Table of Contents
How much pressure can a space shuttle take?
Spacesuits for the space shuttle era are pressurized at 4.3 pounds per square inch (psi), but because the gas in the suit is 100 percent oxygen instead of 20 percent, the person in a spacesuit actually has more oxygen to breathe than is available at an altitude of 10,000 feet or even at sea level without the spacesuit.
How much force does it take to launch a rocket?
It has to produce 3.5 million kilograms (7.2 million pounds) of thrust to do so! As the fuel burns, the shuttle gets lighter, and less thrust is needed to push it up, so it speeds up!
How much thrust does it take to launch a space shuttle?
Each Space Shuttle Main Engine operates at a liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen mixture ratio of 6 to 1 to produce a sea level thrust of 179,097 kilograms (375,000 pounds) and a vacuum thrust of 213,188 (470,000 pounds).
How many PSI is space?
In outer space, the pressure is 1.322 × 10-11 Pa – essentially zero, since there is very little air and hardly any water. Our nearest neighbor, the moon, has a surface pressure at night of 3 x 10-15 bar (or 3 x10-10 Pa).
What kind of fuel does the space shuttle use?
liquid hydrogen
The Space Shuttle’s large External Tank is loaded with more than 500,000 gallons of super-cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, which are mixed and burned together to form the fuel for the orbiter’s three main rocket engines.
How much thrust does a Space Shuttle booster have?
“Each booster has a thrust (sea level) of approximately 3,300,000 pounds at launch. They are ignited after the three space shuttle main engines’ thrust level is verified. The two SRBs provide 71.4 percent of the thrust at lift- off and during first-stage ascent.”
How much power does a Space Shuttle have?
The solid rocket boosters provide 71.4 percent of the thrust (1,496,598.64 kilograms) at lift-off while the orbiter’s other three main engines provide the meager 28.6 percent thrust (599,477.9 kilograms) The overall power of a space shuttle at takeoff is about 12 GW or 12 billion watts of power.
What is the temperature of the main engine on a Space Shuttle?
Combustion is completed in the main combustion chamber. Temperatures in the main engine combustion chamber can reach as high as 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit (3,315.6 degrees Celsius). Image right: Space Shuttle Main Engines being installed on Discovery at the Orbiter Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
How long does it take to launch a Space Shuttle?
As experience was gained by launch crews during the early years of the Space Shuttle program, the launch countdownwas refined and streamlined to the point where the average countdown now takes a little more than 40 hours. This was not the case early in the program, when countdowns of 80 hours or more were not uncommon.