Adapted from Shuttle 3 and Space Shuttle Operators Manual.

There is no brief way to describe the Shuttle, but I?ve tried to be concise and to cover most aspects of a truly remarkable machine.  Overall dimensions. The Space Shuttle is 184 feet tall from its solid-rocket booster base to tip of the external tank. It?s 78 feet wide and the entire vehicle weighs 4.4 million pounds fuelled ready for launch.  Most of the structure is made from aluminium, titanium and a boron-epoxy composite material, providing lightweight strength.  External Tank. 154 feet in length and made of aluminium alloys, holds in two separate tanks, 143,000 galls of Liquid Oxygen. 383,000 galls Liquid Hydrogen. These provide fuel to the three main engines for 8½ minutes of flight after which the external tank is discarded and burns up in the atmosphere. The external tank is coated in spray on polyurethane foam insulation.

Solid Rocket Boosters 149 feet long and re-usable. SRB nozzles gimbal up to 6 degrees to direct the thrust and steer the shuttle. Solid fuel consists of 16% aluminium powder, 69.83% Ammonium Perchlorate as oxidizer; 0.17% iron oxide powder as catalyst; 14% is binder and curing agent. This provides at launch 2,650,000 pounds of thrust. Space Shuttle Main Engines The three main engines give a rated thrust of 375,000 pounds. This can be varied from 65% to 109% of rated value. Mixture ratio for final combustion of oxygen to hydrogen is 6 to 1, fed through feed lines from the external tank. Hydraulics Powered by 3 auxiliary power units using Monomethyl Hydrazine as fuel, they move the main engines during ascent and adjust the orbiters control surfaces during descent. Also deploys landing gear.  Electrical Systems Fuel cells chemical combine oxygen and hydrogen to produce electricity, the by product is water. About 7 pounds is produce every hour and stored in tanks. Excess is dumped overboard where it turns back into a gas.

Computers There are 5. They handle all data-processing and can operate independently or together. They check on each other and translate signals to and from the orbiters systems and sensors. They operate displays to show what?s happening. There are sequence program codes for each mission phase that tells the computer to take over operations. Air Cryogenic liquid oxygen and nitrogen tanks supply air to keep cabin pressure at 14.7psi. Lithium Hydroxide canisters remove odours and carbon dioxide build up, each canister is changed once every 12 hours.  Manoeuvring in Space Orbital Manoeuvring System (OMS).

These jets or burns are used for major manoeuvres and can last for 2 or 3 minutes.  Monomethyl Hydrazine (fuel) and Nitrogen Tetroxide (oxidizer) power each OMS engine to produce 6,000 lbs thrust. They are housed in two pods on the orbiters aft end. The Reaction Control System (RCS) 38 Primary thrusters producing 870 lbs each and 6 vernier (smaller) thrusters at 25 lbs each are used for more precise manoeuvres. They are on the top and sides of the nose and on the aft sides of the orbiters. Between them these engines allow for roll, pitch and yaw manoeuvres: roll (nose to tail); pitch (up & down); yaw (left & right), along the 3 major axis of the orbiter.  Communications Headsets, built in intercoms, TV cameras, teleprinters, E-mail and information from ground is stored on the computers and other recorders conveyed by the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites in geo-stationary orbit.

Cargo Bay 15 x 60 feet. Doors open to disperse heat from electrical systems, lined with Freon radiators. 32 latches secure doors. Fuel cells and oxygen and nitrogen stored below floor.
Remote Manipulator Arm Can be manual or automatic. It has 3 sections, shoulder, elbow & wrist. TV cameras are mounted on it and it is controlled by a hand controller at the aft cabin station. It has a 3 wire grapple-capture feature to snare payloads. It is 50 feet long.
A Brief Run-Down of Shuttle Launch Procedures
T-6.9 sec Computers command 3 main engines to fire
T-3.09 sec. Thrust of the main engines reaches 90%
T-2.64 sec Interval timer to allow for sway of the vehicle due to main
engine start. SRB?s ignite
T-0.0 sec Lift off
T+5.5 sec Tower cleared
T+7 sec 120° roll into head down position
T+14 sec Roll complete, this lets the fuel flow from the main tank into
the engines easily, arc out over the ocean
T+44 sec Main engines throttle back to keep acceleration down to lessen
stress on the vehicle due to vibration at Mach1
T+2 min SRB?s separate, Mach 4.5, 25 miles altitude
T+8.38 min Main engine shut off
T+8.54 in External tank separation

T+10.39 min OMS 1st burn to achieve low orbit, approx 45 minutes later 2nd OMS burn (¼ an orbit later) higher orbit achieved, generally 250 miles up.  Preparing for EVA Spacesuits or extra-vehicular mobility units (EMUS).  These are manufactured in several sizes. Inside straps adjust the fit, each suit has a 15 year life expectancy. It consists of 3 assemblies, upper torso, lower torso (trousers), and the portable life-support system. Upper torso is made from aluminium with a ring joint connecting arms to torso.  There are constant volume joints in the shoulders and elbows, (these resemble bellows) and allow for comfortable movement in a pressurised suit.  Life support system has enough oxygen and electric power for 7 hours, plus a 30 minute backup. Chest mounted microcomputer displays oxygen and battery power supplies. The suit is joined at the waist by a connecting ring, snap and lock connecting rings seal on gloves. Under the suit goes a cooling and ventilation garment woven in spandex mesh. Plastic tubing is woven into the mesh and allows cool water to circulate through the suit to remove excess body heat. Plastic bubble helmet and visor provide protection from ultra-violet radiation and micro-meteoroids. Briefly an EVA begins 12 hours ahead of time.

Cabin pressure is 14.7psi and the spacesuit is at 4.1psi in pure oxygen, so the astronauts gradually reduce cabin pressure to 10.2psi to reduce nitrogen absorbed in bloodstream. 45 minutes before EVA pure oxygen is breathed in from a portable oxygen system, this washes the remaining nitrogen from the blood. Suiting up takes 5 minutes within the airlock and the entry latch is then closed, suit checked and oxygen control switch on chest pack will pressurise the suit to 4psi. Again the suit is checked for leaks. Pressure within the airlock is further reduced to 5psi and 3 minutes later down to less than 0.2psi. The outer hatch can then be opened.
Brief Run-Down on Landing Procedures
L-75 min Orbiter turned to fly tail first
L-60 min De-orbit burn lasting 2-3 minutes using OMS engines
L-52 min 17,100 mph. Orbiter turned around nose first for re-entry
L-41 min Move Orbiter aero surfaces to prepare hydraulic systems for
re-entry and landing
L-40 min Dump propellants in forward RCS system overboard. This shifts the Orbiters balance point for re-entry. Inflate anti-g suit L-30 min 400,000 feet / 17,100 mph. Atmospheric entry begins pitch nose at 28° to 38° L-25 min 312,000 feet / 16,700 mph. Communications black out due to ionised particles enveloping Orbiter L-20 min 230,000 feet / 15,000 mph. Maximum heating of nose and wing edges, 1,500° centigrade L-16 min Orbiters aero control surfaces take over. Start of roll reversals or S turns, to slow down Orbiter L-5.30 min 83,000 feet (25,000m) Mach 2.5. 4th roll reversal. Lining up for runway approach.
L-0.14 sec 90 feet / 330 mph. Landing gear deployed
L 0.0 sec Touchdown. Speed 215 mph, braking at 100%. De-activate all systems and make safe.

A continuing look at the history of astronomy, (with a bit of fun added) from the 1850?s AD 1851 Leon Foucault hung a pendulum in a church to show the Earth?s rotation. Making a hole in the bottom of a bucket, filling it with sand he could show to all his mates that in a day the running sand would scribe a circle on the floor. Then he claimed the Earth wobbled!  AD 1862 Alvan Clark and his son spotted Sirius B while testing their new telescope. It was a white dwarf type star which was dark. Also in this year Foucault measured the distance from Earth to the Sun as 91 million miles. It was a long Stanley tape measure!

AD 1863 Henry Draper produced ?Catalogue of the Stars? which listed 223,300 stars. The basis of his book was on Annie Jump Cannon?s work who maybe should be remembered for being the first astronomer with a made up name.

AD 1864 Sir William Huggins demonstrated that bright nebula such as Orion are just full of gas and later he claimed that Sirius and its White Dwarf partner are moving away from us at a rate of knots.

AD 1877 Giovanni Schiapaelli was convinced that he had seen ?Canals? on the surface of Mars. Just think of all the trouble he caused over the past 120 years just because he wouldn?t have his eyes tested.

AD 1879 George Darwin put forward the theory that the Moon was made in a day by bits flying off the Earth. Don?t laugh the idea was still thought to be valid up to the 1960?s.

AD 1881 Some wally with loads of lolly offered $200 to anyone who could discover a comet. Edward Emerson Barnard went out to find 20 and was paid $3200. It doesn?t add up, but that was what he was paid.

AD 1891 Maximilian Wolf discovered the first asteroid while looking at a photograph taken the night before. He got a little closer to find another 500 of the little blighters.

AD 1892 Barnard the Great White Comet Hunter tracked down the fifth moon of Jupiter. ?Oh look, I?ve bagged another? he said.

AD 1905 The Theory of Relativity is advertised as the best thing since the beginning of time by Albert Einstein. Energy is conserved he said, converted from one form to another, but never created or destroyed; E=mc²

AD 1908 Siberia was dropped on from a great height by a meteor. Many trees were killed off in their prime and one person from the scientific community said ?and that?s just a small one lads...?

AD 1918 On Mount Wilson, USA the new 2.5m reflecting telescope was opened for the first time.

AD 1924 Ejnar Hertzsprung (of Hertzsprung-Russell diagram fame) suggested that a star on a photographic plate which flared up was due to an asteroid sized body falling into the star. It was later designated as DH Carina.

AD 1925 Edwin Hubble used the 2.5 meter telescope to show that all the galaxies he looked at was going away from us using the doppler effect.

AD 1930 American Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto. It had been waiting for such a long time to be found, it didn?t even know it was lost.

AD 1931 Radio waves came from outer space Karl Jansky said.

AD 1937 The first radio telescope was built by Grote Reber. His mother couldn?t have wanted him giving him a name like that.

AD 1946 A V2 rocket took off and carried a spectrograph up to 34 miles above the Earth. It made a change from bombing people.

AD 1948 The 5 meter Palomar Telescope is completed.

AD 1949 Fred Wipple suggested that a comet was just a dirty snowball consisting of ice and rock dust. At the same time Icarus which was the 1566th asteroid to be found, had only a 1.1 year orbit.

AD 1955 Jodrell Bank radio telescope comes on line.

AD 1957 Sputnik goes up to become the first artificial satellite, a dog soon followed in Sputnik 2.

AD 1958 NASA was born. It was found early on that it was to be a breach birth. The American parents did not want to admit that the neighbours (USSR) may get a man into space or even worse e, on the Moon first.  Immediately after the birth NASA went kicking around being noisy but never quite got there for some time.

AD 1959 The Russian satellite called Luna 1 became the first artificial planet when it missed the Moon and went into orbit around the sun on a permanent basis. Later they hit the Moon with Luna 7 and even later Luna 3 photographed the far side. They concluded that it was dark and not quite like the other side.

AD 1961 Russian Yuri Gagarin went down in history as the first man in space. He orbited the Earth for 108 minutes. Al Shepard also went up in Mercury 3 for 15 minutes.

AD 1962 The Russians sent a probe to Mars and lost it. (Maybe there are Martians?) Mariner 2 went on a trip to Venus and became the first man made item to reach another planet. It just flew past.

AD 1963 Valantina Tereshkove Nikolayeva was the first woman in space doing 48 orbits in 78 hrs.

AD 1964 Ranger 2, an American probe took the first 4316 close up pictures of the Moon. Most astronomers decided it wasn?t made of cheese.

AD 1965 Venus was found to be spinning in the opposite direction to all the other planets. The sun rises in the west and sets in the east. Ed White became the first American to float in space tied to a Gemini 4, what a ride that would have been.

AD 1966 Luna 9 was famous for the first soft landing on the Moon in the Ocean of Storms, (good job it wasn?t raining as it would have got rusty).  Jocelyn Bell spotted the first pulsar, CP1919. Her boss took the credit and collected half a Nobel Prize. America?s Surveyor 2 dug a little trench on the Moon and sent pretty pictures back to Earth. It told us that it was sitting on Earth like soil so it should be OK to walk on (its a good job they were right).

AD 1967 Pulsars are discovered on the very edge of the visible universe.  Mean while Venera 4 smelt the atmosphere of Venus, caused a bit of a stink I hear.

AD 1968 Bill Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell achieved the impossible and orbited the Moon on Christmas Eve and came back.

AD 1969 Musical chairs were played by two crews of Soyuz 4 and 5, they meet up, swapped crews then came down again. What a waste of time. ?The Eagle has landed? and ?That?s one small step for a man. One giant leap for mankind? was spoken from the surface of the Moon by Neil Armstrong. The USA had beaten the Ruskies to the Moon.

AD 1970 The soft landing on Venus by Venera 7, it was the first space craft to land and send data home as well. Data has since become Science Officer on the star ship Enterprise. On the 13th day during the 13th hour Apollo 13 took off into the history books, for Lovell, Swigert and Haze it was a ride they will never forget and they almost didn?t come home for Xmas.

AD 1971 Alan Shepard went to the Moon for a drive in his new car the Lunar Rover, he picked up 98 pounds of rocks he found up there which was shared around when he came back.

AD 1972 Pioneer 10 charged along into the record books to be the first probe to leave the solar system. It?s still going today. Apollo 16 visited the Descartes Highlands on the Moon and set up the first Lunar Observatory.  Apollo 17 makes the final visit to the Moon for now.

AD 1973 America launch the first of three Skylab pieces via the Saturn 3 rocket. Three crews visited and it came down to earth over western Australia in 1979. Pioneer 10 also made a fly past of Jupiter and sent some great postcards back.

AD 1974 Saturn is Photographed by Pioneer 11 as it zoomed past. In Puerto Rico the Arecibo radio telescope sent a message to the M13 star cluster in Hercules. It basically said ?here we are, send a calling card if you can hear us. We live in this part of the sky [post code was not included]. We look like this and we are this big and are made up of mostly carbon.? The only problem is that it will take 50,000 years to get there and if an alien life form misses it there was no repeat message sent. What a total waste of time.

AD 1978 Pluto turned out to have a moon, one third the size and at -230°K.
That?s pretty cold for a moon called Charon.

AD 1979 Voyager 1 skimmed past Io, Jupiter?s inner-most moon. Its not the most innermost moon, but it?s the innermost of the larger moons as seen from Earth if you see what I mean!

AD 1981 First flight of the STS-1 Columbia Space Shuttle was tested by Young and Crippen.
MORE FASCINATING DATES NEXT ISSUE

As a recent recruit to the Coventry and Warwickshire Astronomy Society, and a late comer to the ranks of the Astrophile, my reflections on a year or so of my new found passion may be of interest to one or two other members.  I grew up in a village in Ulster with few enough street lamps, and those few went out as soon as all God fearing Ulstermen were in their beds, so I was used to dark skies, and can recall the wonder of gazing up at the heavens.  At that time my interest went little further. My sister had a copy of the Observer?s Book of Astronomy, but I learned no more than a handful of the main constellations. At school we were treated to a showing of the first moon walk - a truly exciting event, but terrestrial TV pictures were pretty poor at that time. My memory is of being told what we were looking at and trying to convince myself I could tell that Neil Armstrong had just stepped off the Lunar Excursion Module ladder.

After twenty five years with other pursuits predominant my interest in astronomy and space exploration was awakened last summer by coverage of the Jupiter comet impact and the twenty fifth anniversary of the first Apollo landing. Out came the Observer?s Book (somehow my sister?s copy had found it?s way into my library!) and with the aid of a copy of Astronomy Now and a pair of 8 x 40 binoculars I began to learn my way around the heavens.  I began observing last summer, with Vega directly overhead, so Lyra became my first ?new constellation. Around the same time I was avidly devouring all the library books I could find on the Apollo programme, and was fascinated to read that Vega was one of the stars used by Jim Lovell and his crew to check the course of Apollo 13 as they returned in their crippled craft from the moon. With this interest and it?s sheer crystal beauty Vega has found a permanent place in my heart that will be touched on any clear summer night for years to come.

As the seasons have progressed I have taken what opportunity I could to learn the rest of the sky. There are still many gaps and this is a real fascination for me - how many years will it take to achieve real confidence in naming even the key Ptolemaic constellations? My success in acquiring deep sky objects has been very slow, with only binoculars at my disposal.  The Great Spiral in Andromeda was the first - visible clearly in my binoculars from my Earlsdon garden, and just perceptible on occasion with the naked eye. The globular cluster in Hercules was next. I then made little further progress, until I took my wife and two young children along to the star party at Stratford - not a great success as a star party, but the children enjoyed running around the field in the dark. Before the clouds came over Vaughan showed us the Beehive cluster in Cancer through his rich field telescope. I am delighted to say that I was subsequently able to find this with my binoculars and have to admit that previously I couldn?t honestly claim to be able to find Cancer with any reliability. No doubt this is a common experience, but for me this is one of the greatest pleasures of my new found interest - not just learning about the sky, but doing so as an ongoing learning process and being able to tie in an object with some event or person.

My planet spotting has been fairly successful - Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were all readily identified, but in binoculars only I saw them as little more than a small disc, except perhaps Saturn which did look distinctly odd. The morning appearance of Jupiter and Venus early this year was particularly breathtaking, and for a period of a few weeks was a regular sight on my way from the car park to the office - one of the few benefits of an eight o?clock start! My next success was Mercury - following advice from Astronomy Now I started the search in May, initially with depressing results. Near the Pleiades, the magazine said - unfortunately the weather was hot (remember those balmy days of summer!) and still and the air quality very poor giving a deep layer of murk at the horizon. I couldn?t see Aldebaran let alone the Pleiades! Then the wind came, and blew away all the muck for a few days.

Having almost given up, as the magazine said we were now past the most favourable opposition, I went out one evening at just the right time to see a remarkably bright object in a narrow gap between my neighbour?s house and some tall trees. Could it be Mercury? Out with the binoculars, out with the magazine, out with the star charts! By the time it had set I was still not sure. I certainly could see no convincing disc with my binoculars, but it just seemed to be too bright to be anything else. My experience of judging magnitudes is very limited, and against a rapidly changing twilight it seems very difficult - Capella looked about the same brightness, but against a darker background. However the weather was kind and on two or three subsequent evenings the horizon was again clear, so I was able to confirm the observation and detect some movement relative to Auriga.
While learning the sky with the aid of my binoculars I had been hankering after a telescope - reading up and seeking advice when possible and keeping my eyes on the small ads in the local papers and the astronomy journals.

Then, on the very same day that I joined the crew who humped the Cooke refractor down the stairs at the Tech (but that?s another story!), I popped into the paper shop next to Fishy Moore?s on the way home with the fish suppers, and found that Astronomy Now was indeed in. At seven o?clock I was reading the ads while devouring my haddock and by eight o?clock I was in Solihull and about to become the proud owner of a Russian Tal 110mm reflector. Inevitably there followed five nights of impenetrable overcast, but a few clear evenings followed and I am now engaged on learning a whole new aspect to finding my way around the sky - thinking upside down and in Polar co-ordinates just doesn?t seem to come naturally!

My telescopic explorations have been fairly limited so far, but the Moon and Jupiter have been the highlights. The Moon is just stunning - and I can?t wait to see what it looks like through the Cooke, while Jupiter is just the most lovely sight I can imagine right now. I can now see the Galilean moons through my binoculars, whereas before I had no inkling of what they looked like so they made no impact. The view I now have of Jupiter is no doubt very poor compared to the telescopes that many of you have, but I now have a clear image in my mind of what it will look like for the first astronauts as they approach Jupiter prior to going into orbit to explore Io!  I am currently hoping to get a sighting of Neptune and Uranus and also to have another look at Saturn, this time through my own telescope. I do need to maintain domestic harmony, however, and three o?clock in the morning is normally a time for sleep in our household. Nocturnal trips to the bathroom which end up lasting half an hour or more tend to attract comment, however I remain hopeful. If I fail to see them this time there is always the next favourable opposition, or the next - after a year it seems like I have an interest for the rest of my life.