10 ms·

The space shuttle blows my mind every time I see one. It's huge - the size of an airliner - and would glide back at Mach 25. It's a humbling level of accomplish

The space shuttle blows my mind every time I see one. It's huge - the size of an airliner - and would glide back at Mach 25. It's a humbling level of accomplishment.

vermontdevil 5y ago
To show the comparison (737 for example here) https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/shuttle-948x1500.jpg?ver=1 https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/shuttle-948x1500.jpg?v...
- titzer 5y ago
  Those size comparisons are super misleading. I've seen the shuttle and it's not that big. A 737 is pretty small. The shuttle can ride piggy-back on a 747--in fact it was designed to: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-013-DFRC.html https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-01... Also, the comparison with the Statue of Liberty is also misleading. The Statue of Liberty is on a huge pedestal that makes it stand much, much higher; the orbiter and boosters wouldn't reach the top of the SoL.
  - lucideer 5y ago
    The sum of your comment seems to be the subjective belief that the statue of liberty and 737s are "not that big"... Not sure what size you'd expect the shuttles to be, but being in the same ballpark as the statue of liberty (without pedestal) seems a great deal larger than my expectations.
    - titzer 5y ago
      These are subjective things, sure. My personal feeling upon seeing the shuttle was that it was not that big, because I've seen big airliners all my life. I was expecting the shuttle to be bigger. So when I looked at the parent's infographic and saw a 737 and the Statue of Liberty there, they didn't seem right (I've also seen the SoL in-person). So the size comparisons I think are quite misleading in that graphic, and yeah, I was surprised how much smaller the shuttle is than what I expected.
    - bencoder 5y ago
      Having never actually seen the statue of liberty my sense when seeing these comparisons is that it's much smaller in real life than the version in my imagination - no matter how many times I see the comparisons, the statue remains much bigger in my head
- JorgeGT 5y ago
  Well, the 737 is probably the worst aircraft to compare against, given it has been enlarged by 50% from the original 737-100 to the newer 737-900! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/B737Familyv1.0.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/B737Fami...
gameswithgo 5y ago
original plan was smaller, but military had a mission in mind that required it be bigger, so they went bigger to get military buy in. And of course the imagined mission never happened. I wonder how much money would have been saved!
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  The space shuttle is a sad story. On the one hand the military’s money made it possible but they also influenced the design in a very bad way.
  - gameswithgo 5y ago
    This is the case with almost all large scale human endeavors. To get things done with lots of people takes compromises. Apollo program was the same way. I assume the pyramids and roman roads and so on as well. Though to be fair at some point once the shuttle program got going someone could have aborted on it and said that really this doesn't make sense.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      And the Mercury program, which launched on adapted Redstone ICBMs [0], themselves improvements on V-2s. An unfunded project that never gets built is objectively worse than a military-funded project. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-11_Redstone#Redstone_derivatives https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-11_Redstone#Redstone_der...
      - whatshisface 5y ago
        If the military-funded project creates $1M worth of value using $1B of funds, the unfunded project is objectively better.
        beerandt 5y ago
        That's what army mapping service essentially did with early radar distance measuring projects. Huge expensive fleet of 18-wheeler trucks failure. And classical surveying methods beat it in every way at the time. But it was the direct predecessor to microwave communications. It was just portable military distance measuring equipment (like the model-99 dme w/ ~1cm @50km) that used a signal they found easy to piggyback voice and data on. And included that in the field units. AND 2nd, after a dozen or so more hugely expensive projects (ranging from failure to moderate success to "achieves objectives"), it led to the Airforce NAVSTAR program, which you know as... GPS. So the question becomes: What was the actual "objective" value provided by those expensive initial radar experiments, despite failing to achieve their direct objective?
iamcreasy 5y ago
Actually one of the reason SS was not cost effective anymore because of the added complexities required by the DoD.
bbojan 5y ago
In perspective, you should keep in mind that the Space Shuttle was a failure as a launch vehicle, both in terms of safety and economics.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  And yet it allowed capabilities that we have lost in 2022.
heffay 5y ago
Reminds me of a video I came across last year about about landing the space shuttle and the complexities of it all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb4prVsXkZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb4prVsXkZU
_yoqn 5y ago
You can actually go see Endeavor in real life at the L.A. Science Center. Admission is like $2. Regardless of the size, the spectacle is breathtaking.
- bdamm 5y ago
  I traveled to LA once just for the sole reason to see the space shuttle there. It was worth it!
  - caycep 5y ago
    I remember when it was decommissioned and flown to LA on the 747 transporter...definitely an event. They publicized the flight path and times, and did like 2 or 3 loops over LA and the west side. Everyone in the city was watching on the rooftops of all the office buildings and parking garages.
  - _yoqn 5y ago
    I'm sure it was! And more for your trouble you got to get really up close to a real SR-71 Blackbird out in the parking lot. The L.A. Science Center is one of the best hidden gems of Los Angeles and I used to love going there pre-COVID.
- papito 5y ago
  Standing next to a shuttle is a humbling experience. On TV it looks like, well, a plane, but in person, it's just massive. The exit hatch (I assume), the one you would expect an astronaut to exit while fully equipped and layered, looks like the size of a bottle opening.
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  https://californiasciencecenter.org/exhibits/endeavour-experience https://californiasciencecenter.org/exhibits/endeavour-exper... You can get really close to it, in the current temporary building. Wonderful. You can almost touch it, and you can smell it, and see the scuff and scorch marks. Go before they raise the money for a bigger building and stand it up. Both Endeavor and Vasa[0] are super, super cool. [0] https://i.redd.it/7zzqeyu5zyo71.jpg https://i.redd.it/7zzqeyu5zyo71.jpg
Axien 5y ago
Space shuttle was not that big. It was literally transported on an airliner and a fraction of the size.

The space shuttle blows my mind every time I see one. It's huge - the size of an airliner - and would glide back at Mach 25. It's a humbling level of accomplishment.

vermontdevil 5y ago

To show the comparison (737 for example here) https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/shuttle-948x1500.jpg?ver=1 https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/shuttle-948x1500.jpg?v...

titzer 5y ago
Those size comparisons are super misleading. I've seen the shuttle and it's not that big. A 737 is pretty small. The shuttle can ride piggy-back on a 747--in fact it was designed to: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-013-DFRC.html https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-01... Also, the comparison with the Statue of Liberty is also misleading. The Statue of Liberty is on a huge pedestal that makes it stand much, much higher; the orbiter and boosters wouldn't reach the top of the SoL.
- lucideer 5y ago
  The sum of your comment seems to be the subjective belief that the statue of liberty and 737s are "not that big"... Not sure what size you'd expect the shuttles to be, but being in the same ballpark as the statue of liberty (without pedestal) seems a great deal larger than my expectations.
  - titzer 5y ago
    These are subjective things, sure. My personal feeling upon seeing the shuttle was that it was not that big, because I've seen big airliners all my life. I was expecting the shuttle to be bigger. So when I looked at the parent's infographic and saw a 737 and the Statue of Liberty there, they didn't seem right (I've also seen the SoL in-person). So the size comparisons I think are quite misleading in that graphic, and yeah, I was surprised how much smaller the shuttle is than what I expected.
  - bencoder 5y ago
    Having never actually seen the statue of liberty my sense when seeing these comparisons is that it's much smaller in real life than the version in my imagination - no matter how many times I see the comparisons, the statue remains much bigger in my head
JorgeGT 5y ago
Well, the 737 is probably the worst aircraft to compare against, given it has been enlarged by 50% from the original 737-100 to the newer 737-900! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/B737Familyv1.0.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/B737Fami...

gameswithgo 5y ago

original plan was smaller, but military had a mission in mind that required it be bigger, so they went bigger to get military buy in. And of course the imagined mission never happened. I wonder how much money would have been saved!

spaetzleesser 5y ago
The space shuttle is a sad story. On the one hand the military’s money made it possible but they also influenced the design in a very bad way.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  This is the case with almost all large scale human endeavors. To get things done with lots of people takes compromises. Apollo program was the same way. I assume the pyramids and roman roads and so on as well. Though to be fair at some point once the shuttle program got going someone could have aborted on it and said that really this doesn't make sense.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    And the Mercury program, which launched on adapted Redstone ICBMs [0], themselves improvements on V-2s. An unfunded project that never gets built is objectively worse than a military-funded project. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-11_Redstone#Redstone_derivatives https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-11_Redstone#Redstone_der...
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      If the military-funded project creates $1M worth of value using $1B of funds, the unfunded project is objectively better.
      - beerandt 5y ago
        That's what army mapping service essentially did with early radar distance measuring projects. Huge expensive fleet of 18-wheeler trucks failure. And classical surveying methods beat it in every way at the time. But it was the direct predecessor to microwave communications. It was just portable military distance measuring equipment (like the model-99 dme w/ ~1cm @50km) that used a signal they found easy to piggyback voice and data on. And included that in the field units. AND 2nd, after a dozen or so more hugely expensive projects (ranging from failure to moderate success to "achieves objectives"), it led to the Airforce NAVSTAR program, which you know as... GPS. So the question becomes: What was the actual "objective" value provided by those expensive initial radar experiments, despite failing to achieve their direct objective?

iamcreasy 5y ago

Actually one of the reason SS was not cost effective anymore because of the added complexities required by the DoD.

bbojan 5y ago

In perspective, you should keep in mind that the Space Shuttle was a failure as a launch vehicle, both in terms of safety and economics.

NikolaeVarius 5y ago
And yet it allowed capabilities that we have lost in 2022.

heffay 5y ago

Reminds me of a video I came across last year about about landing the space shuttle and the complexities of it all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb4prVsXkZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb4prVsXkZU

_yoqn 5y ago

You can actually go see Endeavor in real life at the L.A. Science Center. Admission is like $2. Regardless of the size, the spectacle is breathtaking.

bdamm 5y ago
I traveled to LA once just for the sole reason to see the space shuttle there. It was worth it!
- caycep 5y ago
  I remember when it was decommissioned and flown to LA on the 747 transporter...definitely an event. They publicized the flight path and times, and did like 2 or 3 loops over LA and the west side. Everyone in the city was watching on the rooftops of all the office buildings and parking garages.
- _yoqn 5y ago
  I'm sure it was! And more for your trouble you got to get really up close to a real SR-71 Blackbird out in the parking lot. The L.A. Science Center is one of the best hidden gems of Los Angeles and I used to love going there pre-COVID.
papito 5y ago
Standing next to a shuttle is a humbling experience. On TV it looks like, well, a plane, but in person, it's just massive. The exit hatch (I assume), the one you would expect an astronaut to exit while fully equipped and layered, looks like the size of a bottle opening.
robotresearcher 5y ago
https://californiasciencecenter.org/exhibits/endeavour-experience https://californiasciencecenter.org/exhibits/endeavour-exper... You can get really close to it, in the current temporary building. Wonderful. You can almost touch it, and you can smell it, and see the scuff and scorch marks. Go before they raise the money for a bigger building and stand it up. Both Endeavor and Vasa[0] are super, super cool. [0] https://i.redd.it/7zzqeyu5zyo71.jpg https://i.redd.it/7zzqeyu5zyo71.jpg

Axien 5y ago

Space shuttle was not that big. It was literally transported on an airliner and a fraction of the size.