A brief encounter with a Space Shuttle

The late sixties and the early seventies saw a flurry of activity at the NASA headquarters as various manned missions to the moon were executed one after the other. Christopher Freville reasons that the race to the moon was basically triggered by the Cold War between the US and the former Soviet Union. Their battle for supremacy in missile technology gave birth to powerful rockets which had immense lifting power. According to John F. Kennedy, the former president of the USA, launching a spacecraft to take man to the moon and return him safely back to earth would prove beyond the shadow of a doubt to the Soviets and the rest of the world, the powerful capabilities of the US’ rocket technology. His dream came true on July 20, 1969 when Mission Commander Neil Alden Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. became the first men who stepped on the moon.

Every mission to the moon cost more than $300 million which was a massive amount of money. The bulk of this amount was spent on the rockets that would be powerful enough to lift the spacecraft and push it beyond escape velocity. In an effort to reduce the cost of each mission, the development of a reusable spacecraft was proposed. Christopher Freville points out that the Space Shuttle was created to fulfill this specific need. Shaped in the form of an airplane, the shuttle would be launched into space like a regular rocket. However, while returning back to earth, it would glide back to a runway without power for propulsion.

Officially, the Space Shuttle is termed as a Space Transportation System. The Shuttles are routinely used for conducting scientific space experiments, launching interplanetary probes and numerous satellites, and the construction and servicing of the international space station. Christopher Freville explains that during launch, the shuttle is fitted with an external fuel tank that is dark orange-colored and a pair of solid rocket boosters. The tail of the shuttle houses three main engines which are fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen stored in the external tank. The solid rocket boosters have solid fuel and once they are in operation, they cannot be shut off. The twin rocket boosters and the three main engines of the shuttle provide the thrust for lifting the payload into orbit. The two rocket boosters operate for the first two minutes of the flight which constitutes the first stage of the ascent. Thereafter, they are released and allowed to fall back into the ocean. The boosters are then retrieved from the ocean for reuse in subsequent missions. The rest of the ascent in powered by the three main engines housed in the shuttle. After the shuttle goes into orbit around the earth, the external tank is jettisoned towards the earth. As the tank falls through the atmosphere it burns up and totally disintegrates.

A fleet of Shuttles has been in operation since the early 1980s and is scheduled to be retired in 2010. The spacecrafts would have then been in operation for 30 years estimates Christopher Freville with over 130 missions of which two ended in loss of life of the entire flight crew and the loss of the vehicle as well.

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