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Shuttle External Tank and SRB's


John

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I've been looking through some snaps we took on our trip to Florida last February, which seems a long time ago now :rolleyes2:. I came across the one below that I took at the Kennedy Space Centre in front of the Shuttle Atlantis exhibition hall. My other half is stood at the bottom of the right hand SRB. This is a BIG piece of hardware :shocked:

The exhibition of the Atlantis shuttle inside the huge hall is very impressive as well - it's turned on it's side and is literally hanging right in in front of you. Highly recommended visit for all space nuts :grin:

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Edited by John
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I do regret the terrible mistakes humans had a big part of, and know that it did turn out to be way to costly to feasibly operate, but I'm glad we built such an incredible piece of equipment. 

Where I live I'm at least 150 miles as the crow flies from the cape. The few times I got out in the yard to watch a night launch, the instant those boosters ignited it looked like sunrise there!

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16 hours ago, John said:

My other half is stood at the bottom of the right hand SRB. This is a BIG piece of hardware :shocked:

I had to read that twice to check you weren’t being a little harsh on your dear lady John... 😉😉

That is amazing! Do you have any pictures of the Shuttle itself?

Would love to get across there someday and see it, plus Saturn V of course. There is also the prospect of catching a SpaceX or even SLS launch at some point too I guess if you are lucky.

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32 minutes ago, Stu said:

I had to read that twice to check you weren’t being a little harsh on your dear lady John... 😉😉

That is amazing! Do you have any pictures of the Shuttle itself?

Would love to get across there someday and see it, plus Saturn V of course. There is also the prospect of catching a SpaceX or even SLS launch at some point too I guess if you are lucky.

Here are a few of the Shuttle Atlantis and the Saturn V. You get right up close to the shuttle but that makes it harder to photograph the whole thing !. The Saturn V is just immense. We did see a Space X launch when we were there in 2017 - difficult to photograph though because we were about 3 miles away and the Space X launches are quite sedate compared to the Saturn V and shuttle launches. The one we saw was not a heavy lifter though.

We also did the launch pad bus tour which went right out and around the active pads this time including the one that was being prepped for the manned launch last year.

We were lucky with the timing of the trip last year. We got back on the 6th March just as the Covid thing started to get serious.

I could spend a whole week in and around KSC to be honest with you. Not sure my other half would be too happy about that itinerary though !

 

 

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I've read quite a bit on the Shuttle and those boosters.

The internal passage up through the solid fuel is shaped like a toothed gear, the fingers pointing inward to give more burning surface when it is ignited.

A 135' flame is shot into each booster to ignite it. The extra surface from the shape gives it so much extra power for a brief moment that it immediately lifts everything 6 inches and starts it all moving.

I always joked with SWMBO that if my only chance to ride the Shuttle was to ride sitting on the wing, I just might do it!😁

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