How does a space shuttle move in space yet there is nothing?
102660
The effects of the thrust pushing against the shuttle itself.
1098292
if a rocket were to "stop"  in space  it would come tumblin down like a rock. a rockets orbit is what keeps it up there.  if you meant how does it dock or move its by using stabilizer rockets
612672
well unfortunately, outerspace is a whole lot of nothing, so it doesnt have to take up any space.  granted there are molecules floating around out there, but for the most part there isnt any matter in empty outer space
253916
yes, it is still in space. For more detailed information about the mission, where it went and what's going on now, check out the following website.
424377
It is extremely complicated. Readings from on-board accelerometers that measure how much speed the rocket engines gave to the space craft, direction data from on-board gyroscopes and optical star trackers indicating the direction that acceleration occurred, Doppler data from the radio link with Earth that measures how fast the space craft is moving away from or toward the ground station are all loaded into a computer that does a big complicated calculation that takes into account the gravity of the Earth, Sun, Moon, planets, and sometimes asteroids and even the Galaxy to compute what is called a state vector. The state vector is the position and velocity of the space craft. It is very complicated and could never be done in time my hand.
681803
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.
130717
A space craft is a vehicle that travels once in space. A   rocket is just a big, hot engine that is used to propel the space craft outside of Earth's gravitational pull. \n\nGood Luck!
1010543
Suppose you are taking a space walk near the space shuttle, and your safety line breaks. How would you get back to the shuttle? The thing to do would be to take one of the tools from your tool belt and throw it is hard as you can directly away from the shuttle. Then, with the help of Newton's second and third laws, you will accelerate back towards the shuttle. As you throw the tool, you push against it, causing it to accelerate. At the same time, by Newton's third law, the tool is pushing back against you in the opposite direction, which causes you to accelerate back towards the shuttle, as desired. This is the principle behind jet propulsion: a jet rocket expels fuel rapidly by ``pushing against it''. By the third law the fuel exerts an equal and opposite force against the rocket so the rocket accelerates in the opposite direction that the expelled fuel goes. Another example of the 3rd law is a book lying on a table. If the table were not there the book would fall under the force of gravity between the book and the earth. Why then doesn't the book move off the table, in accordance with the 2nd law? The table is exerting a force on the book that is just enough to cancel the gravitational force on the book. By Newton's third law, the book is also exerting an equal and opposite force on the table, and this is why the table feels the weight of the book. If the book were very heavy, its weight would cause the table to bend, or even break. This is illustrated in the following figure. \n\nThe answer to this question comes from the third law. Imagine the skateboard again. On the ground, the only part air plays in the motions of the rider and the skateboard is to slow them down. Moving through the air causes friction, or as scientists call it, drag. The surrounding air impedes the action-reaction. \n\nAs a result rockets actually work better in space than they do in air. As the exhaust gas leaves the rocket engine it must push away the surrounding air; this uses up some of the energy of the rocket. In space, the exhaust gases can escape freely.
555677
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.
703424
This is a very basic question and you need to get extra help if you are having trouble solving this in your physics class.\n\nAcceleration is force / mass.  (from F = ma).\n\nThus, for the astronaut\n\n120 = 79(a)\na = ~1.52m^2/s\n\nAnd the satellite\n\na = 0.182\n\nNow they travel in opposite directions (BOTH of them move). So calculate how far the astronaut travels, how far the satellite travels, and add them. Simple kinematics:\n\np = 2a(t^2) + v(t)
381192
Rocket Principles\nA consquence of Newton's laws of motion is that for any object, or collection of objects, forces which only involve those objects and nothing else ("internal forces") cannot shift the center of gravity. For example, an astronaut floating in a space suit cannot shift his position without involving something else, e. g. pushing against his spacecraft. The center of gravity--or "center of mass"--is a fixed point, which cannot be moved without outside help (turning around it, however, is possible).\n\nBy throwing a heavy tool in one direction, the astronaut could get moving in the opposite direction, though the common center of gravity of the two would always stay the same. Given a bottle of compressed oxygen, the same result follows from squirting out a blast of gas (a scene that appeared in an early science fiction film). A rocket does much the same, except that the cold gas is replaced by the much faster jet of glowing gas produced by the burning of suitable fuel. At present, rockets are the only means capable of achieving the altitude and velocity necessary to put a payload into orbit.\n\nA rocket engine is a machine that develops thrust by the rapid expulsion of matter. Most rockets today operate with either solid or liquid propellants. The word propellant does not mean simply fuel, as you might think; it means both fuel and oxidizer. The fuel is the chemical rockets burn but, for burning to take place, an oxidizer (oxygen) must be present. Jet engines draw oxygen into their engines from the surrounding air. Rockets do not have the luxury that jet planes have; they must carry oxygen with them into space, where there is no air.\n\nThere are a number of terms used to describe the power generated by a rocket. \n\n\nThrust is the force generated, measured in pounds or kilograms. Thrust generated by the first stage must be greater than the weight of the complete launch vehicle while standing on the launch pad in order to get it moving. Once moving upward, thrust must continue to be generated to accelerate the launch vehicle against the force of the Earth's gravity. To place a satellite into orbit around the Earth, thrust must continue until the minimum altitude and orbital velocity have been attained or the launch vehicle will fall back to the Earth. Minimum altitude is rarely desirable, therefore thrust must continue to be generated to gain additional orbital altitude.\n\nThe impulse, sometimes called total impulse, is the product of thrust and the effective firing duration. A shoulder fired rocket has an average thrust of 600 lbs and a firing duration of 0.2 seconds for an impulse of 120 lb-sec. The Saturn V rocket, used during the Apollo program, not only generated much more thrust but also for a much longer time. It had an impulse of 1.15 billion lb-sec.\n\nThe efficiency of a rocket engine is measured by its specific impulse (Isp). Specific impulse is defined as the thrust divided by the mass of propellant consumed per second. The result is expressed in seconds. The specific impulse can be thought of as the number of seconds that one pound of propellant will produce one pound of thrust. If thrust is expressed in pounds, a specific impulse of 300 seconds is considered good. Higher values are better. A rocket's mass ratio is defined as the total mass at lift-off divided by the mass remaining after all the propellant has been consumed. A high mass ratio means that more propellant is pushing less launch vehicle and payload mass, resulting in higher velocity. A high mass ratio is necessary to achieve the high velocities needed to put a payload into orbit.\n\nThere are three categories of chemical propellants for rocket engines: liquid propellant, solid propellant, and hybrid propellant. The propellant for a chemical rocket engine usually consists of a fuel and an oxidizer. Sometimes a catalyst is added to enhance the chemical reaction between the fuel and the oxidizer. Each catego
453550
It is an incorrect concept that space is full of nothing.  There are dust particles and gas molecules in space.  The solar wind from our sun is always blowing particles into space.  There is also a galactic wind that is blowing particles out into space as well.\n\nSpace is as close as we can get to natural vacuum, or nothingness but it still has a density of one atom per cubic meter.
283134
As it falls to the earth at an incredibly fast speed, the friction of the earth's atmosphere will cause the object to heat up to a point where it starts to burn and disintegrate.  If there is anything left to hit the earth, it was nowhere near the size it was when it hit the atmosphere.  That is why the space shuttle has heat tiles...otherwise, it would never make it back to earth, and all its astronaughts would die.
1162285
Aircrafts' wings gives the aircraft lift (i.e. shaped so that when wind passes through, it will be pushed up), and once a certain velocity is reached, the upwards lift is enough to counteract the forces of gravity (and exceed it), and thus they fly.\n\nSpaceships achieves escape velocity to escape from the Earth's gravitation (or at least far enough for the space ship to reach orbit). Then, at the orbit, it orbits earth at a certain velocity which gives it enough velocity to counteract the remaining attraction from Earth's gravity, hence it stays in space.
262383
It requires enough thrust to escape Earth's Gravity. \n\nIt is said that a spacecraft uses more than 70% of the fuel on board in the first 20 minutes of the mission just to be able to "enter space", i.e. escape Earth's powerful gravitational pull.
191108
Definitely Vacuum. Because space, that is vacuum space has no mass. Because of that factor, WE, can basically, "FLY" in outer space....
1116621
Cigar Me was close when he mentioned firing the thrusters to maintain the satellite's orbit.  Satellites generally don't stay where we put them.  \n\nThe Earth's gravity is the most dominant force acting on a satellite.  Since the center of the Earth is stationary relative to the satellite, there is no net work done and force of gravity maintains a constant, never changing orbit.  However, there's a lot of other forces acting on satellites that cause their orbits to drift.  \n\nThe Earth bulges around the equator due to a soft molten layer and centripetal acceleration (the Earth spins like a centrifuge).  The extra mass around the equator changes the satellite's orbit over time (this can be a good thing - with a 98.6 degree angle between the satellite's orbit plane and the equatorial plane, the satellite's orbit plane rotates at the same rate that the Earth orbits the Sun.  In other words, you can set up an orbit where the satellite always crosses the equator in a northerly direction at sunrise and always crosses the equator in a southerly direction at sunset - or if you want pictures with no shadows, you can set up your orbit so it always crosses the equator in a northerly direction at noon.)\n\nThe atmosphere slowly tapers off the further away from Earth you get, so low altitude satellites still experience atmospheric drag.  They eventually fall back to Earth and usually (but not always) burn up during re-entry.  To keep a low altitude spacecraft, such as the International Space Station, in orbit, you have to periodically re-raise the orbit by firing the thrusters (this is why resuming space shuttle flights is so critical - the space shuttles, along with some Russian spacecraft, supply fuel for the thrusters to the ISS).\n\nHigh altitude satellites, such geosynchronous communications satellites, are beyond the furthest reaches of the atmosphere and will never fall back to Earth.  However, they, like all satellites, are still affected by the Sun's gravity and the Moon's gravity.  That pulls them out of their assigned orbits.  Once again, the thrusters are used to correct the satellite's orbit to keep it in its assigned position.