What fuel or gas does the space shuttle use?
604767
The shuttle initially lifts off using solid rocket boosters(those tanks that are blown off) which are usually filled with an ammonium perchlorate (oxidizer, 69.6 % by weight), aluminum (fuel, 16 %), iron oxide (a catalyst, 0.4 %), a polymer (such as PBAN or HTPB - a binder that holds the mixture together, 12.04 %), and an epoxy curing agent (1.96 %). After the tanks are blown off with explosive bolts, the shuttle uses its own engines, which are fueled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.
33021
The most important thing right now is that it can be used as fuel. It is much cheaper than gas and also does not cause pollution. We have used it as rocket fuel for years but only recently have we developed vehicles that can run on it. They are in California.
325545
These figures are from the space shuttle specifications:\n\nExternal Tank Specifications (for SLWT)\nPropellent Volume: 535,000 gallon \nGross Liftoff Weight: 1.667 million lb (757,000 kg) \n\nSolid Rocket Booster Specifications\nEmpty Weight: 139,490 lb (63,272.7 kg) \nGross Liftoff Weight: 1.3 million lb (590,000 kg) \n\n\nSo that gives you the total weight/volume of fuel that the shuttle carries. most of it is used up for liftoff. I couldnt find exact figures for what percentage. a little is used for maneuvoring in space and a little for starting the re-entry procedure
619150
Millions of dollars. The fuel used is liquid hydrogen and oxygen. This fuel is very powerful but very expensive to maintain and store as well as use.\n\nQuote:\nWhile the Shuttle has been a reasonably successful launch vehicle, it has not met the goal of greatly reducing launch costs. There are various ways to measure per-launch costs. One way is dividing the total cost over the life of the program (including buildings, facilities, training, salaries, etc) by the number of launches. This method gives about $1.3 billion per launch[1]. Another method is calculating the incremental (or marginal) cost differential to add or subtract one flight — just the immediate resources expended/saved/involved in that one flight. This is about $55 million
778847
Depends on what you feed it.  It usually uses the ambient gas which is air and all it's doing is pressurizing it.  But if it's a closed system  compressor like the one on your frigged, then it would be freon or some other refrigerant.  If you took an air compressor to mars, it would just compress whatever gas was in the martian atmosphere.  You would not be able to breath it.
142754
The two white rockets are boosters the burn solid fuel, they seperate once their fuel is spent. The big red part the falls off the space shuttle is a liquid fuel tank that remains attached until the engines on the shuttle consume all or most of the fuel in it, depending oh how high of an orbit they wish to achieve.
858249
well for a candle to burn and have a visible flame we need 2 things convection currents and gravity to support those convection currents. both missing in the space shuttle :))
51283
Shuttles bring oxygen with them, because they have to burn their fuel to propel themselves through space.  It is because they carry liquid oxygen that they are so incredibly dangerous.\n\nBut really, fire is just an oxidation/reduction reaction.  All you really need are an oxidizer, a reducer, and heat.  Oxygen gas in the air serves as the oxidizer for most fires, and carbohydrates (lignin, cellulose, oil, petroleum, coal, etc) serve as the reducer in most fires you see.  But some rockets use nitrogen dioxide as the oxidizer instead of oxygen.  You could, theoretically, use hydrogen gas and chlorine gas to make a flame in the absense of oxygen--but oxygen is the only common and abundant oxidizer, since it is created as a byproduct of photosynthesis in plants and cyanobacteria.
948373
butane (unreliable) propane (many cars are converted to this) hydrogen (next true fuel) and of course diesel which is used everyday
717388
Rockets carry two components -- fuel to burn and their own oxidizer to enable that in the near-vacuum of space.  In the case of liquid fuels, the two components must be stored separately.  Some solid rocket propellants have the fuel and oxidizer mixed together.
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.
372374
You didn't specify the fuel but in general burning is a chemical reaction with oxygen or an oxidation process.  This process releases energy in some form.  Heat is one of those forms, mechanical motion, and light are others.\n\nThere is no requirement for carbon in the process of burning fuel as is stated by some other answerer's.  Let's, for example, consider burning hydrogen.  The hydrogen combines with the oxygen (oxidizes) which releases energy in the form of heat.  The Hindenburg disaster had very little carbon in its primary burn.\n\nSince this combining of 2 or more elements seems to be a requirement for burning (at least one of them being oxygen) it is possible to un-combine them by adding energy to revert to the initial elements.  Again for simplicity, let's use hydrogen and oxygen [so abundant on this planet].  When the hydrogen and oxygen are burned in proper balanced proportions (two atoms of hydrogen to one oxygen in stoichiometric proportions) there is only water and energy.  The energy we use to move things, light things, heat things, etc.  The water in this case is waste.  You can perform electrolysis on the water and separate the O2 and H2. You can then burn them again releasing the energy that you put back into the separation through electrolysis.  This is just un-burning the hydrogen and oxygen by adding energy.\n\nTypically one thinks of burning as a non-reversable process but only when you're talking about proteins...like un-frying an egg.  \n\nA string of hydrocarbons burned with "air" is also more complicated because we're using a large percentage of nitrogen along with our oxygen.  The ratio is roughly 80/20 Nitrogen to Oxygen. To maintain the balance of equations (that stoichiometric word) we'd be working with nitrogen oxides (burned nitrogen) like nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide and many carbon by-products like carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.\n\nAll in all it's a big mess.\n\nI hope that fully answered your question.
666110
There is no mercury in airplane fuel.\n\nThe EIA classifies jet fuel into two categories: "naphtha-based" and "kerosene-based." Kerosene-based jet fuel includes civil-grade Jet A, consumed in commercial jet airliners, which is an important contributor to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for more than 4 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. Naphtha-based jet fuels were used primarily by the military until 1993, when the U.S. Department of Defense began a conversion from naphtha-based JP-4 jet fuel to kerosene-based JP-8 jet fuel. As a result, the share of naphtha-based jet fuel has declined from 12 percent of U.S. jet fuel consumption in 1991, to 7.2 percent in 1993,to 0.3 percent in 1996.(199) The annual emissions coefficients for jet fuel are consumption-weighted averages of the coefficients for kerosene-based and naphtha-based jet fuels (Table B4). Because the emissions coefficient for naphtha-based jet fuel is about 3 percent higher than the coefficient for kerosene-based jet fuel, the near elimination of naphtha-based fuels has led to a steadily declining emissions coefficient. In 1996, naphtha-based jet fuel consumption dropped to the point at which it no longer has a significant impact on the weighted average computation. Hence, the 1996 weighted-average emissions coefficient is equal to the coefficient for kerosene-based jet fuel (to the second decimal place).
355914
hydrazine isn't an element but works really well in propulsion :)
980666
propane\nbutane\nhydrogen\nmethane\nacetylene\nmethyl chloride\nnickel carbonyl\nhydrogen sulfide\n\n\nhundred of others
949270
right here:\n\n\nhttp://www.answers.com/topic/rocket-fuel-1
924904
Firstly our wastes contains many substances like several kinds of elements for e magnesium, iron, cobalt, etc.. If we send them into space, we will lose the possibility to recycle the wastes and reuse the elements or compounds in them to manufacture other things. However if we want to get rid of them by space, this costs a whole lot of money since for sending 1 g of waste, about nearly hundred times the amount of energy needed to create that waste will be lost to propel the waste into space. So it would be illogical to do that since we would be wasting our precious energy sources, our money and also polluting our earth more by the burning of fuels to propel the rockets into space.