8 ms·

Space shuttle Endeavour's giant orange external tank begins final journey

68 points by divbzero 3y ago

firefoxd 3y ago
I was in the building overlooking the airport when endeavor landed at LAX. People literally parked on the freeway to watch [1]. Highway patrol parked as well and enjoyed the show. Couple years later, I'm walking down the street and I see this giant orange tank and a slew of workers dismantling traffic lights to make space for it [2]. I'm gonna make sure I'm there for this as well, right on my kids birthday. More pics: https://idiallo.com/photography/39/los-angeles-space-shuttle-fuel-tank https://idiallo.com/photography/39/los-angeles-space-shuttle... [1]: https://cdn.idiallo.com/photo/39/freewaypark.jpg https://cdn.idiallo.com/photo/39/freewaypark.jpg [2]: http://cdn.idiallo.com/photo/39/spfuel_tank_back_lg.jpg http://cdn.idiallo.com/photo/39/spfuel_tank_back_lg.jpg
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  Regardless what any critics might have to say, the Space Shuttle Orbiters (and all their accessories) are practically heroes wherever they go. They're a kid's dreams brought to reality and then some. I hope we can fly something as cool looking and mindblowing as them again some day.
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    > Regardless what any critics might have to say, the Space Shuttle Orbiters (and all their accessories) are practically heroes wherever they go. They're a kid's dreams brought to reality and then some. They certainly have enormous cultural cachet. There's a reason why, even now, it's pretty common for movies to use a shuttle when they want a rocket that takes people to space. Too bad they were hot garbage when it came to actual performance. > I hope we can fly something as cool looking and mindblowing as them again some day. I like to think that we're already doing that right now. The Falcon 9 is doing the job the Shuttle was created do to: it's a cheap, powerful, and reliable taxi to LEO.
    - wil421 3y ago
      Can the falcon 9 fix the Hubble? I agree having a space plane as your only launch vehicle is very short sighted but I think a space plane has some very unique capabilities.
      - nordsieck 3y ago
        > Can the falcon 9 fix the Hubble? Maybe. There's a plan to use the Dragon capsule to reboost the Hubble and possibly EVA to it. No one knows what exactly will happen, although if you're interested in learning more, the potential mission is Polaris II[1]. But that ignores the bigger point - the Shuttle had a bunch of rarely used capabilities. And the tradeoff for that is that it's main mission: taking people and cargo to space was severely compromised. It would have been easy to just buy a new Hubble with the savings if the US had a reasonably designed and priced rocket instead of the Shuttle. --- 1. https://polarisprogram.com/ https://polarisprogram.com/
        dylan604 3y ago
        The NRO offered NASA multiple Hubbles, but the cost to retrofit them was outside of NASA's budget. Also, how are you getting that new Hubble off the ground without a shuttle?
        nordsieck 3y ago
        > The NRO offered NASA multiple Hubbles, but the cost to retrofit them was outside of NASA's budget. Well, yes - that's kind of the point. If NASA didn't have the Shuttle's fully amortized $1.5B/launch cost weighing it down they'd have been able to do a lot more things. > Also, how are you getting that new Hubble off the ground without a shuttle? Who knows what rocket NASA should have gone with. But the easy answer is: they could have kept Saturn V around for the few really big payloads they needed it for. Another option is the Delta IV Heavy. It's longest fairing is just a little bit short of what's needed for Hubble. I'm sure a 1-off xl fairing would be quite expensive, but since the difference between a Delta IV Heavy launch and a Shuttle launch is $1B, there's quite a bit of room in the budget to work with.
- wil421 3y ago
  Why did they have a fighter escort? Were they monitoring the space shuttle during flight or just there for show?
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Those are NASA F/A-18s flying chase. Extra set of eyes on the aircraft, photography/video for PR, etc. In this particular case there's almost certainly a "let's put on a show" motivator as part of it; they flew the shuttle around various major cities and landmarks on the way. https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/f-a-18-mission-support-aircraft/ https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/f-a-18... Some footage from one of the fighters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVPNDhOWutk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVPNDhOWutk
    - throw0101d 3y ago
      > Those are NASA F/A-18s flying chase. Are there particular capabilities they have that would necessitate that type of aircraft specifically? I would think that they'd have really high operating costs compared to (e.g.) a turboprop of some kind.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        For this particular mission, probably not; rule of cool probably played a factor. (They also have a much-upgraded 1950s B-57 for similar purposes; https://airbornescience.nasa.gov/aircraft/WB-57_-_JSC https://airbornescience.nasa.gov/aircraft/WB-57_-_JSC) For other missions, though, being able to get up to Mach 1.8 is probably helpful when you might be intercepting a Space Shuttle on the tail end of re-entry. Manoeuvrability is also a factor; being nimble helps get around a test aircraft. Or chasing one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-59_Quesst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-59_Quesst
      - syndicatedjelly 3y ago
        It has the capability of looking fucking cool
- dawnerd 3y ago
  The entire office found a rooftop to watch it fly over for its final. Simply amazing to see.
dotancohen 3y ago
Interesting idea to store the shuttle outdoors, building the museum around it. But the article is frustrating. > The cranes that will lift the spacecraft are quite tall — the tallest of which will be about the height of City Hall. And how tall is City Hall? I get that this is a local publication, but do all LA residents even know how tall City Hall is? > At liftoff, the white rocket boosters were set underneath the shuttle’s wings and produced more than 80% of the lift. The boosters provided thrust, not lift.
- badcppdev 3y ago
  That article is hilariously waffly. And I almost posted the exact City Hall quote. The pedant in me wants to point out that the external tank is not "Endeavour's" because the external tanks were not recovered after flights so that one has never been on a mission and could have been a tank for any shuttle mission.
  - dotancohen 3y ago
    I suppose that the external tanks may have been commissioned for specific missions, like Atlas IV and Delta V rockets were. Maybe this tank was commissioned for a mission that never flew, like the current museum Saturn Vs. I remember, possibly incorrectly, that there was a contingency rescue mission stacked but not flown, though I think that the stack did fly on a NASA designated mission (as opposed to the usual Congress designated missions). Though I think that was Atlantis.
    - rzzzt 3y ago
      The external tank destined for display at the California Science Center is ET-94, the last flight-qualified external tank in existence. This lightweight tank (LWT) — donated to the Science Center by NASA — was ordered to support science missions for space shuttle Columbia. From https://californiasciencecenter.org/exhibits/endeavour-experience/external-tank https://californiasciencecenter.org/exhibits/endeavour-exper...
      - 3y ago
gadders 3y ago
Anyone remember the first few launches where the tanks were white, then they realised they could save a bunch of weight by not painting them?
- ajdoingnothing 3y ago
  Yes! Win-win imho — the orange made it look much better along with the white SRBs, orbiter and a blue sky in the background.
- adolph 3y ago
  I had to look it up in case this was a Berenstein Bears/Shazam bad collective memory: The external tank's orange color is the color of the spray-on foam insulation. The first two tanks, used for STS-1 and STS-2, were painted white to protect the tanks from ultraviolet light during the extended time that the shuttle spent on the launch pad prior to launch. Because this did not turn out to be a problem, Martin Marietta (now part of Lockheed Martin) reduced weight by leaving the rust-colored spray-on insulation unpainted beginning with STS-3, saving approximately 272 kg (600 lb). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_external_tank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_external_tank
  - whycome 3y ago
    Rarely mentioned, but I think the foam is polyisocyanurate. I think it changes to the rust colour due to exposure (it's typically light yellow). Anyone got more info? https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19890003374 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19890003374
  - gadders 3y ago
    I did hesitate slightly before posting, but I remember watching the countdown at junior school and the launch when I got home.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  I'll never forget them; watching those launches had a profound impact on the course of my life.
pookha 3y ago
As a kid I thought the shuttle was awesome. As an adult I'm horrified by it. Damn near every tile was custom and snowflake. Orbiter had to be stripped down to the frame every launch. Tanks required major refurbishing... Massive gaping black hole of endless funding that bled NASA dry for years. My suburban school system failed teaching anything whatsoever about the Saturn V. Everything in the 80's and 90's catered to the space truck, even after the tragedies and slow launch schedules. It did a great job at keeping kids interested in big-space after the cold war ended though.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jeremyjh 3y ago
  But it fixed Hubble. Could that have been done any other way?
  - jefftk 3y ago
    They could have made a new one and launched that instead. The Hubble cost, up through launch, was $6.6B in today's dollars. [1] Making a second one would have been expensive, but less than that since you can reuse the design, software, and much of the experience. The shuttle program cost $269B in today's dollars [2] so you need a lot of other benefits, not just fixing the Hubble. [1] "the Hubble cost-to-launch was $4.7 billion in FY 2010 dollars" https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/499224main_jwst-icrp_report-final.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/499224main_j... [2] "The US Congress and NASA spent more than US$192 billion (in 2010 dollars) on the shuttle from 1971 to 2010" https://www.nature.com/articles/472038d https://www.nature.com/articles/472038d
    - bunderbunder 3y ago
      I would also believe that they could have done all of the Hubble servicing missions with a capsule-style vehicle. If they had involved loading it into the payload bay and bringing it back to Earth to service on the ground, sure. But they were all done onsite, and you can do spacewalks from a capsule, too. I admittedly don't know any of the details, but I'm guessing that there's not really anything about the Hubble servicing missions that's fundamentally more difficult to do without a space truck than assembling Mir and Tiangong were.
jnsaff2 3y ago
I saw Endeavour fly over SF Golden Gate Bridge on it's final positioning on top of the 747. Amazing video lecture recordings for anyone who wants to demystify the Space Shuttle for themselves: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/16-885j-aircraft-systems-engineering-fall-2005/video_galleries/video-lectures/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/16-885j-aircraft-systems-enginee...
elzbardico 3y ago
How long till someone get's the idea to incorporate this exhibit piece a as a critical plot element in some fluffy Sci Fi movie of the kind that requires megatons of suspension of disbelief to be watched?
MilStdJunkie 3y ago
In Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, the first colony ships are built from shuttle tanks given an extra kick of delta vee to put them in LEO. Then they stitch them together into all sorts of Lincoln Log things. Seems like a neat idea except for the tyranny of the rocket equation . . although, well, the final configuration of the SST sort of spat in the face of the rocket equation.

68 points by divbzero 3y ago

I was in the building overlooking the airport when endeavor landed at LAX. People literally parked on the freeway to watch [1]. Highway patrol parked as well and enjoyed the show. Couple years later, I'm walking down the street and I see this giant orange tank and a slew of workers dismantling traffic lights to make space for it [2]. I'm gonna make sure I'm there for this as well, right on my kids birthday. More pics: https://idiallo.com/photography/39/los-angeles-space-shuttle-fuel-tank https://idiallo.com/photography/39/los-angeles-space-shuttle... [1]: https://cdn.idiallo.com/photo/39/freewaypark.jpg https://cdn.idiallo.com/photo/39/freewaypark.jpg [2]: http://cdn.idiallo.com/photo/39/spfuel_tank_back_lg.jpg http://cdn.idiallo.com/photo/39/spfuel_tank_back_lg.jpg

Dalewyn 3y ago
Regardless what any critics might have to say, the Space Shuttle Orbiters (and all their accessories) are practically heroes wherever they go. They're a kid's dreams brought to reality and then some. I hope we can fly something as cool looking and mindblowing as them again some day.
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > Regardless what any critics might have to say, the Space Shuttle Orbiters (and all their accessories) are practically heroes wherever they go. They're a kid's dreams brought to reality and then some. They certainly have enormous cultural cachet. There's a reason why, even now, it's pretty common for movies to use a shuttle when they want a rocket that takes people to space. Too bad they were hot garbage when it came to actual performance. > I hope we can fly something as cool looking and mindblowing as them again some day. I like to think that we're already doing that right now. The Falcon 9 is doing the job the Shuttle was created do to: it's a cheap, powerful, and reliable taxi to LEO.
  - wil421 3y ago
    Can the falcon 9 fix the Hubble? I agree having a space plane as your only launch vehicle is very short sighted but I think a space plane has some very unique capabilities.
    - nordsieck 3y ago
      > Can the falcon 9 fix the Hubble? Maybe. There's a plan to use the Dragon capsule to reboost the Hubble and possibly EVA to it. No one knows what exactly will happen, although if you're interested in learning more, the potential mission is Polaris II[1]. But that ignores the bigger point - the Shuttle had a bunch of rarely used capabilities. And the tradeoff for that is that it's main mission: taking people and cargo to space was severely compromised. It would have been easy to just buy a new Hubble with the savings if the US had a reasonably designed and priced rocket instead of the Shuttle. --- 1. https://polarisprogram.com/ https://polarisprogram.com/
      - dylan604 3y ago
        The NRO offered NASA multiple Hubbles, but the cost to retrofit them was outside of NASA's budget. Also, how are you getting that new Hubble off the ground without a shuttle?
        nordsieck 3y ago
        > The NRO offered NASA multiple Hubbles, but the cost to retrofit them was outside of NASA's budget. Well, yes - that's kind of the point. If NASA didn't have the Shuttle's fully amortized $1.5B/launch cost weighing it down they'd have been able to do a lot more things. > Also, how are you getting that new Hubble off the ground without a shuttle? Who knows what rocket NASA should have gone with. But the easy answer is: they could have kept Saturn V around for the few really big payloads they needed it for. Another option is the Delta IV Heavy. It's longest fairing is just a little bit short of what's needed for Hubble. I'm sure a 1-off xl fairing would be quite expensive, but since the difference between a Delta IV Heavy launch and a Shuttle launch is $1B, there's quite a bit of room in the budget to work with.
wil421 3y ago
Why did they have a fighter escort? Were they monitoring the space shuttle during flight or just there for show?
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Those are NASA F/A-18s flying chase. Extra set of eyes on the aircraft, photography/video for PR, etc. In this particular case there's almost certainly a "let's put on a show" motivator as part of it; they flew the shuttle around various major cities and landmarks on the way. https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/f-a-18-mission-support-aircraft/ https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/f-a-18... Some footage from one of the fighters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVPNDhOWutk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVPNDhOWutk
  - throw0101d 3y ago
    > Those are NASA F/A-18s flying chase. Are there particular capabilities they have that would necessitate that type of aircraft specifically? I would think that they'd have really high operating costs compared to (e.g.) a turboprop of some kind.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      For this particular mission, probably not; rule of cool probably played a factor. (They also have a much-upgraded 1950s B-57 for similar purposes; https://airbornescience.nasa.gov/aircraft/WB-57_-_JSC https://airbornescience.nasa.gov/aircraft/WB-57_-_JSC) For other missions, though, being able to get up to Mach 1.8 is probably helpful when you might be intercepting a Space Shuttle on the tail end of re-entry. Manoeuvrability is also a factor; being nimble helps get around a test aircraft. Or chasing one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-59_Quesst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-59_Quesst
    - syndicatedjelly 3y ago
      It has the capability of looking fucking cool
dawnerd 3y ago
The entire office found a rooftop to watch it fly over for its final. Simply amazing to see.

dotancohen 3y ago

Interesting idea to store the shuttle outdoors, building the museum around it. But the article is frustrating. > The cranes that will lift the spacecraft are quite tall — the tallest of which will be about the height of City Hall. And how tall is City Hall? I get that this is a local publication, but do all LA residents even know how tall City Hall is? > At liftoff, the white rocket boosters were set underneath the shuttle’s wings and produced more than 80% of the lift. The boosters provided thrust, not lift.

badcppdev 3y ago
That article is hilariously waffly. And I almost posted the exact City Hall quote. The pedant in me wants to point out that the external tank is not "Endeavour's" because the external tanks were not recovered after flights so that one has never been on a mission and could have been a tank for any shuttle mission.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  I suppose that the external tanks may have been commissioned for specific missions, like Atlas IV and Delta V rockets were. Maybe this tank was commissioned for a mission that never flew, like the current museum Saturn Vs. I remember, possibly incorrectly, that there was a contingency rescue mission stacked but not flown, though I think that the stack did fly on a NASA designated mission (as opposed to the usual Congress designated missions). Though I think that was Atlantis.
  - rzzzt 3y ago
    The external tank destined for display at the California Science Center is ET-94, the last flight-qualified external tank in existence. This lightweight tank (LWT) — donated to the Science Center by NASA — was ordered to support science missions for space shuttle Columbia. From https://californiasciencecenter.org/exhibits/endeavour-experience/external-tank https://californiasciencecenter.org/exhibits/endeavour-exper...
    - 3y ago

gadders 3y ago

Anyone remember the first few launches where the tanks were white, then they realised they could save a bunch of weight by not painting them?

ajdoingnothing 3y ago
Yes! Win-win imho — the orange made it look much better along with the white SRBs, orbiter and a blue sky in the background.
adolph 3y ago
I had to look it up in case this was a Berenstein Bears/Shazam bad collective memory: The external tank's orange color is the color of the spray-on foam insulation. The first two tanks, used for STS-1 and STS-2, were painted white to protect the tanks from ultraviolet light during the extended time that the shuttle spent on the launch pad prior to launch. Because this did not turn out to be a problem, Martin Marietta (now part of Lockheed Martin) reduced weight by leaving the rust-colored spray-on insulation unpainted beginning with STS-3, saving approximately 272 kg (600 lb). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_external_tank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_external_tank
- whycome 3y ago
  Rarely mentioned, but I think the foam is polyisocyanurate. I think it changes to the rust colour due to exposure (it's typically light yellow). Anyone got more info? https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19890003374 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19890003374
- gadders 3y ago
  I did hesitate slightly before posting, but I remember watching the countdown at junior school and the launch when I got home.
marssaxman 3y ago
I'll never forget them; watching those launches had a profound impact on the course of my life.

pookha 3y ago

As a kid I thought the shuttle was awesome. As an adult I'm horrified by it. Damn near every tile was custom and snowflake. Orbiter had to be stripped down to the frame every launch. Tanks required major refurbishing... Massive gaping black hole of endless funding that bled NASA dry for years. My suburban school system failed teaching anything whatsoever about the Saturn V. Everything in the 80's and 90's catered to the space truck, even after the tragedies and slow launch schedules. It did a great job at keeping kids interested in big-space after the cold war ended though.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jeremyjh 3y ago
But it fixed Hubble. Could that have been done any other way?
- jefftk 3y ago
  They could have made a new one and launched that instead. The Hubble cost, up through launch, was $6.6B in today's dollars. [1] Making a second one would have been expensive, but less than that since you can reuse the design, software, and much of the experience. The shuttle program cost $269B in today's dollars [2] so you need a lot of other benefits, not just fixing the Hubble. [1] "the Hubble cost-to-launch was $4.7 billion in FY 2010 dollars" https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/499224main_jwst-icrp_report-final.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/499224main_j... [2] "The US Congress and NASA spent more than US$192 billion (in 2010 dollars) on the shuttle from 1971 to 2010" https://www.nature.com/articles/472038d https://www.nature.com/articles/472038d
  - bunderbunder 3y ago
    I would also believe that they could have done all of the Hubble servicing missions with a capsule-style vehicle. If they had involved loading it into the payload bay and bringing it back to Earth to service on the ground, sure. But they were all done onsite, and you can do spacewalks from a capsule, too. I admittedly don't know any of the details, but I'm guessing that there's not really anything about the Hubble servicing missions that's fundamentally more difficult to do without a space truck than assembling Mir and Tiangong were.

jnsaff2 3y ago

I saw Endeavour fly over SF Golden Gate Bridge on it's final positioning on top of the 747. Amazing video lecture recordings for anyone who wants to demystify the Space Shuttle for themselves: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/16-885j-aircraft-systems-engineering-fall-2005/video_galleries/video-lectures/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/16-885j-aircraft-systems-enginee...

elzbardico 3y ago

How long till someone get's the idea to incorporate this exhibit piece a as a critical plot element in some fluffy Sci Fi movie of the kind that requires megatons of suspension of disbelief to be watched?

MilStdJunkie 3y ago

In Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, the first colony ships are built from shuttle tanks given an extra kick of delta vee to put them in LEO. Then they stitch them together into all sorts of Lincoln Log things. Seems like a neat idea except for the tyranny of the rocket equation . . although, well, the final configuration of the SST sort of spat in the face of the rocket equation.