When a space shuttle launches into space it detaches its fuel supply and it falls to the ocean, but if they dropped their fuel supply how do they get back to Earth???
208577
Before launch, the shuttle crew activates the the ship's rockets. At t=0, the Solid Rocket Boosters or SRBs are activated to provide the initial lift. As the name implies, the SRBs run on solid fuel in order to maximize thrust, but the design has a major drawback. Combustion of the solid fuel cannot be controlled in any way, and it will continue to burn the rest of the way until the fuel runs out 5 minutes later. So, the ship is stabilized before ignition.  After 5 minutes, the SRBs are jettisoned to lessen weight and the SRBs parachute back to earth. The shuttle continues on with the fuel in the external tank (the orange cone) attatched to its belly until the fuel it contains is used up 30 minutes later. That is then it is also jettisoned, but unlike the SRBs, the external tanks remain in space, for good. The shuttle then maneuvers itself around using its own fuel and thrusters to do the job it came up for. It may dock with the ISS, do some repairs, release its sattelite cargo or do whatever it came up to do.\n\nWhen it's time to head home, the shuttle again uses its thrusters and boosters to maneuver itself into low orbit and heads into the atmosphere for re-entry. As the shuttle heads deeper into Earth's atmosphere, friction between the shuttle and the air increases. The space shuttle is purposely built to utilize this effect for re-entry. Its design incorporates a flat base on the underside. That part and some others are generously covered with special ceramic tiles that can withstand temperatures up to 5000 degrees, depending on the thickness. So, the shuttle maximizes friction during re-entry by facing its underside to the direction it is travelling to, using the red-hot ceramic tiles to absorb the heat while slowing itself down. It is a dangerous procedure. If only one of the tiles cracked, went loose or dropped, the shuttle will disintegrate like shuttle Columbia. If the shuttle survives, it heads to its planned destination - a commercial runway. It slowly shifts its flying position back to aircraft-style and lands using landing gears and brake parachute.
647024
plane starts gliding...trading potential energy of its height to kinetic energy forward to hopefully find a landing site.  this is why airplanes gain altitude as quickly as possible after take-off, so if there is an engine problem they have time to find a landing place.\n\nIf thrust is lost, gravity and lift become unbalanced with gravity winning because altitude must be lost to maintain airspeed.  drag wins over thrust since there isn't any thrust so altitude must be lost to compensate for drag-thrust imbalance.\n\nsource: i'm a pilot
637819
You must already understand the displacement description so here's an attempt to physically understand the process.\n\nGravity pulls everything with mass  towards the center of the Earth.  This includes water and even air.  This is what creates air pressure and water pressure within a column of the fluid.  The force towards the center of the Earth is called the Weight.  Weight is simply the mass of an object multiplied by the acceleration of gravity (32.2 feet per second).\n\nMolecules in fluids can move around very easily.  They are constantly being pulled downward by gravity.  Generally, they are blocked by other fluid molecules already below them but they pile up and apply a pressure to the poor suckers below them.  The molecules at the bottom of the stack are under tremendous pressure in very deep portions of the ocean because they have to support the weight of the molecules above them.  (This also creates a sea level air pressure of 14.7 pounds per square inch)\n\nShips weigh less than the water they displace.  Gravity is pulling that ship down, trying to get it to the center of the Earth.  Once the weight of the water equals the weight of the ship, the water pushes back with enough force to keep it afloat.  Water molecules can flow easily.  When they begin to weigh more than the effective weight of the ship, they will flow beneath it and push the ship upward.
419899
Getting to space is fairly easy: just build a big enough rocket, and it'll go high enough. That's what the Rutans did with SpaceShip One.\n\nBut getting into *orbit* is very hard, because you need to go not just up, but sideways, and you must go sideways at 18000 miles per hour -- and you must do it while staying up at altitude.\n\nThat means that you need a method to precisely control the direction in which the rocket is pointed, and that method must work above the atmosphere. Most rockets that launch satellites use engines on gimbals, which are swiveled in response to commands from a gyroscopic-controlled guidance system.
331689
The Shuttle was only ever meant to be used to go into orbit.  The grand idea behind the shuttle program was to use it as a taxi/moving van to get people and cargo into orbit.  Once there, spacecraft to go to the moon and other planets would be assembled from parts brought by the Shuttle, much as is being done with the International Space Station.\n\nThe references to the Shuttle taking astronauts to other planets and beyond was in reference to the Shuttle's being a stepping stone and advancement as a reusable transportation system.
210414
As the plane's engines provide thrust, there is a certain amount of force countering it in the form of drag. So if the thrust from the engines were to drop off, the drag force would be greater than the forward force. (Eventually, the drag force will also be reduced so that the two opposing forces will be in balance again.) Because of this, the plane will immediately start to decelerate.
260449
You are using the term "power" incorrectly. Power is the rate of production of energy. A jet may have enough energy, but it does not have enough power. A fully fueled jet may be able to burn all it's fuel with oxygen from the surrounding atmosphere to generate enough energy to make it to orbit, but it takes many hours to do that, and all the time it is being slowed by friction with the atmosphere. The shuttle burns all it's fuel in 10 minutes, and it carries it's own oxygen in a tank so it can operate outside the atmosphere. So even though they may have similar energy, the shuttle has far more power.
656868
Yes...the Space Shuttle is an airplane. Anything can fly in space...a piano... a ficus tree...a submarine...if you could get it into space without it being destroyed by the atmospheric pressures encountered during lift-off and acceleration! They wouldn't be able to maneuver very well, though! (The Space Shuttle's wings are useless in space...it maneuvers with small rockets. The wings are for atmospheric-use only.)
647765
Environmental groups have recently voiced concern that exhaust from the space shuttle and other rockets could harm the protective ozone layer. But measurements taken by satellites after shuttle launches do not show any sign of stratospheric ozone destruction, atmospheric scientists report.\n\nSolid-propellant motors used to loft some rockets pose a potential threat to the ozone layer because their exhaust contains chlorine, which in some forms can destroy ozone. Indeed, a scientific flight through a rocket's exahust plume in the 1970s detected a 40 percent decrease in ozone levels in the plume, reports Steven Aftergood of the Washington, D.C.-based American Federation of Scientists in the Sept. 20 JOURNAL Of GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH. Aftergood suggests that launches may produce local ozone "holes" that persist for several hours.\n\nIn the same journal, Richard McPeters of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and his colleagues respond to Aftergood's comments by examining satellite measurements of ozone in the shuttle launch area. They find no detectable ozone decrease after several launches.
152859
Think of a car traveling at 90 mph up a ramp. When it gets to the end of the ramp all four wheels leave the ground and the whole car continues upward. Is gravity broken? No, it's just that the velocity of the car upward has more force than gravity trying to pull it down. Of course it will pull it down as soon as the upward momentum decreases enough.\n\nAnother example. The Shuttle orbits around Earth even though gravity is still there and as strong as ever. Again there are two forces at work on the Shuttle -- gravity is pulling downward while at the same time the Shuttle's speed is trying to hurl it off into space. The two forces aren't cancelled or "broken," they're just balanced so that neither completely gains control of the Shuttle.
560340
I woke up to a news report on the radio about how NASA had lost contact with their shuttle, and there had been reports of falling and burning debris. I was sad.\nHonestly... We should be surprised that things don't go wrong more often. Launching into space is a delicate and dangerous venture. There are far more people who are killed each year by toothpicks than die for the purpose of space exploration. This is something we should be proud of.
209994
the Shuttle reaches a point about one minute after launch when the pressure force of the atmosphere rushing past the rapidly accelerating rocket reaches a peak. The roll maneuver is performed shortly before max q is reached because this "heads-down" orientation helps alleviate the stresses that the dynamic pressure loads cause on the vehicle's structure.
582976
Space ships don't really slow down or speed up, per se.  If you fire your thrusters to 'slow' the spacecraft, what you're really doing is reducing the kinetic energy.  This reduces the total energy of the orbit, which reduces the size of the orbit.\n\nOnce you have a new, lower energy orbit, physics takes over and distributes the energy between kinetic energy (speed) and potential energy (position).  Because of the relationships involved, the speed of the satellite actually increases as the orbit gets smaller .... which is why it's more accurate to talk about how much energy you're taking out of the orbit or adding to the orbit.  'Slowing down' results in a higher end velocity while 'speeding up' results in a lower end velocity.\n\nIf you started in a circular orbit and slowed down, you would create a new smaller, elliptical orbit.  Your satellite would be at apogee of the new orbit.  The satellite would speed up as it approached perigee in the new, smaller orbit.  In fact, at perigee, the satellite would be traveling faster than it was in the original orbit.  Slowing down again could create a new, smaller, circular orbit.  The new speed would still be faster than your original starting speed.\n\nIn other words, reducing a satellite's altitude always results in a net gain in speed.
638210
That would be really cool, and they have been trying for years, but so far no success. Rocket planes, like the X-15 and Burt Rutan's Space Ship one, have flown outside the atmosphere, but only at speeds less than 5,000 miles per hour (less than Mach 7). Since orbital speed is 17,500 miles per hour (Mach 25), both these rocket planes immediately start falling back down to the atmosphere as soon as the rocket propellant runs out, which it does in just a few minutes.\n\nA jet powered craft could possibly achieve higher speeds, but unlike rockets, jets need to use air from the atmosphere to keep burning their fuel. While new experiments like the x-43 are testing very high speed jet engines, the problem of friction with the air remains. If you want to make it to orbit you need to get the full 17,500 miles per hour orbital speed, and at that speed the plane would melt from the same heating that the shuttle experiences during reentry. So the only way we know to get to space is to get above the atmosphere before the speed gets too fast, and no atmosphere means you need rockets that carry their own oxygen with them in huge tanks. It is very inefficient, but still the only way known to get to space.
11377
Reentry burn is when engines are fired to slow a spacecraft to allow it to begin dropping towards the planet it will land on. Spacecraft stay in orbit due to a balance of forces; the forward speed and falling speed keep the craft above the planet (what's known as "orbital velocity"; different for each planet due to gravity of each planet). However, if the craft is slowed down, it will begin to fall towards the planet. On older capsules, there used to be "retro-rockets" for this purpose in a small package on the heat shield, but most ships in use today (Russian Soyuz, American Shuttle) use a main engine or maneuvering engine to slow the ship down. When landing on Earth, the ship must then "reenter" the atmosphere, which provides further braking action, and then deploy parachutes or use flying maneuvers to slow down to landing speed.
534034
the shuttle is the result of many years of development.\n\nback in the 1960's the USAF wanted a landable, reusable space system. The concept started with a project called Dyna-soar. it doesnt exactly look like the shuttle, but it shares a lot of its characteristics.\n\nGemini program also tried to promote a landable type space craft by using a large fabric rogollo wing to allow it to be flown to a landing site. it was from this program we go the use of the hang gliders we use for recreation. really a neat concept.\n\nthroughout the 70's the concept of the lifting body was being studied. one such body was the HL-10, and a few others. you might remember seeing the crash of one of these lifting bodies on the TV series the Six Million Dollar Man.  Although not a true shuttle, it too shares a lot of characteristics.\n\nThe shuttle didnt truly become a reality until the development of ceramics or tiles that would allow the use of resuable abalation to re-enter the earths atmosphere. (this is that huge heat pile up under the shuttle that allows it to get back through the atmosphere.
149581
The astronauts would be in zero-G for almost the entire trip causing the negative effects of weighlessness on their bodies.\n\nThe accereration of the spacecraft would indeed negate the problems with Zero-G by temporarily creating artifical gravity.  The problem lies in the fact that with the limited amount of fuel on the spacecraft, acceleration would only occur while the the engine was on. (a very short time with a chemical rocket)   \n\nOne solution would be to use a a drive that will burn during the entire trip.  One such drive is an ion drive (used on the recent Deep-Space One spacecraft to visit a local asteriod).  This drive would acclerate for most of the trip there creating a small amount of artifical gravity.