1.
Low Earth orbit
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A low Earth orbit is an orbit around Earth with an altitude between 160 kilometers, and 2,000 kilometers. Objects below approximately 160 kilometers will experience very rapid orbital decay, with the exception of the 24 human beings who flew lunar flights in the Apollo program during the four-year period spanning 1968 through 1972, all human spaceflights have taken place in LEO or below. The International Space Station conducts operations in LEO, the altitude record for a human spaceflight in LEO was Gemini 11 with an apogee of 1,374.1 kilometers. All crewed space stations to date, as well as the majority of satellites, have been in LEO, objects in LEO encounter atmospheric drag from gases in the thermosphere or exosphere, depending on orbit height. Due to atmospheric drag, satellites do not usually orbit below 300 km, objects in LEO orbit Earth between the denser part of the atmosphere and below the inner Van Allen radiation belt. The mean orbital velocity needed to maintain a stable low Earth orbit is about 7.8 km/s, calculated for circular orbit of 200 km it is 7.79 km/s and for 1500 km it is 7.12 km/s. The delta-v needed to achieve low Earth orbit starts around 9.4 km/s, atmospheric and gravity drag associated with launch typically adds 1. 3–1.8 km/s to the launch vehicle delta-v required to reach normal LEO orbital velocity of around 7.8 km/s. Equatorial low Earth orbits are a subset of LEO and these orbits, with low inclination to the Equator, allow rapid revisit times and have the lowest delta-v requirement of any orbit. Orbits with an inclination angle to the equator are usually called polar orbits. Higher orbits include medium Earth orbit, sometimes called intermediate circular orbit, orbits higher than low orbit can lead to early failure of electronic components due to intense radiation and charge accumulation. Although the Earths pull due to gravity in LEO is not much less than on the surface of the Earth, people, a low Earth orbit is simplest and cheapest for satellite placement. It provides high bandwidth and low communication time lag, but satellites in LEO will not be visible from any point on the Earth at all times. Earth observation satellites and spy satellites use LEO as they are able to see the surface of the Earth more clearly as they are not so far away and they are also able to traverse the surface of the Earth. A majority of satellites are placed in LEO, making one complete revolution around the Earth in about 90 minutes. The International Space Station is in a LEO about 400 km above the Earths surface, since it requires less energy to place a satellite into a LEO and the LEO satellite needs less powerful amplifiers for successful transmission, LEO is used for many communication applications. Because these LEO orbits are not geostationary, a network of satellites is required to provide continuous coverage, lower orbits also aid remote sensing satellites because of the added detail that can be gained. Remote sensing satellites can also take advantage of sun-synchronous LEO orbits at an altitude of about 800 km, envisat is one example of an Earth observation satellite that makes use of this particular type of LEO. The LEO environment is becoming congested with space debris due to the frequency of object launches and this has caused growing concern in recent years, since collisions at orbital velocities can easily be dangerous, and even deadly
2.
Launch vehicle
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In spaceflight, a launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket used to carry a payload from Earths surface into outer space. A launch system includes the launch vehicle, the launch pad, Earth orbital launch vehicles typically have at least two stages, and sometimes as many as four or more. Expendable launch vehicles are designed for one-time use and they usually separate from their payload and disintegrate during atmospheric reentry. In contrast, reusable vehicles are designed to be recovered intact. The Space Shuttle was a part of a vehicle with components used for multiple orbital spaceflights. SpaceX has developed a rocket launching system to successfully bring back a part—the first stage—of their Falcon 9 and launch it again. A fully reusable VTVL design is planned for all parts of the ITS launch vehicle, Launch vehicles are often classified by the amount of mass they can carry into orbit. For example, a Proton rocket can lift 22,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit, Launch vehicles are also characterized by their number of stages. Rockets with as many as five stages have been successfully launched, additionally, launch vehicles are very often supplied with boosters supplying high early thrust, normally burning with other engines. Boosters allow the engines to be smaller, reducing the burnout mass of later stages to allow larger payloads. Other frequently reported characteristics of vehicles are the launching nation or space agency. For example, the European Space Agency is responsible for the Ariane V, many launch vehicles are considered part of a historical line of vehicles of same or similar name, e. g. the Atlas V is the latest Atlas rocket. A small-lift launch vehicle is capable of lifting up to 2,000 kg of payload into low Earth orbit, a medium-lift launch vehicle is capable of lifting 2,000 to 20,000 kg of payload into LEO. A heavy-lift launch vehicle is capable of lifting 20,000 to 50,000 kg of payload into LEO, a super-heavy lift vehicle is capable of lifting more than 50,000 kg of payload into LEO. It refers to its 1,500 kg to LEO Vega launch vehicle as light lift, sounding rockets have long been used for brief, inexpensive unmanned space and microgravity experiments. Current human-rated suborbital launch vehicles include SpaceShipOne and the upcoming SpaceShipTwo, minimizing air drag requires a reasonably high ballistic coefficient, a ratio of length to diameter greater than ten. This generally results in a vehicle that is at least 20 m long. Leaving the atmosphere as early on in the flight as possible provides a velocity loss due to air drag of around 300 m/s, Launch vehicles of sufficient size are capable of launching payloads smaller than their orbital capability, to the Moon or beyond
3.
Boeing
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The Boeing Company is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, and satellites worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support services, Boeing stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The Boeing Companys corporate headquarters are located in Chicago and the company is led by President, Boeing is organized into five primary divisions, Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Boeing Defense, Space & Security, Engineering, Operations & Technology, Boeing Capital, and Boeing Shared Services Group. Boeing bought Heaths shipyard in Seattle on the Duwamish River, which became his first airplane factory. Boeing was incorporated in Seattle by William Boeing, on July 15,1916, Boeing was later incorporated in Delaware, the original Certificate of Incorporation was filed with the Secretary of State of Delaware on July 19,1934. Boeing, who studied at Yale University, worked initially in the timber industry and this knowledge proved invaluable in his subsequent design and assembly of airplanes. The company stayed in Seattle to take advantage of the supply of spruce wood. William Boeing founded his company a few months after the June 15 maiden flight of one of the two B&W seaplanes built with the assistance of George Conrad Westervelt, a U. S. Navy engineer. Boeing and Westervelt decided to build the B&W seaplane after having flown in a Curtiss aircraft, Boeing bought a Glenn Martin Flying Birdcage seaplane and was taught to fly by Glenn Martin himself. Boeing soon crashed the Birdcage and when Martin informed Boeing that replacement parts would not become available for months, Westervelt agreed to build a better airplane and soon produced the B&W Seaplane. This first Boeing airplane was assembled in a hangar located on the northeast shore of Seattles Lake Union. Many of Boeings early planes were seaplanes, on April 6,1917, the U. S. declared War on Germany and later in the year entered World War I. On May 9,1917, the became the Boeing Airplane Company. With the U. S. entering the war, Boeing knew that the U. S. Navy needed seaplanes for training, so Boeing shipped two new Model Cs to Pensacola, Florida, where the planes were flown for the Navy. The Navy liked the Model C and ordered 50 more, the company moved its operations to a larger former shipbuilding facility known as Boeing Plant 1, located on the lower Duwamish River, Washington state. Others, including Boeing, started selling other products, Boeing built dressers, counters, and furniture, along with flat-bottom boats called Sea Sleds. In 1919 the Boeing B-1, flying boat made its first flight and it accommodated one pilot and two passengers and some mail. Over the course of eight years, it made international airmail flights from Seattle to Victoria, on May 24,1920, the Boeing Model 8 made its first flight
4.
S-IC
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The S-IC was the first stage of the American Saturn V rocket. The S-IC stage was built by the Boeing Company, like the first stages of most rockets, most of its mass of more than 2,000 tonnes at launch was propellant, in this case RP-1 rocket fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer. It was 42 meters tall and 10 meters in diameter, the stage had five F-1 engines in a quincunx arrangement. The center engine was fixed in position, while the four engines could be hydraulically gimballed to control the rocket. The Boeing Co. was awarded the contract to manufacture the S-IC on December 15,1961, by this time the general design of the stage had been decided on by the engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center. The main place of manufacture was the Michoud Assembly Facility, New Orleans, wind tunnel testing took place in Seattle and the machining of the tools needed to build the stages at Wichita, Kansas. MSFC built the first three test stages and the first two flight models and they were built using tools produced in Wichita. It took roughly seven to nine months to build the tanks and 14 months to complete a stage, the first stage built by Boeing was S-IC-D, a test model. The largest and heaviest single component of the S-IC was the thrust structure and it was designed to support the thrust of the five engines and redistribute it evenly across the base of the rocket. There were four anchors which held down the rocket as it built thrust and these were among the largest aluminum forgings produced in the U. S. at the time,4.3 meters long and 816 kilograms in weight. The four stabilising fins withstood a temperature of 1100 °C, above the thrust structure was the fuel tank, containing 770,000 liters of RP-1 fuel. The tank itself had a mass of 11 metric tons dry, nitrogen was bubbled through the tank before launch to keep the fuel mixed. During flight the fuel was pressurized using helium, that was stored in tanks in the oxygen tank above. Between the fuel and liquid oxygen tanks was the intertank, the liquid oxygen tank held 1,305,000 liters of LOX. It raised special issues for the designer, the lines through which the LOX ran to the engine had to be straight and therefore had to pass through the fuel tank. This meant insulating these lines inside a tunnel to stop fuel freezing to the outside, two solid motor retrorockets were located inside each of the four conical engine fairings. S-II S-IVB Apollo Stages to Saturn Apollo Saturn Reference Page Video of static test on YouTube
5.
Lockheed Martin
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Lockheed Martin is an American global aerospace, defense, security and advanced technologies company with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995 and it is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, in the Washington, DC, area. Lockheed Martin employs 126,000 people worldwide, Marillyn Hewson is the current President and Chief Executive Officer. Lockheed Martin is one of the largest companies in the aerospace, defense, security and it is the worlds largest defense contractor based on revenue for fiscal year 2014. In 2013, 78% of Lockheed Martins revenues came from sales, it topped the list of US federal government contractors. In 2009 US government contracts accounted for $38.4 billion, foreign government contracts $5.8 billion, Lockheed Martin operates in five business segments, Aeronautics, Information Systems & Global Solutions, Missiles and Fire Control, Rotary and Mission Systems, and Space Systems. The company also invests in healthcare systems, renewable energy systems, intelligent energy distribution, merger talks between Lockheed Corporation and Martin Marietta began in March 1994, with the companies announcing their $10 billion planned merger on August 30,1994. The deal was finalized on March 15,1995, when the two companies approved the merger. The segments of the two companies not retained by the new company formed the basis for the present L-3 Communications, Lockheed Martin also later spun off the materials company Martin Marietta Materials. Both companies contributed important products to the new portfolio, Lockheed products included the Trident missile, P-3 Orion, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-22 Raptor, C-130 Hercules, A-4AR Fightinghawk and the DSCS-3 satellite. Martin Marietta products included Titan rockets, Sandia National Laboratories, Space Shuttle External Tank, Viking 1 and Viking 2 landers, the Transfer Orbit Stage and various satellite models. On April 22,1996, Lockheed Martin completed the acquisition of Loral Corporations defense electronics and system integration businesses for $9.1 billion, the remainder of Loral became Loral Space & Communications. Lockheed Martin abandoned plans for a $8, the development of the spacecraft cost $193.1 million. In May 2001, Lockheed Martin sold Lockheed Martin Control Systems to BAE Systems, on November 27,2000, Lockheed completed the sale of its Aerospace Electronic Systems business to BAE Systems for $1.67 billion, a deal announced in July 2000. This group encompassed Sanders Associates, Fairchild Systems, and Lockheed Martin Space Electronics & Communications. In 2001, Lockheed Martin won the contract to build the F-35 Lightning II, in 2001, Lockheed Martin settled a nine–year investigation conducted by NASAs Office of Inspector General with the assistance of the Defense Contract Audit Agency. The company paid the United States government $7.1 million based on allegations that its predecessor, Lockheed Engineering Science Corporation, submitted false lease costs claims to NASA. On August 31,2006, Lockheed Martin won a $3.9 billion contract from NASA to design and build the CEV capsule, in 2009, NASA reduced the capsule crew requirements from the initial six seats to four for transport to the International Space Station
6.
Space Shuttle external tank
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A Space Shuttle External Tank was the component of the Space Shuttle launch vehicle that contained the liquid hydrogen fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer. During lift-off and ascent it supplied the fuel and oxidizer under pressure to the three Space Shuttle Main Engines in the orbiter, the ET was jettisoned just over 10 seconds after MECO, where the SSMEs were shut down, and re-entered the Earths atmosphere. Unlike the Solid Rocket Boosters, external tanks were not re-used and they broke up before impact in the Indian Ocean, away from shipping lanes and were not recovered. The ET was the largest element of the shuttle. The ET was the backbone of the shuttle during launch, providing support for attachment with the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters. The tank was connected to each SRB at one forward attachment point and one aft bracket, in the aft attachment area, there were also umbilicals that carried fluids, gases, electrical signals and electrical power between the tank and the orbiter. Electrical signals and controls between the orbiter and the two rocket boosters were also routed through those umbilicals. Although the external tanks were discarded, it could have been possible to re-use them in orbit. Plans for re-use ranged from incorporation into a station as extra living or research space, as rocket fuel tanks for interplanetary missions. Another concept was to use the ET as a carrier for bulky payloads. One proposal was for the mirror of a 7-meter aperture telescope to be carried with the tank. Another concept was the Aft Cargo Carrier, over the years, NASA worked to reduce the weight of the ET to increase overall efficiency. For each pound of weight reduction, the capability of the shuttle spacecraft was increased almost one pound. The original ET is informally known as the Standard Weight Tank and was fabricated from 2219, a high-strength aluminum–copper alloy used for many aerospace applications. The first two, used for STS-1 and STS-2, were painted white to protect the tanks from ultraviolet light during the time that the shuttle spends on the launch pad prior to launch. After STS-4, several hundred pounds were eliminated by deleting the anti-geyser line and this line paralleled the oxygen feed line, providing a circulation path for liquid oxygen. This reduces accumulation of oxygen in the feed line during prelaunch tanking. After propellant loading data from tests and the first few space shuttle missions were assessed
7.
Space Shuttle orbiter
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The Space Shuttle orbiter was the reusable spaceplane component of the Space Shuttle program. Six orbiters were built for flight, Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, all were built in Palmdale, California, by the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Rockwell International company. The first orbiter, Enterprise, made its flight in 1977. An unpowered glider, it was carried by a modified Boeing 747 airliner called the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and released for a series of atmospheric test flights, Enterprise was partially disassembled and retired after completion of critical testing. The remaining orbiters were fully operational spacecraft, and were launched vertically as part of the Space Shuttle stack, Columbia was the first space-worthy orbiter, and made its inaugural flight in 1981. Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis followed in 1983,1984 and 1985 respectively, in 1986, Challenger was destroyed in an accident shortly after launch. Endeavour was built as Challengers replacement, and was first launched in 1992, in 2003, Columbia was destroyed during re-entry, leaving just three remaining orbiters. Discovery completed its flight on March 9,2011. Atlantis completed the last ever Shuttle flight, STS-135, on July 21,2011, additionally, two reusable solid rocket boosters provided additional thrust for approximately the first two minutes of launch. The orbiters themselves did carry hypergolic propellants for their RCS thrusters, the vertical stabilizer of the orbiter had a leading edge that was swept back at a 45-degree angle. There were four elevons mounted at the edges of the delta wings. These, along with a movable body flap located underneath the main engines, controlled the orbiter during later stages of descent through the atmosphere, overall, the Space Shuttle orbiter was roughly the same size as a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 airliner. This control system carried out the usual attitude control along the pitch, roll, and yaw axes during all of the phases of launching, orbiting. This system also executed any needed orbital maneuvers, including all changes in the altitude, orbital plane. These were all operations that required a lot more power and energy than mere attitude control, the forward rockets of the Reaction Control System, located near the nose of the Space Shuttle orbiter, included 14 primary and two vernier RCS rockets. The aft RCS engines were located in the two Orbital Maneuvering System pods at the rear of the orbiter, and these included 12 primary and two vernier engines in each pod. The RCS also controlled the attitude of the orbiter during most of its re-entry into the Earths atmosphere – until the air became dense enough that the rudder, elevons and body flap became effective. During the early process of the orbiter, the forward RCS thrusters were to be hidden underneath retractable doors
8.
Foot (unit)
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The foot is a unit of length in the imperial and US customary systems of measurement. Since 1959, both units have been defined by international agreement as equivalent to 0.3048 meters exactly, in both systems, the foot comprises 12 inches and three feet compose a yard. Historically the foot was a part of local systems of units, including the Greek, Roman, Chinese, French. It varied in length from country to country, from city to city and its length was usually between 250 mm and 335 mm and was generally, but not always, subdivided into 12 inches or 16 digits. The United States is the industrialized nation that uses the international foot and the survey foot in preference to the meter in its commercial, engineering. The foot is legally recognized in the United Kingdom, road signs must use imperial units, the measurement of altitude in international aviation is one of the few areas where the foot is widely used outside the English-speaking world. The length of the international foot corresponds to a foot with shoe size of 13,14,15.5 or 46. Historically the human body has been used to provide the basis for units of length. The foot of a male is typically about 15. 3% of his height, giving a person of 160 cm a foot of 245 mm. These figures are less than the used in most cities over time. Archeologists believe that the Egyptians, Ancient Indians and Mesopotamians preferred the cubit while the Romans, under the Harappan linear measures, Indus cities during the Bronze Age used a foot of 13.2 inches and a cubit of 20.8 inches. The Egyptian equivalent of the measure of four palms or 16 digits—was known as the djeser and has been reconstructed as about 30 cm. The Greek foot had a length of 1⁄600 of a stadion, one stadion being about 181.2 m, the standard Roman foot was normally about 295.7 mm, but in the provinces, the pes Drusianus was used, with a length of about 334 mm. Originally both the Greeks and the Romans subdivided the foot into 16 digits, but in later years, after the fall of the Roman Empire, some Roman traditions were continued but others fell into disuse. In AD790 Charlemagne attempted to reform the units of measure in his domains and his units of length were based on the toise and in particular the toise de lÉcritoire, the distance between the fingertips of the outstretched arms of a man. The toise has 6 pieds each of 326.6 mm, at the same time, monastic buildings used the Carolingian foot of 340 mm. The procedure for verification of the foot as described in the 16th century by Jacob Koebel in his book Geometrei, the measures of Iron Age Britain are uncertain and proposed reconstructions such as the Megalithic Yard are controversial. Later Welsh legend credited Dyfnwal Moelmud with the establishment of their units, the Belgic or North German foot of 335 mm was introduced to England either by the Belgic Celts during their invasions prior to the Romans or by the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th & 6th century
9.
Kilogram
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The kilogram or kilogramme is the base unit of mass in the International System of Units and is defined as being equal to the mass of the International Prototype of the Kilogram. The avoirdupois pound, used in both the imperial and US customary systems, is defined as exactly 0.45359237 kg, making one kilogram approximately equal to 2.2046 avoirdupois pounds. Other traditional units of weight and mass around the world are also defined in terms of the kilogram, the gram, 1/1000 of a kilogram, was provisionally defined in 1795 as the mass of one cubic centimeter of water at the melting point of ice. The final kilogram, manufactured as a prototype in 1799 and from which the IPK was derived in 1875, had an equal to the mass of 1 dm3 of water at its maximum density. The kilogram is the only SI base unit with an SI prefix as part of its name and it is also the only SI unit that is still directly defined by an artifact rather than a fundamental physical property that can be reproduced in different laboratories. Three other base units and 17 derived units in the SI system are defined relative to the kilogram, only 8 other units do not require the kilogram in their definition, temperature, time and frequency, length, and angle. At its 2011 meeting, the CGPM agreed in principle that the kilogram should be redefined in terms of the Planck constant, the decision was originally deferred until 2014, in 2014 it was deferred again until the next meeting. There are currently several different proposals for the redefinition, these are described in the Proposed Future Definitions section below, the International Prototype Kilogram is rarely used or handled. In the decree of 1795, the term gramme thus replaced gravet, the French spelling was adopted in the United Kingdom when the word was used for the first time in English in 1797, with the spelling kilogram being adopted in the United States. In the United Kingdom both spellings are used, with kilogram having become by far the more common, UK law regulating the units to be used when trading by weight or measure does not prevent the use of either spelling. In the 19th century the French word kilo, a shortening of kilogramme, was imported into the English language where it has used to mean both kilogram and kilometer. In 1935 this was adopted by the IEC as the Giorgi system, now known as MKS system. In 1948 the CGPM commissioned the CIPM to make recommendations for a practical system of units of measurement. This led to the launch of SI in 1960 and the subsequent publication of the SI Brochure, the kilogram is a unit of mass, a property which corresponds to the common perception of how heavy an object is. Mass is a property, that is, it is related to the tendency of an object at rest to remain at rest, or if in motion to remain in motion at a constant velocity. Accordingly, for astronauts in microgravity, no effort is required to hold objects off the cabin floor, they are weightless. However, since objects in microgravity still retain their mass and inertia, the ratio of the force of gravity on the two objects, measured by the scale, is equal to the ratio of their masses. On April 7,1795, the gram was decreed in France to be the weight of a volume of pure water equal to the cube of the hundredth part of the metre
10.
Pound (mass)
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The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in the imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement. The international standard symbol for the pound is lb. The unit is descended from the Roman libra, the English word pound is cognate with, among others, German Pfund, Dutch pond, and Swedish pund. All ultimately derive from a borrowing into Proto-Germanic of the Latin expression lībra pondō, usage of the unqualified term pound reflects the historical conflation of mass and weight. This accounts for the modern distinguishing terms pound-mass and pound-force, the United States and countries of the Commonwealth of Nations agreed upon common definitions for the pound and the yard. Since 1 July 1959, the avoirdupois pound has been defined as exactly 0.45359237 kg. In the United Kingdom, the use of the pound was implemented in the Weights and Measures Act 1963.9144 metre exactly. An avoirdupois pound is equal to 16 avoirdupois ounces and to exactly 7,000 grains, the conversion factor between the kilogram and the international pound was therefore chosen to be divisible by 7, and an grain is thus equal to exactly 64.79891 milligrams. The US has not adopted the system despite many efforts to do so. Historically, in different parts of the world, at different points in time, and for different applications, the libra is an ancient Roman unit of mass that was equivalent to approximately 328.9 grams. It was divided into 12 unciae, or ounces, the libra is the origin of the abbreviation for pound, lb. A number of different definitions of the pound have historically used in Britain. Amongst these were the avoirdupois pound and the tower, merchants. Historically, the sterling was a tower pound of silver. In 1528, the standard was changed to the Troy pound, the avoirdupois pound, also known as the wool pound, first came into general use c. It was initially equal to 6992 troy grains, the pound avoirdupois was divided into 16 ounces. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the pound was redefined as 7,000 troy grains. Since then, the grain has often been a part of the avoirdupois system
11.
Payload
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Payload is the carrying capacity of an aircraft or launch vehicle, usually measured in terms of weight. Depending on the nature of the flight or mission, the payload of a vehicle may include cargo, passengers, flight crew, munitions, scientific instruments or experiments, extra fuel, when optionally carried, is also considered part of the payload. In a commercial context, payload may refer only to revenue-generating cargo or paying passengers, for a rocket, the payload can be a satellite, space probe, or spacecraft carrying humans, animals, or cargo. For a ballistic missile, the payload is one or more warheads and related systems, the fraction of payload to the total liftoff weight of the air or spacecraft is known as the payload fraction. When the weight of the payload and fuel are considered together, in spacecraft, mass fraction is normally used, which is the ratio of payload to everything else, including the rocket structure. There is a natural trade-off between the payload and the range of an aircraft, a payload range diagram illustrates the trade-off. The top horizontal line represents the maximum payload and it is limited structurally by maximum zero-fuel weight of the aircraft. Maximum payload is the difference between maximum zero-fuel weight and operational empty weight, moving left-to-right along the line shows the constant maximum payload as the range increases. More fuel needs to be added for more range, the vertical line represents the range at which the combined weight of the aircraft, maximum payload and needed fuel reaches the maximum take-off weight of the aircraft. If the range is increased beyond that point, payload has to be sacrificed for fuel, the maximum take-off weight is limited by a combination of the maximum net power of the engines and the lift/drag ratio of the wings. The diagonal line after the point shows how reducing the payload allows increasing the fuel when taking off with the maximum take-off weight. The second kink in the curve represents the point at which the fuel capacity is reached. Flying further than that point means that the payload has to be reduced further, the absolute range is thus the range at which an aircraft can fly with maximum possible fuel without carrying any payload.314 m3 and 2 x 0.414 m3 Envelope, each 1. So even when the airplane has been loaded with its maximum payload that the wings can support, launch and transport system differ not only on the payload that can be carried but also in the stresses and other factors placed on the payload. The payload must not only be lifted to its target, it must also arrive safely, to ensure this the payload, such as a warhead or satellite, is designed to withstand certain amounts of various types of punishment on the way to its destination. Most aircraft payloads are carried within the fuselage for similar reasons, outsize cargo may require a fuselage with unusual proportions, such as the Super Guppy. The various constraints placed on the system can be roughly categorized into those that cause physical damage to the payload. Heavy-lift launch vehicle Medium-lift launch vehicle Tsiolkovsky rocket equation Shannon Ackert, using the Payload/Range and Takeoff Field Length Charts in the Airplane Characteristics for Airport Planning Documents
12.
Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39
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Launch Complex 39 is a rocket launch site at the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida, United States. The site and its collection of facilities were built for the Apollo program. As of 2017, only Launch Complex 39A is active, launching SpaceXs Falcon 9. LC-39 is also being modified to support launches of the SpaceXs Dragon 2 and Falcon Heavy, as well as NASAs Space Launch System, with a new, smaller pad, C, added to support smaller launches. SpaceX leases Launch Pad 39A from NASA and has modified the pad to support Falcon Heavy launches in 2017 and beyond. NASA began modifying Launch Pad 39B in 2007 to accommodate the now defunct Project Constellation, Pad C was originally planned but never built for Apollo, and would have been a copy of pads 39A and 39B. A smaller pad, designated 39C was constructed from January to June 2015 to accommodate small-class vehicles, NASA launches from LC-39A and 39B have been supervised from the NASA Launch Control Center, located 3 miles from the launch pads. LC-39 is one of launch sites that share radar and tracking services of the Eastern Test Range. During the 1920s, Peter E. Studebaker Jr. son of the automobile magnate, in 1948, the Navy transferred the former Banana River Naval Air Station located south of Cape Canaveral, to the Air Force for use in testing captured German V-2 rockets. The sites location on the East Florida coast was ideal for this purpose in that launches would be over the ocean and this site became the Joint Long Range Proving Ground in 1949, and was renamed Patrick Air Force Base in 1950. The Air Force annexed part of Cape Canaveral to the North in 1951, forming the Air Force Missile Test Center, Missile and rocketry testing and development would take place here through the 1950s. After the creation of NASA in 1958, the CCAFS launch pads were used for NASAs civilian unmanned and manned launches, including those of Project Mercury, in 1961, President Kennedy proposed to Congress the goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. NASA began acquisition of land in 1962, taking title to 131 square miles by outright purchase, on July 1,1962, the site was named the Launch Operations Center. At the time, the highest numbered launch pad on CCAFS was Launch Complex 37 and it was designed to handle launches of the Saturn V rocket, at the time the largest, most powerful rocket then designed, required to take Apollo to the Moon. Initial plans included four pads evenly spaced 8,700 feet apart to damage in the event of an explosion on the pad. Three were scheduled for construction and two would have built at a later date. The numbering of the pads at the time was from north to south, with the northernmost being 39A, Pad 39A was never built, and 39C became 39A in 1963. With todays numbering, 39C would have been north of 39B, Pad 39E would have been due north of the mid-distance between 39C and 39D, with 39E forming the top of a triangle, and equidistant from 39C and 39D
13.
Kennedy Space Center
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The John F. Kennedy Space Center is one of ten National Aeronautics and Space Administration field centers. Since December 1968, Kennedy Space Center has been NASAs primary launch center of human spaceflight, Launch operations for the Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs were carried out from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 and managed by KSC. Located on the east coast of Florida, KSC is adjacent to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the management of the two entities work very closely together, share resources, and even own facilities on each others property. Additionally, the center manages launch of robotic and commercial missions, researches food production and In-Situ Resource Utilization for off Earth exploration. Since 2010, the center has worked to become a multi-user spaceport through industry partnerships, there are about 700 facilities grouped across the centers 144,000 acres. There is also a Visitor Complex open to the public on site, the military had been performing launch operations since 1949 at what would become Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. In December 1959, the Department of Defense transferred 5,000 personnel, President John F. Kennedys 1961 goal of a manned lunar landing before 1970 required an expansion of launch operations. On July 1,1962, the Launch Operations Directorate was separated from MSFC to become the Launch Operations Center, therefore, the decision was made to build a new LOC site located adjacent to Cape Canaveral on Merritt Island. NASA began land acquisition in 1962, buying title to 131 square miles, the major buildings in KSCs Industrial Area were designed by architect Charles Luckman. Construction began in November 1962, and Kennedy visited the site twice in 1962, on November 29,1963, the facility was given its current name by President Lyndon B. Johnson under Executive Order 11129. Johnsons order joined both the civilian LOC and the military Cape Canaveral station under the designation John F. Kennedy Space Center, spawning some confusion joining the two in the public mind. Located on Merritt Island, Florida, the center is north-northwest of Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic Ocean and it is 34 miles long and roughly six miles wide, covering 219 square miles. KSC is a major central Florida tourist destination and is one hours drive from the Orlando area. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex offers public tours of the center, Center workers can encounter bald eagles, American alligators, wild boars, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, the endangered Florida panther and Florida manatees. From 1967 through 1973, there were 13 Saturn V launches, the first of two unmanned flights, Apollo 4 on November 9,1967, was also the first rocket launch from KSC. The Saturn Vs first manned launch on December 21,1968 was Apollo 8s lunar orbiting mission, the next two missions tested the Lunar Module, Apollo 9 and Apollo 10. Apollo 11, launched from Pad A on July 16,1969, Apollo 12 followed four months later. From 1970–1972, the Apollo program concluded at KSC with the launches of missions 13 through 17, on May 14,1973, the last Saturn V launch put the Skylab space station in orbit from Pad 39A
14.
Rocketdyne
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Rocketdyne was an American rocket engine design and production company headquartered in Canoga Park, located in the western San Fernando Valley of suburban Los Angeles, in southern California. The Rocketdyne Division was founded by North American Aviation in 1955, in 2005, the Rocketdyne Division was sold to United Technologies Corporation, becoming Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne as part of Pratt & Whitney. In 2013, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne was sold to GenCorp, after World War II, North American Aviation was contracted by the Defense Department to study the German V-2 missile and adapt its engine to SAE measurements and U. S. construction details. NAA also used the general concept of separate burner/injectors from the V-2 engine design to build a much larger engine for the Navaho missile project. This work was considered unimportant in the 1940s and funded at a low level. Navaho ran into difficulties and was canceled in 1958 when the Chrysler Corporation Missile Divisions Redstone missile design had caught up in development. In 1967, NAA, with its Rocketdyne and Atomics International divisions, merged with the Rockwell Corporation to form North American Rockwell, Rocketdynes next major development was its first all-new design, the S-3D, which had been developed in parallel to the V-2 derived A series. An even larger design, the LR89/LR105, was used on the Atlas missile, the Thor had a short military career, but it was used as a satellite launcher through the 1950s and 60s in a number of different versions. One, Thor Delta, became the baseline for the current Delta series of space launchers, although the original S-3 engine was used on some Delta versions, most use its updated RS-27 design, originally developed as a single engine to replace the three-engine cluster on the Atlas. The Atlas V is still in manufacture and use, Rocketdyne also became the major supplier for NASAs development efforts, supplying all of the major engines for the Saturn rocket. Rocketdynes H-1 engine was used by the Saturn I booster main stage, five F-1 engines powered the Saturn Vs, S-IC, first stage, while five J-2 engines powered its S-II second stage, and one J-2 the S-IVB third stages. By 1965, Rocketdyne built the vast majority of US rocket engines, excepting those of the Titan rocket and this sort of growth appeared to be destined to continue in the 1970s when Rocketdyne won the contract for the Space Shuttle Main Engine. But the rapid downturn in other military and civilian contracts led to downsizing of the company, during continued downsizing in the 1980s and 1990s, Rockwell International shed several parts of the former North American Rockwell corporation. The aerospace entities of Rockwell International, including the former NAA, Rocketdyne became part of Boeings Defense division. In February 2005, Boeing reached an agreement to sell what was by referred to as Rocketdyne Propulsion & Power to Pratt & Whitney of United Technologies Corporation. The transaction was completed on August 2,2005, Boeing retained ownership of Rocketdynes Santa Susana Field Lab. GenCorp purchased Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne in 2013 from United Technologies Corporation, in addition to its primary business of building rocket engines, Rocketdyne has developed power generation and control systems. These included early nuclear power generation experiments, radioisotope thermoelectric generators, in the Boeing sale to Pratt & Whitney, the Power Systems division of Rocketdyne was transferred to Hamilton Sundstrand, another subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation
15.
Rocketdyne F-1
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The F-1 is a gas-generator cycle rocket engine developed in the United States by Rocketdyne in the late 1950s and used in the Saturn V rocket in the 1960s and early 1970s. Five F-1 engines were used in the S-IC first stage of each Saturn V, the F-1 remains the most powerful single-combustion chamber liquid-propellant rocket engine ever developed. The F-1 was originally developed by Rocketdyne to meet a 1955 U. S. Air Force requirement for a large rocket engine. The eventual result of requirement was two engines, the E-1 and the much larger F-1. The E-1, although tested in static firing, was quickly seen as a technological dead-end. The Air Force eventually halted development of the F-1 because of a lack of requirement for such a large engine, however, the recently created National Aeronautics and Space Administration appreciated the usefulness of an engine with so much power, and contracted Rocketdyne to complete its development. Test firings of F-1 components had performed as early as 1957. The first static firing of a full-stage developmental F-1 was performed in March 1959, the first F-1 was delivered to NASA MSFC in October 1963. In December 1964, the F-1 completed flight-rating tests, testing continued at least through 1965. Early development tests revealed serious combustion instability problems which caused catastrophic failure. Initially, progress on this problem was slow, as it was intermittent, oscillations of 4 kHz with harmonics to 24 kHz were observed. Eventually, engineers developed a technique of detonating small explosive charges outside the combustion chamber. This allowed them to exactly how the running chamber responded to variations in pressure. The designers could then quickly experiment with different co-axial fuel-injector designs to obtain the one most resistant to instability and these problems were addressed from 1959 through 1961. Eventually, engine combustion was so stable, it would self-damp artificially induced instability within 1/10 of a second, the Rocketdyne-developed F-1 engine is the most powerful single-nozzle liquid-fueled rocket engine ever flown. The M-1 rocket engine was designed to have more thrust, however it was tested at the component level. The F-1 was a rocket motor, burning RP-1 as fuel. A turbopump was used to fuel and oxygen into the combustion chamber
16.
Newton (unit)
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The newton is the International System of Units derived unit of force. It is named after Isaac Newton in recognition of his work on classical mechanics, see below for the conversion factors. One newton is the force needed to one kilogram of mass at the rate of one metre per second squared in direction of the applied force. In 1948, the 9th CGPM resolution 7 adopted the name newton for this force, the MKS system then became the blueprint for todays SI system of units. The newton thus became the unit of force in le Système International dUnités. This SI unit is named after Isaac Newton, as with every International System of Units unit named for a person, the first letter of its symbol is upper case. Note that degree Celsius conforms to this rule because the d is lowercase. — Based on The International System of Units, section 5.2. Newtons second law of motion states that F = ma, where F is the applied, m is the mass of the object receiving the force. The newton is therefore, where the symbols are used for the units, N for newton, kg for kilogram, m for metre. In dimensional analysis, F = M L T2 where F is force, M is mass, L is length, at average gravity on earth, a kilogram mass exerts a force of about 9.8 newtons. An average-sized apple exerts about one newton of force, which we measure as the apples weight, for example, the tractive effort of a Class Y steam train and the thrust of an F100 fighter jet engine are both around 130 kN. One kilonewton,1 kN, is 102.0 kgf,1 kN =102 kg ×9.81 m/s2 So for example, a platform rated at 321 kilonewtons will safely support a 32,100 kilograms load. Specifications in kilonewtons are common in safety specifications for, the values of fasteners, Earth anchors. Working loads in tension and in shear, thrust of rocket engines and launch vehicles clamping forces of the various moulds in injection moulding machines used to manufacture plastic parts
17.
Liquid oxygen
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Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is one of the physical forms of elemental oxygen. Liquid oxygen has a blue color and is strongly paramagnetic. Liquid oxygen has a density of 1.141 g/cm3 and is cryogenic with a point of 54.36 K. Because of its nature, liquid oxygen can cause the materials it touches to become extremely brittle. Liquid oxygen is also a powerful oxidizing agent, organic materials will burn rapidly and energetically in liquid oxygen. Further, if soaked in liquid oxygen, some such as coal briquettes, carbon black, etc. can detonate unpredictably from sources of ignition such as flames. Petrochemicals, including asphalt, often exhibit this behavior, the tetraoxygen molecule was first predicted in 1924 by Gilbert N. Lewis, who proposed it to explain why liquid oxygen defied Curies law. Modern computer simulations indicate that there are no stable O4 molecules in liquid oxygen, O2 molecules do tend to associate in pairs with antiparallel spins. Conversely, liquid nitrogen or liquid air can be oxygen-enriched by letting it stand in air, atmospheric oxygen dissolves in it. In commerce, liquid oxygen is classified as a gas and is widely used for industrial and medical purposes. Liquid oxygen is obtained from the oxygen found naturally in air by fractional distillation in an air separation plant. Liquid oxygen is a cryogenic liquid oxidizer propellant for spacecraft rocket applications, usually in combination with liquid hydrogen. Liquid oxygen is useful in this role because it creates a specific impulse. It was used in the very first rocket applications like the V2 missile and Redstone, R-7 Semyorka, Atlas boosters, many modern rockets use liquid oxygen, including the main engines on the now-retired Space Shuttle. U. S. Army has long recognized the importance of liquid oxygen. In 1985 it started a program of building its own facilities at all major consumption bases. By 1845, Michael Faraday had managed to liquefy most gases then known to exist, six gases, however, resisted every attempt at liquefaction and were known at the time as permanent gases. They were oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, in 1877, Louis Paul Cailletet in France and Raoul Pictet in Switzerland succeeded in producing the first droplets of liquid air
18.
Space Shuttle main engine
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Built in the United States by Rocketdyne, the RS-25 burns cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants, with each engine producing 1,859 kN of thrust at liftoff. Although the RS-25 can trace its heritage back to the 1960s, concerted development of the began in the 1970s, with the first flight, STS-1. The RS-25 has undergone several upgrades over its history to improve the engines reliability, safety. The RS-25 operates at temperatures ranging from −253 °C to 3300 °C, the Space Shuttle used a cluster of three RS-25 engines mounted in the aft structure of the orbiter, with fuel being drawn from the external tank. Following each flight, the engines were removed from the orbiter, the RS-25 engine consists of various pumps, valves and other components which work in concert to produce thrust. Once in the MPS lines, the fuel and oxidizer each branch out into separate paths to each engine, in each branch, prevalves then allow the propellants to enter the engine. Once in the engine, the flow through low-pressure fuel and oxidizer turbopumps. From these HPTPs the propellants take different routes through the engine, meanwhile, fuel flows through the main fuel valve into regenerative cooling systems for the nozzle and MCC, or through the chamber coolant valve. Fuel passing through the MCC cooling system then passes back through the LPFTP turbine before being routed either to the tank pressurization system or to the hot gas manifold cooling system. Once in the injectors, the propellants are mixed and injected into the combustion chamber where they are ignited. The burning propellant mixture is ejected through the throat and bell of the engines nozzle. It boosts the liquid oxygens pressure from 0.7 to 2.9 MPa, during engine operation, the pressure boost permits the high-pressure oxidizer turbine to operate at high speeds without cavitating. The LPOTP, which measures approximately 450 by 450 mm, is connected to the vehicle propellant ducting, the HPOTP consists of two single-stage centrifugal pumps mounted on a common shaft and driven by a two-stage, hot-gas turbine. The main pump boosts the liquid oxygens pressure from 2.9 to 30 MPa while operating at approximately 28,120 rpm, the HPOTP discharge flow splits into several paths, one of which drives the LPOTP turbine. Another path is to, and through, the oxidizer valve. Another small flow path is tapped off and sent to the heat exchanger. The gas is sent to a manifold and then routed to pressurize the liquid oxygen tank, another path enters the HPOTP second-stage preburner pump to boost the liquid oxygens pressure from 30 to 51 MPa. It passes through the oxidizer preburner oxidizer valve into the oxidizer preburner, the HPOTP measures approximately 600 by 900 mm
19.
Liquid hydrogen
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Liquid hydrogen is the liquid state of the element hydrogen. Hydrogen is found naturally in the molecular H2 form, one common method of obtaining liquid hydrogen involves a compressor resembling a jet engine in both appearance and principle. Liquid hydrogen is used as a concentrated form of hydrogen storage. As in any gas, storing it as liquid takes less space than storing it as a gas at temperature and pressure. However, the density is very low compared to other common fuels. Once liquefied, it can be maintained as a liquid in pressurized, liquid hydrogen consists of 99. 79% parahydrogen,0. 21% orthohydrogen. In 1885 Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski published hydrogens critical temperature as 33 K, critical pressure,13.3 atmospheres, hydrogen was liquefied by James Dewar in 1898 by using regenerative cooling and his invention, the vacuum flask. The first synthesis of the stable form of liquid hydrogen, parahydrogen, was achieved by Paul Harteck. Room–temperature hydrogen consists mostly of the orthohydrogen form, practical H2–O2 rocket engines run fuel-rich so that the exhaust contains some unburned hydrogen. This reduces combustion chamber and nozzle erosion and it also reduces the molecular weight of the exhaust which can actually increase specific impulse despite the incomplete combustion. Liquid hydrogen can be used as the fuel for an internal combustion engine or fuel cell, various submarines and concept hydrogen vehicles have been built using this form of hydrogen. Due to its similarity, builders can sometimes modify and share equipment with systems designed for LNG, however, because of the lower volumetric energy, the hydrogen volumes needed for combustion are large. Unless LH2 is injected instead of gas, hydrogen-fueled piston engines usually require larger fuel systems, unless direct injection is used, a severe gas-displacement effect also hampers maximum breathing and increases pumping losses. Liquid hydrogen is used to cool neutrons to be used in neutron scattering. Since neutrons and hydrogen nuclei have similar masses, kinetic energy exchange per interaction is maximum, finally, superheated liquid hydrogen was used in many bubble chamber experiments. The first thermonuclear bomb, Ivy Mike, used liquid deuterium, the product of its combustion with oxygen alone is water vapor, which can be cooled with some of the liquid hydrogen. Since water is harmless to the environment, an engine burning it can be considered zero emissions, liquid hydrogen also has a much higher specific energy than gasoline, natural gas, or diesel. The density of hydrogen is only 70.99 g/L
20.
Saturn V
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The Saturn V was an American human-rated expendable rocket used by NASA between 1967 and 1973. The Saturn V was launched 13 times from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with no loss of crew or payload, to date, the Saturn V remains the only launch vehicle to launch missions to carry humans beyond low Earth orbit. A total of 15 flight-capable vehicles were built, but only 13 were flown, an additional three vehicles were built for ground testing purposes. A total of 24 astronauts were launched to the Moon, three of them twice, in the four years spanning December 1968 through December 1972 and it was known that Americas rival, the Soviet Union, would also try to secure some of the Germans. Von Braun was put into the design division of the Army due to his prior direct involvement in the creation of the V-2 rocket. Between 1945 and 1958, his work was restricted to conveying the ideas, finally, they turned to von Braun and his team, who during these years created and experimented with the Jupiter series of rockets. The Juno I was the rocket launched the first American satellite in January 1958. The Jupiter series was one step in von Brauns journey to the Saturn V. The Saturn Vs design stemmed from the designs of the Jupiter series rockets, as the success of the Jupiter series became evident, the Saturn series emerged. Between 1960 and 1962, the Marshall Space Flight Center designed a series of Saturn rockets that could be used for various Earth orbit or lunar missions. NASA planned to use the C-3 as part of the Earth Orbit Rendezvous concept, the C-4 would need only two launches to carry out an EOR lunar mission. On January 10,1962, NASA announced plans to build the C-5. The three-stage rocket would consist of, the S-IC first stage, with five F-1 engines, the S-II second stage, with five J-2 engines, the C-5 was designed for a 90, 000-pound payload capacity to the Moon. The C-5 would undergo component testing even before the first model was constructed, by testing all components at once, far fewer test flights would be required before a manned launch. The C-5 was confirmed as NASAs choice for the Apollo program in early 1963, the C-1 became the Saturn I, and C-1B became Saturn IB. Von Braun headed a team at the Marshall Space Flight Center in building a vehicle capable of launching a spacecraft on a trajectory to the Moon. Before they moved under NASAs jurisdiction, von Brauns team had begun work on improving the thrust, creating a less complex operating system. It was during these revisions that the decision to reject the single engine of the V-2s design came about, the Saturn I and IB reflected these changes, but were not large enough to send a manned spacecraft to the Moon
21.
Multistage rocket
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A multistage rocket is a rocket that uses two or more stages, each of which contains its own engines and propellant. A tandem or serial stage is mounted on top of another stage, the result is effectively two or more rockets stacked on top of or attached next to each other. Taken together these are called a launch vehicle. Two-stage rockets are common, but rockets with as many as five separate stages have been successfully launched. By jettisoning stages when they run out of propellant, the mass of the rocket is decreased. This staging allows the thrust of the stages to more easily accelerate the rocket to its final speed. In serial or tandem staging schemes, the first stage is at the bottom and is usually the largest, in parallel staging schemes solid or liquid rocket boosters are used to assist with lift-off. These are sometimes referred to as stage 0, in the typical case, the first-stage and booster engines fire to propel the entire rocket upwards. When the boosters run out of fuel, they are detached from the rest of the rocket, the first stage then burns to completion and falls off. This leaves a smaller rocket, with the stage on the bottom. Known in rocketry circles as staging, this process is repeated until the final stages motor burns to completion, by dropping the stages which are no longer useful to the mission, the rocket lightens itself. The thrust of future stages is able to provide more acceleration than if the stage were still attached, or a single. When a stage drops off, the rest of the rocket is still traveling near the speed that the whole assembly reached at burn-out time and this means that it needs less total fuel to reach a given velocity and/or altitude. A further advantage is that each stage can use a different type of rocket motor each tuned for its operating conditions. Thus the lower-stage motors are designed for use at atmospheric pressure, on the downside, staging requires the vehicle to lift motors which are not yet being used, as well as making the entire rocket more complex and harder to build. In addition, each staging event is a significant point of failure during a launch, with the possibility of failure, ignition failure. Nevertheless, the savings are so great that every rocket ever used to deliver a payload into orbit has had staging of some sort. In terms of staging, the rocket stages usually have a lower specific impulse rating, trading efficiency for superior thrust in order to quickly push the rocket into higher altitudes.3 to 2.0
22.
S-II
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The S-II was the second stage of the Saturn V rocket. It was built by North American Aviation, using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen it had five J-2 engines in a quincunx pattern. The second stage accelerated the Saturn V through the atmosphere with 1,000,000 pounds-force of thrust. The beginning of the S-II came in December 1959 when a committee recommended the design and construction of a high-thrust, the contract for this engine was given to Rocketdyne and it would be later called the J-2. At the same time the S-II stage design began to take shape, initially it was to have four J-2 engines and be 74 feet in length and 260 inches in diameter. In 1961 the Marshall Space Flight Center began the process to find the contractor to build the stage, out of the 30 aerospace companies invited to a conference where the initial requirements were laid out, only seven submitted proposals a month later. Three of these were eliminated after their proposals had been investigated, however it was then decided that the initial specifications for the entire rocket were too small and so it was decided to increase the size of the stages used. This raised difficulties for the four remaining companies as NASA had still not yet decided on various aspects of the stage including size, and the upper stages that would be placed on top. In the end on 11 September 1961 the contract was awarded to North American Aviation, with the plant built by the government at Seal Beach. When fully loaded with propellant, the S-II had a mass of about 481 tonnes, the hardware was only 7. 6% of this—92. 4% was liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. At the bottom was the thrust structure supporting five J-2 engines, the center engine was fixed, while the other four were gimballed. Instead of using an intertank like the S-IC, the S-II used a common bulkhead that included both the top of the LOX tank and bottom of the LH2 tank and it consisted of two aluminium sheets separated by a honeycomb structure made of phenolic resin. It insulated a 70 °C temperature differential between the two tanks, the use of a common bulkhead saved 3.6 tonnes in weight, both by eliminating one bulkhead and by reducing the overall length of the stage. The LOX tank was a container of 10 meters diameter and 6.7 meters high holding up to 377.35 cubic meters or 357,882 kg of oxidizer. It was formed by welding 12 gores and two pieces for the top and bottom. The gores were shaped by positioning in a 211,000 liter tank of water with three carefully orchestrated sets of underwater explosions to shape each gore. The LH2 tank was constructed of six cylinders, five were 2.4 meters high, the biggest challenge was the insulation. Liquid hydrogen must be colder than about 20 °C above absolute zero so good insulation is very important
23.
Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster
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After burnout, they were jettisoned and parachuted into the Atlantic Ocean where they were recovered, examined, refurbished, and reused. The SRBs were the most powerful rocket motors ever flown, each provided a maximum 13,800 kN thrust, roughly double the most powerful single-combustion chamber liquid-propellant rocket engine ever flown, the Rocketdyne F-1. With a combined mass of about 1,180,000 kg, the motor segments of the SRBs were manufactured by Thiokol of Brigham City, Utah, which was later purchased by ATK. The prime contractor for most other components of the SRBs, as well as for the integration of all the components and retrieval of the spent SRBs, was USBI, a subsidiary of Pratt and Whitney. This contract was subsequently transitioned to United Space Alliance, a liability company joint venture of Boeing. Out of 270 SRBs launched over the Shuttle program, all but four were recovered – those from STS-4, over 5,000 parts were refurbished for reuse after each flight. The final set of SRBs that launched STS-135 included parts that flew on 59 previous missions, recovery also allowed post-flight examination of the boosters, identification of anomalies, and incremental design improvements. The two reusable SRBs provided the main thrust to lift the shuttle off the pad and up to an altitude of about 150,000 ft. While on the pad, the two SRBs carried the weight of the external tank and orbiter and transmitted the weight load through their structure to the mobile launch platform. Each booster had a liftoff thrust of approximately 2,800,000 pounds-force at sea level and they were ignited after the three Space Shuttle Main Engines thrust level was verified. Each is 149.16 ft long and 12.17 ft in diameter, only then could any conceivable set of launch or post-liftoff abort procedures be contemplated. In addition, failure of an individual SRBs thrust output or ability to adhere to the designed performance profile was not survivable, each SRB weighed approximately 1,300,000 lb at launch. The two SRBs constituted about 69% of the total lift-off mass, the propellant for each solid rocket motor weighed approximately 1,100,000 lb. The inert weight of each SRB was approximately 200,000 pounds, while the terms solid rocket motor and solid rocket booster are often used interchangeably, in technical use they have specific meanings. The term solid rocket motor applied to the propellant, case, igniter, each booster was attached to the external tank at the SRBs aft frame by two lateral sway braces and a diagonal attachment. The forward end of each SRB was attached to the tank at the forward end of the SRBs forward skirt. On the launch pad, each booster also was attached to the launcher platform at the aft skirt by four frangible nuts that were severed at lift-off. The boosters were composed of seven individually manufactured steel segments and these were assembled in pairs by the manufacturer, and then shipped to Kennedy Space Center by rail for final assembly
24.
VTVL
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Vertical takeoff, vertical landing is a form of takeoff and landing for rockets. VTVL rockets are not to be confused with aircraft which take off and land vertically which use the air for support and propulsion, such as helicopters,1961 Bell Rocket Belt, personal VTVL rocket belt demonstrated. VTVL rocket concepts were studied by Philip Bono of Douglas Aircraft Co. in the 1960s, apollo Lunar Module was a 1960s two-stage VTVL vehicle for landing and taking off from the moon. The Soviet Union did some development work on, but never flew, the McDonnell Douglas DC-X was an unmanned prototype VTVL launch vehicle that flew several successfully test flights in the 1990s. In June 1996, the set a altitude record of 3,140 metres. Follow-on VTVL designs including Mastens Xaero and Armadillos Stig were aimed at higher-speed flight to higher suborbital altitudes, SpaceX announced plans in 2010 to eventually install deployable landing gear on the Dragon spacecraft and use the vehicles thrusters to perform a land-based landing. The test vehicle made eight successful test flights in 2012–2013, grasshopper v1.0 made its eighth, and final, test flight on October 7,2013, flying to an altitude of 744 metres before making its eighth successful VTVL landing. F9R Dev1 made its first test flight in April 2014, to an altitude of 250 meters before making a vertical landing. 2013, SpaceXs DragonFly is a prototype low-altitude rocket-powered test article for a version of their Dragon space capsule. The DragonFly is a reusable launch vehicle, intended for low-altitude flight testing expected to start in 2014. On November 23,2015, Blue Origins New Shepard booster rocket made the first successful vertical landing following an unmanned suborbital test flight that reached space. On December 21,2015, SpaceXs 20th Falcon 9 first stage made a landing after boosting 11 commercial satellites to low earth orbit on Falcon 9 Flight 20. On April 8,2016, SpaceXs Falcon 9 made the first successful landing on their Autonomous spaceport drone ship as part of the SpaceX CRS-8 cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station, the technology required to successfully achieve VTVL has several parts. First, thrust must be greater than weight, second the thrust is required to be vectored. Guidance must be capable of calculating the position and attitude of the vehicle, RCS systems are usually required to keep the vehicle at the correct angle. Landing legs and deployment mechanisms add to the weight of the vehicle compared to expendable vehicles and it can also be necessary to be able to ignite engines in a variety of conditions potentially including vacuum, hypersonic, supersonic, transonic, and subsonic. Elon Musk has discussed the potential for substantial reductions in space flight costs as a result of being able to reuse rockets after successful VTVL landings, vertical landing of spaceships was the predominant mode of rocket landing envisioned in the pre-spaceflight era. Many science fiction authors as well as depictions in popular culture showed rockets landing vertically, typically resting after landing on the space vehicles fins, the spacecraft stopped mid-air again and, as the engines throttled back, began its successful vertical landing
25.
International Space Station
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The International Space Station is a space station, or a habitable artificial satellite, in low Earth orbit. Its first component launched into orbit in 1998, and the ISS is now the largest man-made body in space, the ISS consists of pressurised modules, external trusses, solar arrays, and other components. ISS components have been launched by Russian Proton and Soyuz rockets, the ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields. The station is suited for the testing of systems and equipment required for missions to the Moon. The ISS maintains an orbit with an altitude of between 330 and 435 km by means of reboost manoeuvres using the engines of the Zvezda module or visiting spacecraft and it completes 15.54 orbits per day. The ISS is the space station to be inhabited by crews, following the Soviet and later Russian Salyut, Almaz. The station has continuously occupied for 16 years and 156 days since the arrival of Expedition 1 on 2 November 2000. This is the longest continuous presence in low Earth orbit. It has been visited by astronauts, cosmonauts and space tourists from 17 different nations, Soyuz has very limited downmass capability. The ISS programme is a joint project among five participating space agencies, NASA, Roscosmos, JAXA, ESA, the ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements. The station is divided two sections, the Russian Orbital Segment and the United States Orbital Segment, which is shared by many nations. As of January 2014, the American portion of ISS is being funded until 2024, Roscosmos has endorsed the continued operation of ISS through 2024 but has proposed using elements of the Russian Orbital Segment to construct a new Russian space station called OPSEK. On 28 March 2015, Russian sources announced that Roscosmos and NASA had agreed to collaborate on the development of a replacement for the current ISS. NASA later issued a statement expressing thanks for Russias interest in future co-operation in space exploration. According to the original Memorandum of Understanding between NASA and Rosaviakosmos, the International Space Station was intended to be a laboratory, observatory and factory in low Earth orbit. It was also planned to provide transportation, maintenance, and act as a base for possible future missions to the Moon, Mars. In the 2010 United States National Space Policy, the ISS was given roles of serving commercial, diplomatic. The ISS provides a platform to conduct scientific research, the ISS simplifies individual experiments by eliminating the need for separate rocket launches and research staff
26.
Skylab
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Skylab was the United States first space station, orbiting Earth from 1973 to 1979, when it fell back to Earth amid huge worldwide media attention. Launched and operated by NASA, Skylab included a workshop, a solar observatory and it was launched unmanned by a modified Saturn V rocket, with a weight of 170,000 pounds. Lifting Skylab into low earth orbit was the mission and launch of a Saturn V rocket. Skylabs solar observatory was one aspect of study, and solar science was significantly advanced by the telescope. Each of these missions delivered a three-astronaut crew, carried in the Apollo Command/Service Module launched atop the Saturn IB rocket, which is much smaller than the Saturn V. For the final two manned missions to Skylab, a backup Apollo CSM/Saturn IB was assembled and made ready in case a rescue mission was needed. This deprived Skylab of most of its power, and also removed protection from intense solar heating, threatening to make it unusable. However, the first crew was able to save Skylab by deploying a replacement heat shade and freeing the jammed solar panels, Skylab included the Apollo Telescope Mount, Multiple Docking Adapter, Airlock Module with extravehicular activity hatches, and the Orbital Workshop. Electrical power came from solar arrays, as well as cells in the docked Apollo CSM. The rear of the station included a large tank, propellant tanks for maneuvering jets. Numerous scientific experiments were conducted aboard Skylab during its operational life, the Earth Resources Experiment Package was used to view Earth with sensors that recorded data in the visible, infrared, and microwave spectral regions. Plans were made to refurbish and reuse Skylab by using the Space Shuttle to boost its orbit, however, due to delays with the development of the Space Shuttle, Skylabs decaying orbit could not be stopped. In the hours before re-entry, NASA ground controllers attempted to adjust Skylabs trajectory, NASAs attempted target was a spot 810 miles south-southeast of Cape Town, South Africa. Skylab did not burn up as fast as NASA expected, and Skylab debris landed southeast of Perth in Western Australia, over a single property in Esperance,24 pieces of Skylab were found. Analysis of some debris indicated that the Skylab station had disintegrated 10 mi above the Earth, after Skylab, NASA space station/laboratory projects included Spacelab, Shuttle-Mir, and Space Station Freedom. Rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, science fiction writer Arthur C, clarke, and other early advocates of manned space travel, expected until the 1960s that a space station would be an important early step in space exploration. Von Braun participated in the publishing of a series of articles in Colliers magazine from 1952 to 1954. He envisioned a large, circular station 250 feet in diameter that would rotate to generate gravity and require a fleet of 7
27.
Mir
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Mir was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, run by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. Mir was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996 and it had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft. At the time it was the largest artificial satellite in orbit and it holds the record for the longest single human spaceflight, with Valeri Polyakov spending 437 days and 18 hours on the station between 1994 and 1995. Mir was occupied for a total of twelve and a half out of its fifteen-year lifespan. Following the success of the Salyut programme, Mir represented the stage in the Soviet Unions space station programme. The first module of the station, known as the module or base block, was launched in 1986. Proton rockets were used to all of its components except for the docking module. When complete, the station consisted of seven pressurised modules and several unpressurised components, power was provided by several photovoltaic arrays attached directly to the modules. The station was maintained at an orbit between 296 km and 421 km altitude and traveled at an speed of 27,700 km/h. Mir was deorbited in March 2001 after funding was cut off, the cost of the Mir programme was estimated by former RKA General Director Yuri Koptev in 2001 as $4.2 billion over its lifetime. Mir was authorized on a 17 February 1976 decree, to design a model of the Salyut DOS-17K space stations. Four Salyut space stations had been launched since 1971, with three more being launched during Mirs development, by August 1978, this had evolved to the final configuration of one aft port and five ports in a spherical compartment at the forward end of the station. It was originally planned that the ports would connect to 7. 5-tonne modules derived from the Soyuz spacecraft and these modules would have used a Soyuz propulsion module, as in Soyuz and Progress, and the descent and orbital modules would have been replaced with a long laboratory module. However, following a February 1979 governmental resolution, the programme was consolidated with Vladimir Chelomeis manned Almaz military space station programme, the docking ports were reinforced to accommodate 20-tonne space station modules based on the TKS spacecraft. NPO Energia was responsible for the space station, with work subcontracted to KB Salyut, due to ongoing work on the Energia rocket and Salyut 7, Soyuz-T. KB Salyut began work in 1979, and drawings were released in 1982 and 1983, by early 1984, work on Mir had halted while all resources were being put into the Buran programme in order to prepare the Buran spacecraft for flight testing. Funding resumed in early 1984 when Valentin Glushko was ordered by the Central Committees Secretary for Space and Defence to orbit Mir by early 1986 and it was clear that the planned processing flow could not be followed and still meet the 1986 launch date. It was decided on Cosmonauts Day 1985 to ship the flight model of the block to the Baikonur cosmodrome and conduct the systems testing
28.
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
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The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11,39 EST. Disintegration of the vehicle began after an O-ring seal in its solid rocket booster failed at liftoff. The O-ring was not designed to fly under unusually cold conditions as in this launch and this led to the separation of the right-hand SRBs aft field joint attachment and the structural failure of the external tank. Aerodynamic forces broke up the orbiter, the crew compartment and many other vehicle fragments were eventually recovered from the ocean floor after a lengthy search and recovery operation. The exact timing of the death of the crew is unknown, the shuttle had no escape system, and the impact of the crew compartment with the ocean surface was too violent to be survivable. The Rogers Commission found NASAs organizational culture and decision-making processes had been key contributing factors to the accident, NASA managers had known since 1977 that contractor Morton Thiokols design of the SRBs contained a potentially catastrophic flaw in the O-rings, but they had failed to address this problem properly. Approximately 17 percent of Americans witnessed the launch live because of the presence of Payload Specialist Christa McAuliffe, media coverage of the accident was extensive, one study reported that 85 percent of Americans surveyed had heard the news within an hour of the accident. The Challenger disaster has been used as a study in many discussions of engineering safety. Each of the Space Shuttles two Solid Rocket Boosters was constructed of seven sections, six of which were joined in pairs at the factory. For each flight, the four resulting segments were then assembled in the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, the factory joints were sealed with asbestos-silica insulation applied over the joint, while each field joint was sealed with two rubber O-rings. During the Space Shuttle design process, a McDonnell Douglas report in September 1971 discussed the safety record of solid rockets, while a safe abort was possible after most types of failures, one was especially dangerous, a burnthrough by hot gases of the rockets casing. The report stated that if burnthrough occurs adjacent to tank or orbiter, timely sensing may not be feasible and abort not possible, Morton Thiokol was the contractor responsible for the construction and maintenance of the shuttles SRBs. This phenomenon, known as joint rotation, caused a drop in air pressure. This made it possible for combustion gases to erode the O-rings, in the event of widespread erosion, a flame path could develop, causing the joint to burst—which would have destroyed the booster and the shuttle. Evidence of serious O-ring erosion was present as early as the space shuttle mission, STS-2. Contrary to NASA regulations, the Marshall Center did not report this problem to senior management at NASA, by 1985, Marshall and Thiokol realized that they had a potentially catastrophic problem on their hands. They began the process of redesigning the joint with three inches of steel around the tang. This tang would grip the inner face of the joint and prevent it from rotating and they did not call for a halt to shuttle flights until the joints could be redesigned, but rather treated the problem as an acceptable flight risk
29.
Richard Nixon
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Richard Milhous Nixon was an American politician who served as the 37th President of the United States from 1969 until 1974, when he became the only U. S. president to resign from office. He had previously served as a U. S, Representative and Senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California, after completing his undergraduate studies at Whittier College, he graduated from Duke University School of Law in 1937 and returned to California to practice law. He and his wife Pat moved to Washington in 1942 to work for the federal government and he subsequently served on active duty in the U. S. Navy Reserve during World War II. Nixon was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and to the Senate in 1950 and his pursuit of the Hiss Case established his reputation as a leading anti-communist, and elevated him to national prominence. He was the mate of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party presidential nominee in the 1952 election. Nixon served for eight years as vice president and he waged an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1960, narrowly losing to John F. Kennedy, and lost a race for Governor of California to Pat Brown in 1962. In 1968, he ran for the presidency again and was elected by defeating incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Nixon ended American involvement in the war in Vietnam in 1973 and brought the American POWs home, and ended the military draft. His administration generally transferred power from Washington D. C. to the states and he imposed wage and price controls for a period of ninety days, enforced desegregation of Southern schools and established the Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon also presided over the Apollo 11 moon landing, which signaled the end of the moon race and he was reelected in one of the largest electoral landslides in U. S. history in 1972, when he defeated George McGovern. The year 1973 saw an Arab oil embargo, gasoline rationing, the scandal escalated, costing Nixon much of his political support, and on August 9,1974, he resigned in the face of almost certain impeachment and removal from office. After his resignation, he was issued a pardon by his successor, in retirement, Nixons work writing several books and undertaking of many foreign trips helped to rehabilitate his image. He suffered a stroke on April 18,1994. Richard Milhous Nixon was born on January 9,1913 in Yorba Linda, California and his parents were Hannah Nixon and Francis A. Nixon. His mother was a Quaker and his father converted from Methodism to the Quaker faith, Nixons upbringing was marked by evangelical Quaker observances of the time, such as refraining from alcohol, dancing, and swearing. Nixon had four brothers, Harold, Donald, Arthur, four of the five Nixon boys were named after kings who had ruled in historical or legendary England, Richard, for example, was named after Richard the Lionheart. Nixons early life was marked by hardship, and he quoted a saying of Eisenhower to describe his boyhood, We were poor. The Nixon family ranch failed in 1922, and the moved to Whittier
30.
Titan (rocket family)
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Titan is a family of U. S. expendable rockets used between 1959 and 2005. A total of 368 rockets of this family were launched, including all the Project Gemini manned flights of the mid-1960s, titans also were used to send highly successful interplanetary scientific probes throughout the Solar System. The HGM-25A Titan I was the first version of the Titan family of rockets and it began as a backup ICBM project in case the Atlas was delayed. It was a rocket whose LR-87 engine was powered by RP-1. It was operational from early 1962 to mid-1965, the ground guidance for the Titan was the UNIVAC ATHENA computer, designed by Seymour Cray, based in a hardened underground bunker. Using radar data, it made course corrections during the burn phase, most of the Titan rockets were the Titan II ICBM and their civilian derivatives for NASA. The first Titan II guidance system was built by AC Spark Plug and it used an Inertial measurement unit made by AC Spark Plug derived from original designs from the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory at MIT. The missile guidance computer was the IBM ASC-15, when spares for this system became hard to obtain, it was replaced by a more modern guidance system, the Delco Electronics Universal Space Guidance System. The USGS used a Carousel IV IMU and a Magic 352 computer, the USGS was already in use on the Titan III space launcher when work began in March 1978 to replace the Titan II guidance system. The main reason was to reduce the cost of maintenance by $72 million per year, the most famous use of the civilian Titan II was in the NASA Gemini program of manned space capsules in the mid-1960s. Twelve Titan II GLVs were used to launch two U. S. unmanned Gemini test launches and ten manned capsules with two-man crews, all of the launches were successes. Also, in the late 1980s some of the deactivated Titan IIs were converted into space launch vehicles to be used for launching U. S. Government payloads. The final such vehicle launched a Defense Meteorological Satellite Program weather satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, the Titan III was a modified Titan II with optional solid rocket boosters. The Titan III core was similar to the Titan II, but had a few differences, the Titan IIIA was a prototype rocket booster, which consisted of a standard Titan II rocket with a Transtage upper stage. The Titan IIIB with its different versions had the Titan III core booster with an Agena D upper stage and this combination was used to launch the KH-8 GAMBIT series of intelligence-gathering satellites. They were all launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California and their maximum payload mass was about 7,500 lb. The powerful Titan IIIC used a Titan III core rocket with two large strap-on solid-fuel boosters to increase its launch thrust, and hence the maximum payload mass capability. The Titan IIID was a derivative of the Titan IIIC, without the upper transtage, the first guidance system for the Titan III used the AC Spark Plug company IMU and an IBM ASC-15 guidance computer from the Titan II
31.
Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar
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The program ran from October 24,1957 to December 10,1963, cost US$660 million, and was cancelled just after spacecraft construction had begun. Other spacecraft under development at the time, such as Mercury or Vostok, were based on space capsules that returned on ballistic re-entry profiles, Dyna-Soar was more like the much later Space Shuttle. It could not only travel to distant targets at the speed of a ballistic missile. It could land at an airfield, rather than falling to earth. Dyna-Soar could also reach earth orbit, like Mercury or Gemini and these characteristics made Dyna-Soar a far more advanced concept than other human spaceflight missions of the period. Following World War II, many German scientists were taken to the United States by the Office of Strategic Servicess Operation Paperclip, among them was Dr. Walter Dornberger, the former head of Germanys wartime rocket program, who had detailed knowledge of Eugen Sängers Silbervogel project. Working for Bell, he attempted to create interest in a system in the USAF. The development of Dyna Soar can be traced back to the Silbervogel bomber project of World War II, the concept was a rocket-powered bomber that could travel vast distances by gliding to its target after being boosted to high speed and high altitude by A-4 or A-9 rockets. Essentially, these rockets would place the vehicle onto an exoatmospheric intercontinental ballistic missile-like trajectory, in this way, the vehicle would be bounced back into space again. This skip-glide method would repeat until the speed was low enough that the pilot of the vehicle would need to pick a landing spot and this use of hypersonic atmospheric lift meant that the vehicle could greatly extend its range over a ballistic trajectory using the same engines. In addition, an aircraft may be recoverable, acting as a manned bomber. On October 10,1957 ARDC headquarters consolidated Hywards, Brass Bell, the Dyna-Soar program was to be conducted in three stages, a research vehicle, a reconnaissance vehicle, and a vehicle that added strategic bombing capability. The first glide tests for Dyna-Soar I were expected to be carried out in 1963, followed by powered flights, reaching Mach 18, a robotic glide missile was to be deployed in 1968, with the fully operational weapons system expected by 1974. In March 1958, nine U. S. aerospace companies tendered for the Dyna-Soar contract, of these, the field narrowed to proposals from Bell and Boeing. Even though Bell had the advantage of six years worth of design studies, in late 1961, the Titan III was chosen as the launch vehicle. The Dyna-Soar was to be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the overall design of the X-20 Dyna-Soar was outlined in March 1960. It had a low-wing delta shape, with winglets for control rather than a conventional tail. The framework of the craft was to be made from the René41 super alloy, the bottom surface was to be made from molybdenum sheets placed over insulated René41, while the nose-cone was to be made from graphite with zirconia rods
32.
Boeing X-37
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The Boeing X-37, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle, is a reusable unmanned spacecraft. It is boosted into space by a vehicle, then re-enters Earths atmosphere. The X-37 is operated by the United States Air Force for orbital spaceflight missions intended to demonstrate reusable space technologies and it is a 120%-scaled derivative of the earlier Boeing X-40. The X-37 began as a NASA project in 1999, before being transferred to the U. S. Department of Defense in 2004 and it conducted its first flight as a drop test on 7 April 2006, at Edwards Air Force Base, California. The spaceplanes first orbital mission, USA-212, was launched on 22 April 2010 using an Atlas V rocket and its successful return to Earth on 3 December 2010 was the first test of the vehicles heat shield and hypersonic aerodynamic handling. A second X-37 was launched on 5 March 2011, with the mission designation USA-226, a third X-37 mission, USA-240, launched on 11 December 2012 and landed at Vandenberg AFB on 17 October 2014. The fourth X-37 mission, USA-261, launched on 20 May 2015 and is in progress, in 1999, NASA selected Boeing Integrated Defense Systems to design and develop an orbital vehicle, built by the California branch of Boeings Phantom Works. Over a four-year period, a total of $192 million was spent on the project, with NASA contributing $109 million, the U. S. Air Force $16 million, and Boeing $67 million. In late 2002, a new contract was awarded to Boeing as part of NASAs Space Launch Initiative framework. An early requirement for the called for a delta-v of 7,000 mph to change its orbit. An early goal for the program was for the X-37 to rendezvous with satellites, the X-37 was transferred from NASA to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on 13 September 2004. Thereafter, the became a classified project. DARPA promoted the X-37 as part of the independent space policy that the United States Department of Defense has pursued since the 1986 Challenger disaster, the vehicle that was used as an atmospheric drop test glider had no propulsion system. Instead of an operational vehicles payload bay doors, it had an enclosed and reinforced upper fuselage structure to allow it to be mated with a mothership. In September 2004, DARPA announced that for its initial atmospheric drop tests the X-37 would be launched from the Scaled Composites White Knight, on 21 June 2005, the X-37A completed a captive-carry flight underneath the White Knight from Mojave Spaceport in Mojave, California. Through the second half of 2005, the X-37A underwent structural upgrades, further captive-carry flight tests and the first drop test were initially expected to occur in mid-February 2006. The X-37s public debut was scheduled for its first free flight on 10 March 2006, the next flight attempt, on 15 March 2006, was canceled due to high winds. On 24 March 2006, the X-37 flew again, but a datalink failure prevented a free flight, on 7 April 2006, the X-37 made its first free glide flight
33.
NASA
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29,1958, disestablishing NASAs predecessor, the new agency became operational on October 1,1958. Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA shares data with various national and international such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite. Since 2011, NASA has been criticized for low cost efficiency, from 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch a satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard, after the Soviet launch of the worlds first artificial satellite on October 4,1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. This led to an agreement that a new federal agency based on NACA was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop technology for military application. On July 29,1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, a NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA, earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPAs early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA has conducted many manned and unmanned spaceflight programs throughout its history. Some missions include both manned and unmanned aspects, such as the Galileo probe, which was deployed by astronauts in Earth orbit before being sent unmanned to Jupiter, the experimental rocket-powered aircraft programs started by NACA were extended by NASA as support for manned spaceflight. This was followed by a space capsule program, and in turn by a two-man capsule program. This goal was met in 1969 by the Apollo program, however, reduction of the perceived threat and changing political priorities almost immediately caused the termination of most of these plans. NASA turned its attention to an Apollo-derived temporary space laboratory, to date, NASA has launched a total of 166 manned space missions on rockets, and thirteen X-15 rocket flights above the USAF definition of spaceflight altitude,260,000 feet. The X-15 was an NACA experimental rocket-powered hypersonic research aircraft, developed in conjunction with the US Air Force, the design featured a slender fuselage with fairings along the side containing fuel and early computerized control systems
34.
Space Shuttle program
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When its mission was complete, the orbiter would re-enter the Earths atmosphere and land like a glider at either the Kennedy Space Center or Edwards Air Force Base. The Shuttle is the only winged manned spacecraft to have achieved orbit and landing, and its missions involved carrying large payloads to various orbits, providing crew rotation for the space station, and performing service missions. The orbiter also recovered satellites and other payloads from orbit and returned them to Earth, the stalled plans for a U. S. space station evolved into the International Space Station and were formally initiated in 1983 by U. S. The first experimental orbiter Enterprise was a glider, launched from the back of a specially modified Boeing 747. The Space Shuttle program finished with its last mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011, the Space Shuttle program formally ended on August 31,2011. Since the Shuttles retirement, many of its duties are performed by an assortment of government. The European ATV Automated Transfer Vehicle supplied the ISS between 2008 and 2015, classified military missions are being flown by the US Air Forces unmanned space plane, the X-37B. Crew service to the ISS is currently provided by the Russian Soyuz while work on the Commercial Crew Development program proceeds, for missions beyond low Earth orbit, NASA is building the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft. Before the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, NASA began early studies of space shuttle designs, in 1969, President Richard Nixon formed the Space Task Group, chaired by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. Smaller goals included a variety of vehicles for moving spacecraft around in orbit. Presenting the plans to Nixon, Agnew was told that the administration would not commit to a Mars mission and he was then told to select one of the two remaining proposals. During early shuttle development there was debate about the optimal shuttle design that best balanced capability, development cost. Ultimately the current design was chosen, using a reusable winged orbiter, reusable solid rocket boosters, the shuttle program was formally launched on January 5,1972, when President Nixon announced that NASA would proceed with the development of a reusable space shuttle system. The prime contractor for the program was North American Rockwell, the company responsible for building the Apollo Command/Service Module. The contractor for the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters was Morton Thiokol, for the tank, Martin Marietta. All Space Shuttle missions were launched from the Kennedy Space Center, the weather criteria used for launch included, but were not limited to, precipitation, temperatures, cloud cover, lightning forecast, wind, and humidity. The Shuttle was not launched under conditions where it could have been struck by lightning, the first fully functional orbiter was Columbia, built in Palmdale, California. It was delivered to Kennedy Space Center on March 25,1979, Challenger was delivered to KSC in July 1982, Discovery in November 1983, Atlantis in April 1985 and Endeavour in May 1991
35.
Space Shuttle
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The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated by the U. S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program name was Space Transportation System, taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development, the first of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights beginning in 1982. Five complete Shuttle systems were built and used on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011, the Shuttle fleets total mission time was 1322 days,19 hours,21 minutes and 23 seconds. Shuttle components included the Orbiter Vehicle, a pair of solid rocket boosters. The Shuttle was launched vertically, like a rocket, with the two SRBs operating in parallel with the OVs three main engines, which were fueled from the ET. The SRBs were jettisoned before the vehicle reached orbit, and the ET was jettisoned just before orbit insertion, at the conclusion of the mission, the orbiter fired its OMS to de-orbit and re-enter the atmosphere. The orbiter then glided as a spaceplane to a landing, usually at the Shuttle Landing Facility of KSC or Rogers Dry Lake in Edwards Air Force Base. After landing at Edwards, the orbiter was back to the KSC on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. The first orbiter, Enterprise, was built in 1976 for use in Approach, four fully operational orbiters were initially built, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis. Of these, two were lost in accidents, Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003, with a total of fourteen astronauts killed. A fifth operational orbiter, Endeavour, was built in 1991 to replace Challenger, the Space Shuttle was retired from service upon the conclusion of Atlantiss final flight on July 21,2011. Nixons post-Apollo NASA budgeting withdrew support of all components except the Shuttle. The vehicle consisted of a spaceplane for orbit and re-entry, fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks. The first of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights beginning in 1982, all launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The system was retired from service in 2011 after 135 missions, the program ended after Atlantis landed at the Kennedy Space Center on July 21,2011. Major missions included launching numerous satellites and interplanetary probes, conducting space science experiments, the first orbiter vehicle, named Enterprise, was built for the initial Approach and Landing Tests phase and lacked engines, heat shielding, and other equipment necessary for orbital flight. A total of five operational orbiters were built, and of these and it was used for orbital space missions by NASA, the US Department of Defense, the European Space Agency, Japan, and Germany. The United States funded Shuttle development and operations except for the Spacelab modules used on D1, sL-J was partially funded by Japan
36.
Reaction control system
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A reaction control system is a spacecraft system that uses thrusters to provide attitude control, and sometimes translation. An RCS is capable of providing small amounts of thrust in any desired direction or combination of directions, an RCS is also capable of providing torque to allow control of rotation. RCS systems often use combinations of large and small thrusters, to different levels of response. Because spacecraft only contain an amount of fuel and there is little chance to refill them. For stationkeeping, some spacecraft use high-specific-impulse engines such as arcjets, ion thrusters, to control orientation, a few spacecraft, including the ISS, use momentum wheels which spin to control rotational rates on the vehicle. The Mercury space capsule and Gemini re-entry module both used groupings of nozzles to provide attitude control, the thrusters were located off their center of gravity, thus providing a torque to rotate the capsule. The Gemini capsule was also capable of adjusting its re-entry course by rolling, the Gemini spacecraft was also equipped with a hypergolic Orbit Attitude and Maneuvering System, which made it the first manned spacecraft with translation as well as rotation capability. In-orbit attitude control was achieved by firing pairs of eight 25-pound-force thrusters located around the circumference of its adapter module at the aft end. Lateral translation control was provided by four 100-pound-force thrusters around the circumference at the end of the adaptor module. The Apollo Command Module had a set of twelve hypergolic thrusters for attitude control, the Apollo Service Module and Lunar Module each had a set of sixteen R-4D hypergolic thrusters, grouped into external clusters of four, to provide both translation and attitude control. The clusters were located near the centers of gravity, and were fired in pairs in opposite directions for attitude control. A pair of translation thrusters are located at the rear of the Soyuz spacecraft and these act in pairs to prevent the spacecraft from rotating. The thrusters for the directions are mounted close to the center of mass of the spacecraft. Those for pitch and yaw are located in the nose, forward of the cockpit and those for roll are located at the wingtips. The X-20, which would have gone into orbit, continued this pattern, unlike these, the Space Shuttle Orbiter had many more thrusters, as it was required to carry out docking maneuvers in orbit. Shuttle thrusters were grouped in the nose of the vehicle and on each of the two aft Orbital Maneuvering System pods. No nozzles interrupted the heat shield on the underside of the craft, instead, the nose RCS nozzles which control positive pitch were mounted on the side of the vehicle, the downward-facing negative pitch thrusters were located in the OMS pods mounted in the tail/afterbody. The International Space Station uses electrically powered reaction control gyroscopes for attitude control, with RCS thruster systems as backup
37.
Space Shuttle thermal protection system
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The Space Shuttle thermal protection system is the barrier that protected the Space Shuttle Orbiter during the searing 1,650 °C heat of atmospheric reentry. A secondary goal was to protect from the heat and cold of space while in orbit, used where reentry temperature exceeded 1,260 °C. High-temperature reusable surface insulation tiles, used on the orbiter underside, made of coated LI-900 Silica ceramics. Used where reentry temperature was below 1260 °C, fibrous refractory composite insulation tiles, used to provide improved strength, durability, resistance to coating cracking and weight reduction. Some HRSI tiles were replaced by this type, flexible Insulation Blankets, a quilted, flexible blanket-like surface insulation. Used where reentry temperature was below 649 °C, low-temperature Reusable Surface Insulation tiles, formerly used on the upper fuselage, but were mostly replaced by FIB. Used in temperature ranges roughly similar to FIB, toughened unipiece fibrous insulation tiles, a stronger, tougher tile which came into use in 1996. Used in high and low temperature areas, white Nomex felt blankets on the upper payload bay doors, portions of the mid fuselage and aft fuselage sides, portions of the upper wing surface and a portion of the OMS/RCS pods. Used where temperatures stayed below 371 °C, each type of TPS had specific heat protection, impact resistance, and weight characteristics, which determined the locations where it was used and the amount used. The shuttle TPS has three key characteristics that distinguish it from the TPS used on spacecraft, Reusable. Previous spacecraft generally used ablative heat shields which burned off during reentry and this insulation was robust and reliable, and the single-use nature was appropriate for a single-use vehicle. By contrast, the reusable shuttle required a reusable thermal protection system, previous ablative heat shields were very heavy. For example the heat shield on the Apollo Command Module comprised about 1/3 of the vehicle weight. The winged shuttle had much more area than previous spacecraft. The only known technology in the early 1970s with the thermal and weight characteristics was also so fragile, due to the very low density. The orbiters aluminum structure could not withstand temperatures over 175 °C without structural failure, aerodynamic heating during reentry would push the temperature well above this level in areas, so an effective insulator was needed. Reentry heating differs from the atmospheric heating associated with jet aircraft. The skin of high-speed jet aircraft can also become hot, but this is from frictional heating due to atmospheric friction, the orbiter reentered the atmosphere as a blunt body by having a very high angle of attack, with its broad lower surface facing the direction of flight
38.
Space Shuttle Enterprise
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Space Shuttle Enterprise was the first orbiter of the Space Shuttle system. Rolled out on September 17,1976, it was built for NASA as part of the Space Shuttle program to perform atmospheric test flights after being launched from a modified Boeing 747. It was constructed without engines or a heat shield, and was therefore not capable of spaceflight. Originally, Enterprise had been intended to be refitted for orbital flight to become the second space-rated orbiter in service, similarly, Enterprise was considered for refit to replace Challenger after the latter was destroyed, but Endeavour was built from structural spares instead. Enterprise was restored and placed on display in 2003 at the Smithsonians new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. The design of Enterprise was not the same as that planned for Columbia, the first flight model, the aft fuselage was constructed differently, instead of a thermal protection system, its surface was primarily covered with simulated tiles made from polyurethane foam. Fiberglass was used for the edge panels in place of the reinforced carbon–carbon ones of spaceflight-worthy orbiters. Only a few sample thermal tiles and some Nomex blankets were real, Enterprise used fuel cells to generate its electrical power, but these were not sufficient to power the orbiter for spaceflight. Enterprise was equipped with Lockheed-manufactured zero-zero ejection seats like those its sister Columbia carried on its first four missions, construction began on Enterprise on June 4,1974. Designated OV-101, it was planned to be named Constitution and unveiled on Constitution Day. Fans of Star Trek asked US President Gerald Ford, through a campaign, to name the orbiter after the television shows fictional starship. White House advisors cited hundreds of thousands of letters from Trekkies—one of the most dedicated constituencies in the country—as a reason for giving the shuttle the name. Although Ford did not publicly mention the campaign, the president said that he was partial to the name Enterprise, in mid-1976 the orbiter was used for ground vibration tests, allowing engineers to compare data from an actual flight vehicle with theoretical models. On September 17,1976, Enterprise was rolled out of Rockwells plant at Palmdale, in recognition of its fictional namesake, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and most of the principal cast of the original series of Star Trek were on hand at the dedication ceremony. On January 31,1977, Enterprise was taken by road to Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base to begin operational testing, while at NASA Dryden Enterprise was used by NASA for a variety of ground and flight tests intended to validate aspects of the shuttle program. The initial nine-month testing period was referred to by the acronym ALT, for Approach and these tests included a maiden flight on February 18,1977, atop a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft to measure structural loads and ground handling and braking characteristics of the mated system. Ground tests of all orbiter subsystems were carried out to verify functionality prior to atmospheric flight, the mated Enterprise/SCA combination was then subjected to five test flights with Enterprise unmanned and unactivated. The purpose of these test flights was to measure the characteristics of the mated combination
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Space Shuttle Columbia
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Space Shuttle Columbia was the first space-rated orbiter in NASAs Space Shuttle fleet. It launched for the first time on mission STS-1 on April 12,1981, construction began on Columbia in 1975 at Rockwell Internationals principal assembly facility in Palmdale, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. It is also named after the Command Module of Apollo 11, Columbia was also the female symbol of the United States. After construction, the arrived at Kennedy Space Center on March 25,1979. Columbia was originally scheduled to lift off in late 1979, however the date was delayed by problems with both the SSME components, as well as the thermal protection system. On March 19,1981, during preparations for a ground test, workers were asphyxiated while working in Columbias nitrogen-purged aft engine compartment, resulting in two or three fatalities. Columbia spent 610 days in the Orbiter Processing Facility, another 35 days in the Vehicle Assembly Building, Columbia then undertook three further research missions to test its technical characteristics and performance. Its first operational mission, with a crew, was STS-5. At this point Columbia was joined by Challenger, which flew the next three missions, while Columbia underwent modifications for the first Spacelab mission. At that time the fleet was expanded to include Discovery. Columbia returned to space on January 12,1986, with the launch of STS-61-C, the missions crew included Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz, as well as the first sitting member of the House of Representatives to venture into space, Bill Nelson. The next shuttle mission, STS-51-L, was undertaken by Challenger and it was launched on January 28,1986, ten days after STS-61-C had landed, and ended in disaster 73 seconds after launch. In the aftermath NASAs shuttle timetable was disrupted, and Columbia was not flown again until 1989, sTS-93, launched on July 23,1999, was the first U. S. space mission with a female commander, Lt. Col. Eileen Collins. This mission deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Columbias final successful mission was STS-109, the fourth servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope. Its next mission, STS-107, culminated in the loss when it disintegrated during reentry. Consequently, President Bush decided to retire the Shuttle orbiter fleet by 2010 in favor of the Constellation program, the Constellation program was later cancelled with the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 signed by President Obama on October 11. Due to its weight, Columbia could not have used the planned Centaur-G booster, the retention of the internal airlock allowed NASA to use Columbia for the STS-109 Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, along with the Spacehab double module used on STS-107. The upgrade also involved replacing many of the white LRSI tiles on the surfaces with Advanced Flexible Reusable Surface Insulation blankets that had been used on Discovery
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Space Shuttle Challenger
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Space Shuttle Challenger was the second orbiter of NASAs space shuttle program to be put into service following Columbia. The shuttle was built by Rockwell Internationals Space Transportation Systems Division in Downey and its maiden flight, STS-6, started on April 4,1983. It was the first of two shuttles to be destroyed in flight, the other being Columbia in 2003, the accident led to a two-and-a-half year grounding of the shuttle fleet, flights resumed in 1988 with STS-26 flown by Discovery. Challenger itself was replaced by Endeavour which was built using structural spares ordered by NASA as part of the contracts for Discovery. The Apollo 17 lunar module that landed on the Moon in 1972 was also named Challenger. Because of the low volume of orbiters, the Space Shuttle program decided to build a vehicle as a Structural Test Article, STA-099. The contract for STA-099 was awarded to North American Rockwell on July 26,1972, after STA-099s rollout, it was sent to a Lockheed test site in Palmdale, where it spent over 11 months in vibration tests designed to simulate entire shuttle flights, from launch to landing. In order to prevent damage during structural testing, qualification tests were performed to a factor of safety of 1.2 times the limit loads. The qualification tests were used to validate computational models, and compliance with the required 1.4 factor of safety was shown by analysis. STA-099 was essentially a complete airframe of a Space Shuttle orbiter, with only a crew module installed. Modifying her for flight article status would have far too difficult, expensive. Since STA-099 was not as far along in the construction of its airframe, because STA-099s qualification testing prevented damage, NASA found that rebuilding STA-099 as OV-099 would be less expensive than refitting Enterprise. Work on converting STA-099 into Challenger began in January 1979, starting with just the crew module as the rest of the orbiter was used by Lockheed. STA-099 returned to the Rockwell plant in November 1979, and the original unfinished crew module was replaced with the newly constructed model. Major portions of STA-099, including the bay doors, body flap, wings and vertical stabilizer. By early 1981, most of these components had returned to Palmdale and were reinstalled on the orbiter, work continued on the conversion until July 1982. Challenger had fewer tiles in its Thermal Protection System than Columbia, most of the tiles on the payload bay doors, upper wing surfaces, and rear fuselage surfaces were replaced with DuPont white Nomex felt insulation. These modifications as well as a lighter structure allowed Challenger to carry 2,500 lb more payload than Columbia
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Space Shuttle Discovery
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Space Shuttle Discovery is one of the orbiters from NASAs Space Shuttle program and the third of five fully operational orbiters to be built. Its first mission, STS-41-D, flew from August 30 to September 5,1984, over 27 years of service it launched and landed 39 times, gathering more spaceflights than any other spacecraft to date. Discovery became the third operational orbiter to enter service, preceded by Columbia and Challenger. It embarked on its last mission, STS-133, on February 24,2011 and touched down for the time at Kennedy Space Center on March 9. Discovery performed both research and International Space Station assembly missions and it also carried the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. Discovery was the first operational shuttle to be retired, followed by Endeavour, Discovery launched the Hubble Space Telescope and conducted the second and third Hubble service missions. It also launched the Ulysses probe and three TDRS satellites, project Mercury astronaut John Glenn, who was 77 at the time, flew with Discovery on STS-95 in 1998, making him the oldest person to go into space. Had plans to launch United States Department of Defense payloads from Vandenberg Air Force Base gone ahead and its first West Coast mission, STS-62-A, was scheduled for 1986, but canceled in the aftermath of Challenger. Discovery was retired after completing its mission, STS133 on March 9,2011. The spacecraft is now on display in Virginia at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Discovery weighed 6,870 pounds less than Columbia when it was brought into service due to optimizations determined during the construction and testing of Enterprise, Columbia and Challenger. Beginning in late 1995, the orbiter underwent a nine-month Orbiter Maintenance Down Period in Palmdale and this included outfitting the vehicle with a 5th set of cryogenic tanks and an external airlock to support missions to the International Space Station. After STS-105, Discovery became the first of the fleet to undergo Orbiter Major Modification period at the Kennedy Space Center. Work began in September 2002 to prepare the vehicle for Return to Flight and this included scheduled upgrades and additional safety modifications. Discovery is 6 pounds heavier than Atlantis and 363 pounds heavier than Endeavour, Discovery was decommissioned on March 9,2011. Discovery replaced Enterprise in the Smithsonians display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, Discovery was transported to Washington Dulles International Airport on April 17,2012, and was transferred to the Udvar-Hazy on April 19 where a welcome ceremony was held. Afterwards, at around 5,30 pm, Discovery was rolled to its final stop in the Udvar Hazy Center. By its last mission, Discovery had flown 149 million miles in 39 missions, completed 5,830 orbits, Discovery flew more flights than any other Orbiter Shuttle, including four in 1985 alone. Discovery flew all three return to flight missions after the Challenger and Columbia disasters, STS-26 in 1988, STS-114 in 2005, Discovery flew the ante-penultimate mission of the Space Shuttle program, STS-133, having launched on February 24,2011
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Space Shuttle Atlantis
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Space Shuttle Atlantis is a Space Shuttle orbiter belonging to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the spaceflight and space exploration agency of the United States. Its maiden flight was STS-51-J from 3 to 7 October 1985, Atlantis embarked on its 33rd and final mission, also the final mission of a space shuttle, STS-135, on 8 July 2011. STS-134 by Endeavour was expected to be the flight before STS-135 was authorized in October 2010. STS-135 took advantage of the processing for the STS-335 Launch On Need mission that would have been necessary if STS-134s crew became stranded in orbit, Atlantis landed for the final time at the Kennedy Space Center on 21 July 2011. By the end of its mission, Atlantis had orbited the Earth a total of 4,848 times. Atlantis is named after RV Atlantis, a sailing ship that operated as the primary research vessel for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution from 1930 to 1966. Weight,151,315 pounds Length,122.17 feet Height,56.58 feet Wingspan,78.06 feet Atlantis was completed in half the time it took to build Space Shuttle Columbia. When it rolled out of the Palmdale assembly plant, weighing 151,315 lb, Atlantis is the lightest shuttle of the remaining fleet, weighing three pounds less than the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off on its voyage on 3 October 1985, on mission STS-51-J. It flew one mission, STS-61-B, the second night launch in the shuttle program. Atlantis was then used for ten flights between 1988 and 1992, two of these, both flown in 1989, deployed the planetary probes Magellan to Venus and Galileo to Jupiter. With STS-30 Atlantis became the first shuttle to launch an interplanetary probe, during another mission, STS-37 flown in 1991, Atlantis deployed the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Beginning in 1995 with STS-71, Atlantis made seven flights to the former Russian space station Mir as part of the Shuttle-Mir Program. When linked, Atlantis and Mir together formed the largest spacecraft in orbit at the time, Shuttle Atlantis also delivered several vital components for the construction of the International Space Station. During the February 2001 mission STS-98 to the ISS, Atlantis delivered the Destiny Module, the five hour 25 minute third spacewalk performed by astronauts Robert Curbeam and Thomas Jones during STS-98 marked NASAs 100th extra vehicular activity in space. The Quest Joint Airlock, was flown and installed to the ISS by Atlantis during the mission STS-104 in July 2001. The successful installation of the airlock gave on-board space station crews the ability to stage repair, the first mission flown by Atlantis after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was STS-115, conducted during September 2006. The mission carried the P3/P4 truss segments and solar arrays to the ISS, on ISS assembly flight STS-122 in February 2008, Atlantis delivered the Columbus laboratory to the ISS
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Space Shuttle Endeavour
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Space Shuttle Endeavour is a retired orbiter from NASAs Space Shuttle program and the fifth and final operational shuttle built. It embarked on its first mission, STS-49, in May 1992 and its 25th and final mission, STS-134, STS-134 was expected to be the final mission of the Space Shuttle program, but with the authorization of STS-135, Atlantis became the last shuttle to fly. The United States Congress authorized the construction of Endeavour in 1987 to replace Challenger, structural spares built during the construction of Discovery and Atlantis were used in its assembly. NASA chose, on cost grounds, to build Endeavour from spares rather than refitting Enterprise or accepting a Rockwell International proposal to build two shuttles for the price of one. The orbiter is named after the British HMS Endeavour, the ship which took Captain James Cook on his first voyage of discovery and this is why the name is spelled in the British English manner, rather than the American English. This has caused confusion, including when NASA itself misspelled a sign on the pad in 2007. The Space Shuttle carried a piece of the wood from Cook’s ship inside the cockpit. The name also honored Endeavour, the Command Module of Apollo 15, Endeavour was named through a national competition involving students in elementary and secondary schools. Entries included an essay about the name, the story behind it and why it was appropriate for a NASA shuttle, Endeavour was the most popular entry, accounting for almost one-third of the state-level winners. The national winners were Senatobia Middle School in Senatobia, Mississippi, in the division and Tallulah Falls School in Tallulah Falls, Georgia. They were honored at ceremonies in Washington, D. C. including a White House ceremony where then-President George H. W. Bush presented awards to each school. Endeavour was delivered by Rockwell International Space Transportation Systems Division in May 1991 and first launched a year later, in May 1992, Rockwell International claimed that it had made no profit on Space Shuttle Endeavour, despite construction costing US$2.2 billion. On its first mission, it captured and redeployed the stranded INTELSAT VI communications satellite, the first African-American woman astronaut, Mae Jemison, was brought into space on the mission STS-47 on September 12,1992. Endeavour flew the first servicing mission STS-61 for the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993, in 1997 it was withdrawn from service for eight months for a retrofit, including installation of a new airlock. In December 1998, it delivered the Unity Module to the International Space Station, Endeavours last Orbiter Major Modification period began in December 2003 and ended on October 6,2005. Morgan was the backup for Christa McAuliffe who was on the ill-fated mission STS-51-L in 1986, as it was constructed later, Endeavour was built with new hardware designed to improve and expand orbiter capabilities. Most of this equipment was incorporated into the other three orbiters during out-of-service major inspection and modification programs. Endeavour’s upgrades include, A 40-foot diameter drag chute that reduced the orbiters rollout distance by 1,000 to 2,000 feet, the plumbing and electrical connections needed for Extended Duration Orbiter modifications to allow up to a 28-day mission
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Spacelab
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Spacelab was a reusable laboratory used on certain spaceflights flown by the Space Shuttle. The laboratory comprised multiple components, including a module, an unpressurized carrier and other related hardware housed in the Shuttles cargo bay. The components were arranged in various configurations to meet the needs of each spaceflight, Spacelab components flew on a total of 32 Shuttle missions. Spacelab allowed scientists to perform experiments in microgravity in earth orbit, there were at least 22 major Spacelab missions between 1983 and 1998, and Spacelab hardware was used on a number other missions, with some of the Spacelab pallets being flown as late as 2008. In August 1973, NASA and ESRO signed a Memorandum of Understanding to build a laboratory for use on Space Shuttle flights. Construction of Spacelab was started in 1974 by the ERNO, the first lab module, LM1, was donated to NASA in exchange for flight opportunities for European astronauts. A second module, LM2, was bought by NASA for its own use from ERNO, construction on the Spacelab modules began in 1974 by what then the company ERNO-VFW-Fokker. Spacelab is important to all of us for at least four good reasons and it expanded the Shuttles ability to conduct science on-orbit manyfold. It provided an opportunity and example of a large international joint venture involving government, industry. The European effort provided the world with a really versatile laboratory system several years before it would have been possible if the United States had had to fund it on its own. And finally, it provided Europe with the development and management experience they needed to move into the exclusive manned space flight arena. Eight flight configurations were qualified, though more could be assembled if needed, the Spacelab Module comprises a cylindrical main laboratory configurable as Short or Long Module flown in the rear of the Space Shuttle cargo bay, connected to the crew compartment by a tunnel. The laboratory had an diameter of 4.12 meters. Most of the two segments were used in forming the Long Module configuration. Two habitable modules were built, named LM1 and LM2, LM2 is now on display in the Bremenhalle exhibition in the Bremen Airport of Bremen, Germany. LM1 is now on display at the Udvar-Hazy center at the Smithsonian Air, the pallet has several hard points for mounting heavy equipment. The pallet can be used in single configuration or stacked end to end in double or triple configurations, up to five pallets can be configured in the Space Shuttle cargo bay by using a double pallet plus triple pallet configurations. A Spacelab Pallet was transferred to the Swiss Museum of Transport for permanent display on 5 March 2010, the Pallet carried TSS-1 in the Shuttles cargo bay
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Canadarm
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The Shuttle Remote Manipulator System, also known as Canadarm, is a series of robotic arms that were used on the Space Shuttle orbiters to deploy, maneuver and capture payloads. In 1969, Canada was invited by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to participate in the Space Shuttle program, at the time what that participation would entail had not yet been decided but a manipulator system was identified as an important component. Canadian company, DSMA ATCON, had developed a robot to load fuel into CANDU nuclear reactors, in 1975, NASA and the Canadian National Research Council signed a memorandum of understanding that Canada would develop and construct the Shuttle Remote Manipulator System. NRC awarded the contract to Spar Aerospace. Anthony “Tony” Zubrzycki, an engineer at DSMA ATCON, while seconded to SPAR, originated the concept for the Canadarm End Effector. Tony formally presented this concept to NASA officials, frank Mee, head of the SPAR mechanical development laboratory, built the end effector prototypebased on Tony’s concept and is credited by SPAR as the inventor of the Canadarm End Effector. The three-wire crossover design won over the mechanisms and others, such as the camera iris model. The main controls algorithms were developed by SPAR and by subcontractor Dynacon Inc. of Toronto, CAE Electronics Ltd. in Montreal provided the display and control panel and the hand controllers located in the Shuttle aft flight deck. Other electronic interfaces, servoamplifiers and power conditioners located on the Canadarm were designed, rockwell Internationals Space Transportation Systems Division designed, developed, tested and built the systems used to attach the Canadarm to the payload bay of the orbiter. An acceptance ceremony for NASA was held at Spars RMS Division in Toronto on the 11th of February 1981, here Larkin Kerwin, then the head of the NRC, gave the SRMS the informal name, Canadarm. The first remote manipulator system was delivered to NASA in April 1981, in all, five arms were built and delivered to NASA. Arm 302 was lost in the Challenger accident, the original Canadarm was capable of deploying and retrieving payloads weighing up to 332.5 kg in space. In the mid-1990s the arm control system was redesigned to increase the capability to 3,293 kg in order to support space station assembly operations. While able to maneuver payloads with the mass of a bus in space. NASA therefore developed a model of the arm for use at its training facility within the Johnson Space Center located in Houston, most of the time, the arm operators see what they are doing by looking at the Advanced Space Vision System screen next to the controllers. One crew member operates the Canadarm from the aft flight deck control station, the Canadarm is outfitted with an explosive-based mechanism to allow the arm to be jettisoned. This safety system allows the Orbiters payload bay doors to be closed in the event that the arm fails in a position and is not able to be retracted. The Canadarm is 15.2 m long and 38 cm diameter with six degrees of freedom and it weighs 410 kg by itself, and 450 kg as part of the total system
