Space Shuttle

That depends how close you are to the engines. The sound pressure diminishes with the distance r after the distance law 1/r. Every halving of the distance gives a 6 dB louder noise. 1 mile away it could be 170 dB SPL. Very close to the engines - as being in the very front seat of a rock concert - it will be more level.

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by the Space Shuttle Discovery in April 1990. It is named for the American astronomer Edwin Hubble. Although not the first space telescope, the Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, and is well known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy. The HST is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, and is one of NASA's Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Space telescopes were proposed as early as 1923. The Hubble was funded in the 1970s, with a proposed launch in 1983, but the project was beset by technical delays, budget problems, and the Challenger disaster. When finally launched in 1990, scientists found that the main mirror had been ground incorrectly, severely compromising the telescope's capabilities. However, after a servicing mission in 1993, the telescope was restored to its intended quality. Hubble's position outside the Earth's atmosphere allows it to take extremely sharp images with almost no background light. Hubble's Ultra Deep Field image, for instance, is the most detailed visible-light image of the universe's most distant objects ever made. Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe. The Hubble is the only telescope ever designed to be serviced in space by astronauts. To date, there have been four servicing missions. Servicing Mission 1 took place in December 1993 when Hubble's imaging flaw was corrected. Servicing missions 2, 3A, and 3B repaired various sub-systems and replaced many of the observing instruments with more modern and capable versions. However, following the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, the fifth servicing mission was canceled on safety grounds. After spirited public discussion, NASA reconsidered this decision, and administrator Mike Griffin gave the green light for one final Hubble servicing mission. This was planned for October 2008, but in September 2008, another key component failed. The servicing mission has been postponed until May 2009 to allow this unit to be replaced as well. The planned repairs to the Hubble should allow the telescope to function until at least 2013, when its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is due to be launched. The JWST will be far superior to Hubble for many astronomical research programs, but will only observe in infrared, so it would complement (not replace) Hubble's ability to observe in the visible and ultraviolet parts of the spectrum.

Steve and Sally's or.. Sally and Steve's.

Columbia. Crew was John W. Young (commander) and Robert L. "Crip" Crippen (pilot).

Because its wings are tired. But seriously; Keep reading you will get the laymans answer as well. The following answer and translation are provided by Ken Jenks

(kjenks@gothamcity.jsc.nasa.gov).

The "Ascent Guidance and Flight Control Training Manual," ASC G&C 2102,

says:

"During the vertical rise phase, the launch pad attitude is

commanded until an I-loaded V(rel) sufficient to assure launch tower

clearance is achieved. Then, the tilt maneuver (roll program)

orients the vehicle to a heads down attitude required to generate a

negative q-alpha, which in turn alleviates structural loading. Other

advantages with this attitude are performance gain, decreased abort

maneuver complexity, improved S-band look angles, and crew view of

the horizon. The tilt maneuver is also required to start gaining

downrange velocity to achieve the main engine cutoff (MECO) target

in second stage."

This really is a good answer, but it's couched in NASA jargon. I'll try

to interpret.

1) We wait until the Shuttle clears the tower before rolling.

2) Then, we roll the Shuttle around so that the angle of attack

between the wind caused by passage through the atmosphere (the

"relative wind") and the chord of the wings (the imaginary line

between the leading edge and the trailing edge) is a slightly

negative angle ("a negative q-alpha"). This causes a little bit of

"downward" force (toward the belly of the Orbiter, or the +Z

direction) and this force "alleviates structural loading."

We have to be careful about those wings -- they're about the

most "delicate" part of the vehicle.

3) The new attitude (after the roll) also allows us to carry more

mass to orbit, or to achieve a higher orbit with the same mass, or

to change the orbit to a higher or lower inclination than would be

the case if we didn't roll ("performance gain").

4) The new attitude allows the crew to fly a less complicated

flight path if they had to execute one of the more dangerous abort

maneuvers, the Return To Launch Site ("decreased abort maneuver

complexity").

5) The new attitude improves the ability for ground-based radio

antennae to have a good line-of-sight signal with the S-band radio

antennae on the Orbiter ("improved S-band look angles").

6) The new attitude allows the crew to see the horizon, which is a

helpful (but not mandatory) part of piloting any flying machine.

7) The new attitude orients the Shuttle so that the body is

more nearly parallel with the ground, and the nose to the east

(usually). This allows the thrust from the engines to add velocity

in the correct direction to eventually achieve orbit. Remember:

velocity is a vector quantity made of both speed and direction.

The Shuttle has to have a large horizontal component to its

velocity and a very small vertical component to attain orbit.

This all begs the question, "Why isn't the launch pad oriented to give

this nice attitude to begin with? Why does the Shuttle need to roll to

achieve that attitude?" The answer is that the pads were leftovers

from the Apollo days. The Shuttle straddles two flame trenches -- one

for the Solid Rocket Motor exhaust, one for the Space Shuttle Main

Engine exhaust. (You can see the effects of this on any daytime

launch. The SRM exhaust is dirty gray garbage, and the SSME exhaust is

fluffy white steam. Watch for the difference between the "top"

[Orbiter side] and the "bottom" [External Tank side] of the stack.) The

access tower and other support and service structure are all oriented

basically the same way they were for the Saturn V's. (A side note: the

Saturn V's also had a roll program. Don't ask me why -- I'm a Shuttle

guy.)

Silcon Carbide and other stuff like that

in 1981 she graduated from Cornell University Medical College.

something that inspired Mae was that when she was lil she was interested in bein an astronaut and science and also bein teacher was her dream for as long as she can remember

sing

They didn't; the "space program" includes a lot of stuff besides the space shuttle, and most of the other stuff is still continuing.

The Shuttle first flew in 1981, 30 years ago. Do you still drive a 30-year-old car? It's time for something new.

One of the problems has been that NASA has stopped being a SPACE program, and is little more than a PORK program. There are 435 different congressional districts in the United States, and parts for the shuttle are built in almost 400 of them. There's too much in the way of "pork barrel" spending (a term that applies to spending money wastefully) and too little in the way of actual research. The recently-cancelled Constellation program is based on 20-year-old designs, doesn't utilize new technology, and focuses more on keeping all of the existing NASA engineers employed, rather than actually flying missions.

Robot probes are still being built, and launched, and instead of having one enormous soviet-styled manned space program, there are a half-dozen different PRIVATE space programs. SpaceX, ArianeSpace, Dragon, Scaled Composites; the list goes on.

In 1903, in a massively-funded government development program, the US tried to build a heavier-than-air flying machine. Professor Samuel Langley failed, and his aircraft crashed into the Potomac River on December 8, 1903. On December 17, 1903, two bicycle makers named Wilbur and Orville Wright succeeded where the government had failed. It's happening again.

Sonic booms occur when an object (space shuttle) is traveling faster than the speed of sound and the air in front of the object is compressed. As the air is compressed it emits a noise, thus the sonic boom.

The days of space capsules are gone; today people use Space Shuttles (Space Liners/ "Air Passenger Liners").

Check your sway bar rubbers in the front, there are 4 of them and they will cause a bumping and banging noise around corners and over bumps.

An hour by car, 48 miles as the crow flies.

The rocket would be carrying extra dead weight and likely would not have enough fuel to reach its destination.

The Challenger on January 28, 1986.

None.

James Lovel , John Swigert and Fred Haise were part of the Apollo 13 crew in the 7th mission to the moon, perhaps that is who you meant.

The Answer is: 10 hours, 41 minutes, and 26 seconds.

Sally K. Ride

when she became the first african american women in space

A coconut can be pretty tough to crack open. It takes about 1,400 pounds per square inch to break one open.

Colonel Guion Bluford was the first black astronaut to orbit the earth; this occurred in 1983. The first black female astronaut was Dr. Mae Jemison, in 1992.