@RCAvhstape there's a picture of an alleged Civil War vet standing next to an F-100 Super Sabre, a supersonic jet fighter with air-to-air missiles.
Holy crap has the CGI gotten good on this channel... Congratulations to the production team working on these.
You're a 🤡
I just said similar thing. Sooooo good
That shot of the orbiter in space with the wing root sections popping out scared the crap out of me, I thought I was watching actual footage. If your wings ever did that in real life you are in big trouble.
10:23 especially looks like it's actual footage shot from the ISS on approach. :O
It looks better than the animations of the space shuttle that used to air on TV. Amazing job by the animators!
20:04 When I was in 5th grade my grandpa, who was a retired Air Force pilot, flew me from CA to FL to attend Space Camp. As we were somewhere over AZ my grandpa brought me up front and told me to listen to the controller. We were being told to move over. He had me go look out one of the windows. At first I didn’t see anything interesting as we were above the clouds. Then all of a sudden the Space Shuttle comes through the clouds! It had previously landed at Edwards and was being carried back to FL on the back of a 747. We were left in the dust very quickly, however, those moments were incredible. (Edit: 737 -> 747)
Cool!
Thanks for sharing! And thanks for that link, Sloth, those were some great views!
@GlutenEruption umm I know, I just watched the video lol
I was not aware that the shuttle could be carried by a 737, thought that was a 747’s job lol😊
@@Artemie-np3qu The 737 is not able to carry the space shuttle, it was probably a typing error
In fourth grade, a NASA engineer was invited to come to my school to hold an assembly where he demonstrated some of the advanced technology NASA was using at that time. At one point, he held up one of the insulating tiles, describing it's function on the space shuttle. He then proceeded to get it brightly glowing hot with a large blow torch. As the tile was heating up, he asked for a volunteer. I immediately raised my hand, and he motioned me to come forward. I stood there for a moment in awe of the glowing white-hot brick in front of me. He picked it up using a thermal glove and asked if I wanted to touch it. I shook my head, no, no, no, and everyone laughed. He winked at me and took my hand and guided it above the still glowing tile. He told me to pick it up off his gloved hand, and to the shock and awe of myself and the rest of the school, I picked it up. It was only slightly warm, and sort of made a slight hissing sound when my skin made contact with it. I was scared, but the fear quickly turned into amazement at what I had just experienced. One of my fondest memories, for sure. It left a lasting impression, to say the least.
you are a great storyteller, like listening to an uncle tell his stories
When I was in fifth grade, they had a similar demonstration, except the way I remember it was they had a little stand for the blow torch, which was going full blast, then they had kids line up and each one could put their hand on the cool side of the tile - while the torch was still wailing away. It's a vague memory without the detail you have, so perhaps I'm wrong - or maybe they changed it over time or had different setups. I remember being amazed by it - it happened shortly before the Challenger disaster - which I do remember clear, being in west central Florida we went outside that morning to watch the launch, saw the puff ball, the boosters disengage, literally no one thought anything about it - it wasn't until we got inside that we realized the puff ball we saw was an explosion. What I don't understand about that whole situation is how every kid, coast to coast, all knew the "What does NASA stand for" ... "Need Another Seven Astronauts" joke. Seriously, how in a time before internet, when long distance dialing was really expensive, how did everyone know the joke within days? It's not something they'd have ever said on TV or radio back then. That deserves its own investigative series.
@@rodmunch69 I got to do that when I visited the Glenn Research Center for an open house. It was amazing to think of something so frail that did its job so well. Definitely had to get over my brain yelling, "That's glowing white hot!!"
You two were like Frodo and Gandalf
@@АндрейОнищенко-з8х "It is quite cool. Take it!"
One small thing: 177°C = 450K; 980°C = 1253K. So Inconel X can withstand a little less than 3 times the temperature of Aluminium, not more than 5!!! That’s why we always do temperatures in Kelvin 😅
that is a very good point, I didn't even realize that.
@ Captain Cookie,
You beat me by 2 hours ! I calculated 2.78 times Inconel / Al
:-)
This video is full of small errors.
Now I get why Space X chose stainless for Starship - KISS principle ..
Or Rankine if you are working in America's private sector.
But honestly, once you get outside of the everyday units and ranges its almost always easier to just use metric. (Imperial is a pile of legacy units, that are pretty good in context but once you leave that context and have to convert it just gets gross. I still hate that i know what a pound-mol is.)
my dad worked at the company that made those parachutes! I remember him telling a story about testing some of them early in the development period, they went out to a local airfield and tested a scaled down design by attaching it to the rear frame of my dads blazer. From his telling it stopped the car dead in its tracks and nearly tore apart the frame! Side bonus for me as a kid was all expense paid corporate visits to Canaveral to shuttle launches and landings!
Was the sacrificial blazer a company car or was your dad just extremely generous? lol
I love this story! Very cool. Old school methodology, the experiment was the goal and how you did it and if it was a bit unsafe wasn't a worry. Imagine OSHA nowadays. But on the flip side we have computers now lol and that's pretty darned cool, so it all evens out in the end
@@quualuddite nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
I made those thermal blankets with my fellow "Sew Sisters." The correct range of temperatures for those blankets were roughly 650-1200 degrees. The majority of the blankets were about 1/2" thick -Class 4. Most of the orbiter was covered in that thickness. The OMS Pods were covered with Class 10 or 11- approx 1,000-1,200 protection. The blankets were thick in the area because the OMS Pod skin was made of composite materials. NASA required the blankets in that area to be that thickness because the temperature couldn't exceed 350 degrees. Otherwise, it could soften the airframe there.
Wow , this is amazing piece of information , I’m in awe of the technology and engineering used …
One of the best quotes about the shuttle in the Atlantis exhibit as you go in is "it was like bolting a butterfly to a bullet" in describing its launch configuration
Jeez
one of my favorites quotes when describing the shuttle during re-entry is that its a "flying brick on approach" from the Clint Eastwood film "Space Cowboys"
Yeah. "Aerodynamic approach*"
*For certain interpretations of "aerodynamic"
this movie 🔥
The shuttle was a beautiful flying brick.
It is amazing movie
suddenly half as interesting
I absolutely believe the space shuttle is one of the single most impressive feats of engineering in human history. In addition to the Apollo missions, it's incredible we could do what we did with the tech of that time and have such a high success rate.
"We"? 99% of humans alive today, if put on an island with all the raw materials needed to build one, COULD NOT DO IT. Not ever.
Diversity NASA blew up 2 out of 4 space shuttles, a 50% failure rate.
Yes very impressive but probably not as impressive as the craft I saw which dropped straight in from a stand still about 12 years ago.
It absolutely was an impressive feat of engineering. But most of that engineering would've been completely unnecessary if NASA hadn't been forced to bow to the Air Force's demands when they were designing it.
@AndyFerr Most of that can be blamed on Congress forcing NASA to partner with the Air Force when designing and building it because of their budget cuts. If NASA had more control over the requirements, a lot of the problems with the Shuttle could've been avoided.
Love your videos. They are a great source of joy for those of us who are curious about technology!
Forgive me for being pedantic, but at 12:04 you state that Inconel is mostly made of steel. Unless this is an alloy I am not familiar with, Inconel is a Nickel based alloy, typically >50% of the composition being Nickel.
Thanks again for all your great work in these videos!
Was flying back from Miami Fl. to NYC when the captain of our airliner announced the space shuttle would be departing off our right side miles away. I got to see it climb from below and then above our cruising altitude until I couldn't see it anymore. One of the coolest things I've ever seen.
The first time I saw an orbiter in person I was completely taken back by the thermal protection system. As a kid, I would write to NASA to get information on the STS (no internet at the time) and would read it over and over, so I knew that the shuttle was not just a painted aluminum aircraft (like it appeared on 80's television).
When I first saw it in person at Kennedy the first thing I thought was 'it looks dirty' and pieced together, and not as refined as it did in the photos that I had. It gave me a better appreciation for the careful design, engineering and fabrication that went into it.
Did nasa ever respond you ?
@@ni9274 All the time. I would get a large envelope from them every week filled with color photos and documents.
me playing ksp and blowing up 20 of my rockets before 1 successful reentry:
"im something of an engineer myself too"
Me too
Only 20?
KSP taught me how to eyeball Hohmann Transfers. It also taught me how to calculate one, too.
Huh
Me too
What they managed to achieve with the technology of the time is so remarkable. My all-time favourite spacecraft.
Its kind of like the disney movies of the 1960-1990. With the classics. Beautiful art. Same for the landing on the moon
If you love this stuff you might enjoy a great video on LTT and Everyday Astronaut covering the flight control computers from Apollo.
Or maybe the mechanical fire control computers from battleship days or even early naval clocks.. Mind bendingly complicated devices made from innumerable problem solving mixed with artisanal levels of precision and craftsmanship.
Then again, parts of modern screens are produced using ink dot printing, which is Wizardry of another order on it's own.
I remember a funny and disturbing quote, "The space shuttle has over 1,000,000 components that all needed to work perfectly, supplied by contractors with the lowest bid"
@@dzzopeif we're talking modern engineering techniques, cutting edge lithography for making the most advanced microchips is just complete fucking wizardry
As a child of the 1980s the Shuttle will always have a huge place in my heart. What the kids in the 60s loved about the Apollo missions, I loved as a kid in the 80s with the Shuttle.
this fucking channel..makes me delete my bad channels..pure quality, I thank you whoever you are.
The space shuttle really was a marvel of it's time
@@aleespabst1011 problem?
A real shame that it never resolved the financial barrier of space travel.
It was a poorly thought out design.
There is no reason to use a glider to return to earth. It is vastly more difficult to make a plane that wont melt, than a space capsule.
They added solid rocket boosters, which cannot be shut down. And can also detonate instantaneously, if anything goes wrong.
Saturn V > Soyuz > Space Shuttle
Tbf it failed all it's stated goals and slowed down space travel by decades.
@@brll5733 agreed, it's absolutely terrible. Should never have been made. Great engineering, sure, but terrible platform.
I've never heard steel being described as 'a poor heat conductor' before. You learn something new every day.
Depends on how thick or thin the metal actually is.
Chefs know steel is a poor heat conductor compared to copper or aluminum.
Fancy pans are copper (for thermal conductivity) clad in stainless steel (for non-reactivity)
Copper conducts heat about 20x faster than steels and nickel alloys. But compared to polymers and ceramics any metal is vastly more conductive of heat.
@@petervillano3484 My favourite pan is one made from stainless steel. Looks like just another pot, but the base is almost 1cm thick. Base provides and retains a more even spread of heat.
It is when compared to copper, but not when compared to wood lol.
These 3d models are unbelievably impressive and really add so much to the explanations.
the thing that amazes me is how many of these materials are now available and even common commercially
Great point, space stuff has ever been so expensive I suppose it becoming economically viable is why spacex and other private space companies popped up.
We went from using horses as a main mode of transportation prior to 1897, to landing on the moon 72 years later & in another 12 years we were flying reusable space shuttles.
The space shuttle was too advanced for its own good 😢
Edit: YAY 1K also nice also pls sub
Too complex*
@@2shae475 fair enough
Agree 💯
the Buran was even more advanced , sadly the soviets really only made it because they thought the space shuttle was a threat from a military standpoint
It was just completely pointless. It had a payload of 25 tonnes, but the orbiter weighed 75 tonnes. Let's consider for the moment not reusing anything.
Well you can get rid of the wings obviously, don't need them, and the thermal protection system. And the crew compartment , now nobody needs to land. And the payload bay, just a simple fairing will do.
By this point you are down to the engines and orbital thrusters, only you've saved so much mass you only need one engine, smaller thrusters, and smaller fuel tanks for those...
Now you are lifting so much less mass into orbit, you need an external tank a third the size, and only one SRB. Oh, and no point reusing that, because doing so costs the same as building a new one.
What was the point of reusing it? Everything they reused was only there to be reused.
Complete waste of hundreds of billions of dollars.
13:10 - on orbit, the shuttle was oriented with the top side facing earth meaning the black underside was the side which faced the sun. The choice of white on top was driven almost entirely by reentry considerations. Because the upper side is only receiving heat radiatively rather than directly, white is the better choice to reject it.
Also the vast majority of the white TPS was changed to thermal fabric blankets made of either woven silica fibers or nomex fibers depending on temperature - rigid tiles were almost entirely replaced on the upper side in the 80's.
Only Columbia and Challenger had LRSI tiles on the midbody and payload bay doors. The latter three, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour all made extensive use of Advanced Felt Reusable Insulation (AFRSI, the quilted thermal blankets) replacing both the LRSI tiles and the smooth Felt Reusable Insulation (FRSI) thermal blankets. During extensive downtime between STS-51L and STS-28R, all of the LRSI tiles on Columbia's midbody and PLBDs were replaced with AFRSI blankets, leaving only the Forward Fuselage with LRSI tiles.
For the ISS missions, alot of the original AFRSI blankets on Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour were replaced with FRSI blankets for weight saving reasons as every pound counted when lifting heavy payloads into the challenging 51.62° inclination orbit that had been chosen for the ISS (lowest possible inclination available to the Russians). This was in late-90's.
@@DaveS_shuttle awesome breakdown, thanks 👍.
Is this a coincidence that the video about re-entry was uploaded on the 1st of February? Because it's the date of the Columbia disaster
Agreed - this is a little bit “on the nose.”
well... the LA's exhibit shuttle was just up righted recently... in launch config... couldn't that be the point? there's always a date that's inauspicious for certain things...
There are no accidents -Master Oogway, or something
This was my exact question. Release one hour before the 21st anniversary.
Probably just a bad joke
What I wish more people would understand is that neither of the two Shuttle losses were due to the orbiter (what everyone thinks of as “the shuttle”). The first was destroyed by the SRB’s, and the second by foam fatally damaging it. The orbiter itself did everything it was asked.
and the booster doomed by an o ring.
One of my favorite videos of yours. The editing, storytelling, info shared, and the phenomenal renders and animations make this far better than most professional space docs I've seen... and I've seen a lot. Incredible all around!
20:26 Not just the Cape! The USAF wanted it to have the same once-around capability from Vandenberg, too. That's much tougher because the orbital inclination is about double what you get launching from Frorida. In other words, you still need to fly the same distance sideways, but you have to pull twice as hard to make the turn.
As far as I know VAFB was the primary military purpose. KSC only needed cross range for weather purposes
Man, I thought I knew a decent amount about the Shuttle but you taught me a lot on this one! The crossrange considerations of single orbit missions, the deployable Air Data Sensors, how the tiles were made, the inconel intermediate connections, the nomex felt base layer, etc. But especially the reversed aileron control at those speeds and AoA!
Outstanding video!
I don’t know why but I cried watching this. As an aerospace engineer I can say without a doubt that this is one of the coolest videos I’ve ever seen. It makes me proud to be in the field I’m in. Thank you for this ✈️🚀
Reddit soy cuck
Considering the Space Shuttle, Concorde and SR-71 were designed in the ‘60’s and 70’s, I feel like we’ve stagnated in the last few decades in terms of progressing space and flight vehicle development. Why are these 50+ year old platforms still seen as such technological marvels? If the pace of experimentation and development had continued, they should be seen as absolute relics given what should be flying today.
it's a mix of more cautiousness and lack of funding. USA just likes funding war more than anything.
But NASA is still going strong, in my opinion even better than before, just at a slower pace(bc of funding).
More consideration, more experimenting instead of fixating on a concept, even if other solutions might be better, just to get something working more quickly...
Wish our world would stop fixating so much on profits and funding the rich, and finally start focusing on improving people's lifes and eventually go beyond just surviving and exploring the mysteries of our Universe.
Would also posit that lacking the Cold War dimension of political competition with respect to aeronautics and space flight, the drive behind stretching these technologies to their limits in a flashy way diminished considerably. Concorde could be worth it to prove it could be done for a coolness factor, and show off to the Soviets, but it wasn't commercially viable, and lacked enough material improvement on ordinary jet airliner travel with the technologies that built it. Not that surprising that it lasted barely more than a decade beyond the fall of the Soviet Union
Similarly, while NASA may have discontinued the shuttle program, it's doing more interesting science than ever before, and being wildly successful putting robots on Mars, and telescopes in far-off space.
The Cold War really influenced priorities in these fields towards a specific kind of national prestige, and without it, priorities changed
@@Julie-ns8vmyou hit the nail on the head 👏
I don't like how this is worded because the Saturn V was designed and made in the 60's yet it's still the most powerful rocket to launch a payload into orbit.
But Starship is quickly closing the gap and it's the most advanced and optimistic rocket ever created. Once it reaches orbit early next year, is there anything that could catch up to it? It's only a matter of time before we get a ship catch. Only a matter of time before boosters are reflown again and only a matter of time until Starship launches multiple times per month
It’s videos like these which remind me how absolutely incredible human ingenuity and intelligence truly are. We’ve gone from cave-dweller fashioning crude tools from sticks and stones to a space-faring species capable of designing and building machines to carry us into the most inhospitable and uninhabitable environments within our local universe. It truly is mind blowing.
Only in the movies my friend. Hollywood!
@@antoniodacosta8880bait or severe mental retardation
"The space shuttle is doing the fastest drift"
Tokyo drift starts playing 😂
KANSEI DORIFTO!?!?!??
I wonder if you know
@@qazwedik How they drift in tokyo
*eurobeat intensifies*
the space shuttle crew must have been like a family, then :D
I swear this is the coolest shit ever
Agreed! The science and engineering that goes into every aspect of a shuttle’s design to final landing is absolutely monumental!
Describing the banking procedure of re-entry as "the fastest drift in history" has forever etched in my brain the image of the crew switching on Gas Gas Gas during those portions.
What a lot of people don't know is that in the majority of later missions the shuttles landing was completely autonomous. The commanders insisted on having a role so they were given the task to press the button to lower the landing gear. Of course in an emergency they could take control and were certainly over qualified to land these things manually but the automated system worked so well they most just lowered the landing gear.
I loved the Spaced shuttle, John Young and Bob Crippen are still my heroes from 1981.
@18:33 this is a phenomena of high degrees of AOA not necessarily high altitude or high speed, it has a specific name called adverse yaw. modern flight control systems are now designed to, in high performance planes mostly, to have differential aileron control higher degrees of AOA. the effects of this have actually been mapped by the advisory group for aerospace research and development, AGARD in 1979. their white paper called "high angle of attack aerodynamics" in section 2-6 sub 4.1.1 and accompaning fig 15 for the chart. adverse yaw in traditional configuration begins to happen around 30d of aoa/alpha. before flight control systems basically solved the input problem, pilots were actually trained to change control regime at high alpha, most notably in the F-4 phantom where rudder was used for roll authority in high alpha regimes. a period training video also showing this effect is on youtube called "F-4 flight characteristics TF-6771" and the section on adverse yaw starts at around 10min.
For a brick, it flew pretty good!
I think my fav thing I learned in this was around 8:40. I’ve never seen (read:noticed) the rear body flap on the shuttle, let alone knew it even existed. That’s awesome
Even though the shuttle didnt achieve its main objective (reuseable shuttle with cheap access to space), it was a massive achievement in Engineering and Aerodynamics.
The biggest surprise and something new I learnt from this video was the hypersonic re entry profile and behaviour or airflow in such profile.
Yeah, hypersonics are weird. Also in the video they show it making turns while hypersonic. In reality it was only a couple degrees side to side. You cant actually maneuver at hypersonic speeds, all you can do is point in a new direction and increase drag.
After the end of the Apollo program and the massive cost cut backs for NASA, the Shuttle was seen as a downgrade, in what people thought would be a program culminating in sending a manned mission to Mars. Still, engineering something that went to space, and then returned as a sort of airplane is insane indeed. The things we learned from this machine are of huge value.
7:18 The region between a bow show and the body which generates that shock in a supersonic flow is not low pressure. It is actually very high pressure, depending on Mach number. At Mach 7 the pressure in this region is 57 times that of the free stream. At Mach 20, it’s 466 times that of the free stream. This is an elementary concept in supersonic flows.
Blunt bodies produce normal shocks and do experience much less aerodynamic heating. But this is primarily due to a reduction in viscous dissipation heating.
Source: Fundamentals of Aerodynamics, John D Anderson
12:10 Inconel is not mostly made of steel. Steels are alloys of iron. Inconel is a family of nickel alloys, none of which are mostly steel.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed the mistake at 7:18 regarding the bow shock pressure change. He even states that this air gap "reduces heat transfer", which is wildly incorrect. It makes me wonder where he got this information, as any compressible fluids textbook covering shockwaves should clearly state how high pressure and high temperature the region between the bow shock and nose is.
Thank you for the video.
I just wanted to comment that this is the first time I not only watched the sponsor video, but found your pitch appealing enough to give it a try. I usually use solidworks, but it has it limitations, let's see how onshape measures up.
Kudos!
This is true over engineering. With such a complex system it’s a miracle we didn’t have more failures with this craft. A finely tuned machine indeed!
Over engineering? We engineers call it good engineering.
@@BottleOfCoke The scope of the crafts abilities was entirely too wide! Don’t get me wrong here, as a mechanical engineer myself I can appreciate the mind boggling level of science and engineering at play here and like I said, it’s a beautiful finely tuned machine. My point though is that they would have been better off creating multiple variants rather than trying to make everyone happy with one do it all craft, and like I said it really is shocking we didn’t see more failures of the system given its complexity. Truly speaks to the skill of the fab and maintenance teams involved.
@@johnbenson3024 Multiple variants have been designed, tested and flow ever since Shuttle demise, based on lessons learnt.
@@BottleOfCokeGermans call it under engineering
@@TheWizardGamez lol I did think of German and Italian supercars while making the comment.
15:09 communication blackouts were only an issue early in the program. TDRS (tracking and data relay satellites) - launched during early missions - allowed communication upwards, via an antenna in the tail, during entry.
For certain orbital inclinations the last abort base short of orbit was Kadina AB, Okinawa. In 1982 I helped save a shuttle launch. The Tacan (Tactical Air Navigation System) at Kadina went down and base supply did not have a replacement part. I was working Communications Job Control and Navaids Communications Management Office at Yokota AB, Japan. NCMO Kadina called me to see if we had the part. I woke the NCOIC of Supply in the Communications Group, Elmer Troxel, up in the middle of the night. While Trox worked on getting the part, I called in some IOUs and got it a ride to Kadina. We were working against the clock. If the TACAN at Kadina was not back up in time they would have to scrub that launch. Trox got me the part and I got it a ride. The guys at Kadina got the TACAN back up with 2 hours to spare so the launch proceeded as scheduled. Instead of some sort of commendation medal Trox and I got a letter read at Commander's call. Bit Whoop!
I went the whole video waiting for you to credit the Dyna-Soar/X-20 program for the basics of the shuttle's mission performance. I'm amazed that you failed to mention it once, and seemed to think it was an outgrowth of the X-15.
2:40 The X-15 may have experimentally proven the thermal techniques, but the entire reentry sequence was developed during the Dyna-Soar program. Dyna-Soar did not use ablatives nor the super-fragile tiles. It's main body was made from a Rene 41 (a nickel alloy developed for gas turbine blades, not that different from Inconel) truss covered with Rene 41 panels. On the bottom surface were additional, non-load-bearing panels of columbium that would last ~4 flights before needing replacement. Also, there were only a couple dozen panels, rather than the thousands of tiles on the shuttle.
20:12 The shuttle got it's delta wings from Dyna-Soar as well. Even North American's X-20 proposal was basically an upgraded X-15 with delta wings since that design requirement was already well understood at the time. This let the shuttle designers use the 14,000 hours of wind tunnel testing done on the Dyna-Soar as a starting point, saving years of basic research.
20:55 The whole cross-range requirement was another Dyna-Soar legacy. It's mission was to launch from Florida, fly over the "area of interest" anywhere in the world, gather its intel, then land at Edwards AFB. For the reason you mention, this required a large cross-range capability, and Dyna-Soar could land 1,500 miles (2.500 km) to either side of the ballistic trajectory
This is all covered in the book "Dyna-Soar" by Roy Houchin, available on amazon or directly from the publisher: www.arapress.com/dyna-soar-book/
Bit of a nitpick but the primary amount of radiative heating during reentry wouldn't come from solar radiation but from radiation coming from the reentry plasma.
20:39 talks about how shuttle's design was dictated by a mission from cape Canaveral mission but i think that this is supposed to be refrencing a mission from Vandenberg AFB? Scott Manley has a great video about it
Yeah, you're right. A single orbit mission makes more sense from Vandenberg
To be more precise, the mission requirement was to launch into a polar orbit, rendezvous with a satellite, retrieve it, then land back at Vandenberg. The cross range was required to account for the rotation of the Earth.
There is no physics reason why such a mission couldn't be performed from the Cape -- but it would require dropping SRBs on the East Coast or on Cuba. Politically speaking, this was never going to happen.
The thumbnail looks like a giant snail colliding with Earth and now I can't unsee it 😂
What are you smoking?
It does. It brothered me, that's why i clicked.... It's not like I don't know what the space shuttle goes through at re-entry or how it's built.
As a kid of the 80s i watched so many videos about it on the old Discovery channel... Back when it was actually a good cience channel.
Ha! Now you say it, I saw it too. The fin becomes an eye stalk.
God damn it! Now i see it too
We need a supercut of this series.
Long form content is suprisingly well performing in yt for revenue. Especially if there is decent retention / premium viewers.
i just want to take a second to appreciate the insane engineering of your 3D animations
I love what Onshape have been doing so far. And pray that it won't turn rogue on their openness in future.
I just want to say I’ve always watched your videos but just recently I started watching them to fall asleep and it’s amazing and that’s not me calling your videos boring quite the opposite I find it stimulating enough that it actually relaxes me and I end up having a good night sleep I’ll definitely be subscribing to your other platforms in the near future keep at it !
Not these videos specifically, but I have been using the same technique for a couple months now and I have always been a shit sleeper. These documentaries sooth my racing brain! You should give "Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles" a try!
This is one of the best Space Shuttle videos I've ever seen...
The skill of the designers is absolutely amazing.
They thought of so many factors.
The cross-range requirement was 1100 miles by the Air Force because they wanted the capability to launch into polar trajectory from Vandenberg AFB and land after a single orbit, by which time, Vandenberg would have been 1100 miles further east. This polar orbit requirement was driven by the USAF desire to be able to deploy reconnaissance satellites to cover the Soviet Union, much of which was at high latitudes (which would not be fully covered by the the approx max orbital inclination of about 62 degrees w/ a "dog-leg" maneuver up the east coast), and then land again before the shuttle's presence was detected.
Amazing video BTW!
As usual, an excellent explanation of a very technical subject. Very well done!
Those Delta wings literally carried the whole thing, what a feat of engineering...
“Yeah we’re gonna need you to fly this Gulfstream the worse way possible so you can fly the shuttle the best way possible”
As a pilot I was thinking the same thing. All the alarm bells are going off in my head. Especially flying with reverse thrust and upward Flaps.
If that happened on my plane I'd be shitting bricks!
8:07 ionisation radio blackout was only a problem in the early years. Once the TDRSS satellites were launched, the orbiters could communicate, via antennas on the tail, upwards to those satellites, which relayed to the ground.
this made my day thx
Every time I see a video about space, I always get the interstellar song stuck in my head
The true masterpiece of space
I remember watching the shuttle enter the atmosphere, it was at night here, and looked like a fireball passing over Calgary, watching it enter the atmosphere was the most amazing thing I even saw. I also watched live as the shuttle exploded during launch in February of '86, was so shocking it took me a few days to process, I was only 16 years old and had never felt those emotions before.
Keep up the awesome videos, your one of the few you tubers I trust the information from.
My mom worked for nasa from the 80s to the mid 90s. When she passed away, I found some of her awards she got for her contributions to the space shuttle program.
My dad worked for Rockwell and helped construct the space shuttles.
18:47 Wow, even as a pilot I didn't know this. Amazing!!
Yeah I doubt most pilots would be experienced in upper atmosphere hypersonic flight haha. Unintuitive details like this are something that stand out and I really appreciate them going through the details as to why in the video.
To be extra fair, it's not 'difficult', it's fucking EXPENSIVE.
Canadian forces base Edmonton used to be a reserve runway for the space shuttle back when it was an airforce base.
It's an army base now and that 4Km long runway now has been used as a foundation for a bunch of buildings and the rest of it is a scrap yard. Kind of sad honestly.
I love his voice, something about it is just so welcoming and makes learning about these topics so much easier
I love his accent
In proper english, 500,000ft to ground in 1 hour, 19,200kmh in orbit To 800kmh or 500mph at 40,000ft, falling at terminal velocity, at 40,000ft 1 minute from landing they enter the heading alignment cone and do the turn onto the final approach at 500 ft they drop the landing gear at 300ft they start their flare. The tail has an air brake that controls speed in the final 100,000ft. The final minutes are flown by manual control and the computer for the whole mission are only 16 kb. Take a picture of a white wall and that uses more memory on your phone than the whole of the space shuttle. Truely amazing.
At 24:00 is mentioned the "runway at Cape Canaveral", but is showing footage of somewhere with mountains, probably Edwards AFB or White Sands.
That is Edwards Airforce Base. White Sands Missile Range was used one for STS-3 Space Shuttle Columbia. And was lost on the day of upload 21 years ago.
I remember going to Kennedy Space Center when I was a kid in the 90s. They did a live demonstration of a space shuttle tile. The guy turned on a blow torch on one side of the tile and put his hand on the other side.
They do that with aerogel now
What blows my mind about all the cold war era tech between the 60's and 80's is that it was all designed by a group of brilliant engineers working with nothing but a pencil, some draft paper and a calculator.
CAD was just in its infancy and may have been used for little 2d sketches here and there but that's about it. Today an engineer could open a cad file, change the heat absorbing material or shape of a wing on a shuttle and run a re-entry simulation in a couple of hours. Make another little tweak then run again. Back then all of that math had to be worked out by hand, hand crafted models built from hand made drawings having tests done in wind tunnels. There was no previous space technology to base your designs on. Everything was all original, you had an idea in a dream, you wrote it down and spent months sketching it out. Engineers in the space program truly must have been some of the most influential geniuses of our time. There is probably so much mechanical tech we use everyday that has its roots in some drawing for some obscure part of a shuttle and we don't even realize it.
As JFK once famously said "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"
That spirit is lost on us today and we desperately need it back.
I love the shuttle program. Seeing a launch today generates the same chills and tears it did in the 80s when it first took flight. I have seen numerous documentaries on the shuttle program, and this was one of THE most in-depth analyses of material design and reentry that I have seen to date. Great work. Earned a like and a sub.
The Insane Overuse of the word Insane in video titles on this channel is Insane.
The space shuttle was a answer looking for a problem
the starship make it today
As someone who works in the space industry and works directly with this thermal protection, this was cool to watch
The quality of CGI in this video is absolutely mind blowing!! Thank you for creating such a perfectly done educational video!
This is why I kind of roll my eyes when they call Elon Musk an aerospace genius.
"rapid disassembly"
And what are you? A keyboard warrior?
@@Haliotro I work at Sandia National Labs, and if I told you what I did in detail I could lose my security clearance.
He is though…you are just a liberal with an axe to grind and can’t handle someone else being way smarter than you.
@@dannonyogurt98damnnnn that's sooo cool....
This series is infuriating.
177C is NOT "five times lower" than 980C, because the base of the scale is not zero C, it's zero Kelvin. Zero C is merely where water boils at sea level, an utterly irrelevant floor for the comparison here.
I expect better.
I'm with you. There are tons of small mistakes. I've been getting more and more frustrated with this channel in general.
You Tubers need to stop using the word insane to describe everything, it's too overused
maybe we need a new word discovered
It truly is intense just how much that word gets used.
If you enjoyed this, i'd highly recommend "how to land the space shuttle.... from space" by bret. really fun little presentation and gives some nice pieces of context, like how the shuttle's descent path falls at the same rate as the terminal velocity of a skydiver in freefall (imagine the earth coming at you at 120mph!). Frigging mindblowing stuff.
This was a great series. I knew the Shuttle was complex but wow this makes it even that much more incredible this thing was built and worked. Truly amazing machine.
I’m one of those people that are amazed people did this (mostly) without computers as we know them. Simply amazing engineering.
I find it very fitting that you've released this video on the anniversary of the Columbia disaster. It's quiet poetic.
The human ingenuity, craftsmanship, perseverance and teamwork that has to go into a project like this is something that gives me hope for humanity. Despite all the disagreements that they can have, when they want to, people can come together and make something like this. Even airliners, fighter jets, space telescopes etc. It's amazing that we manage to do these things.
Also your videos on these things are epic. Doing Ireland proud :)
Years ago I read that back in the day, this was most advanced thing in history of mankind. Amazing what you have to know to design this marvel.
From 1984 to 1992 I grew up around Edwards Air Force Base. I was lucky enough to have witnessed the shuttle landing many times.
I've been spending the last few weeks reading into the early shuttle designs and it was great to see you touch on them here. The straight-wing orbiter designs came in even steeper and got more of the blunt-body effect.
And while it may seem precarious to only have a single shot to land a gliding shuttle, tests with powered lifting bodies showed the speed management and extra mass for landing engines was not viable.
Can you imagine the first person to turn right and go left in a super sonic plane?
My heart would skip a beat.
The test pilots were incredibly brave men. Did you read General Yeager's book? Highly recommended.
It always impresses me that the pinnacles of aerospace technology, the shuttle, concorde, blackbird and even the 747 were designed in the 60s. A time when even calculators weren't available and computing power was a fraction of what we are holding on our palms. 60 years on, nothing has come overtaking them. Except the 380.
Your videos were always good but this is on another level. The animation of the carbon plates around the wings was amazing.
I'd love to know who does these animations!
Thank you, thank you, thank you for not repeating the widely-circulated myth that re-entry heating is caused by friction.
An excellent and informative video, indeed.
Sponsors are the bane of creation.