How much fuel can a space ship hold?

Answer 1

How is this a health and car buying question???

Anyway, according to wikipedia, the space shuttle external tank carries 1,387,457 lb (629,340 kg) of liquid oxygen and 234,265 lb (106,261 kg) of liquid hydrogen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_External_Tank).

For rockets there is a technical difference between fuel and propellant (http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3at.html): fuel provides the energy, propellant provides the momentum. They do not need to be the same thing, in nuclear thermal rockets or electrical rockets for instance.

Without knowing your level it's hard to say where to go to next. NASA has lots of information about this kind of thing on their website. Here Dr. Marc at the Space Place answers a question about how rockets are different from airplanes and explains how they both work: http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/phonedrmarc/2003_april.shtml

If you have some more maths and physics then you can read about the basic equation of rocketry, called the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation), which relates the amount of propellant a rocket has (as a weight percentage or mass ratio) to the velocity change capability of the rocket. There are more details about the physics of rocketry and spaceflight here: http://www.braeunig.us/space/propuls.htm

Answer 2

bob