The Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle

Out of all the space craft that NASA has launched into space, the Space Shuttle is my favorite. Maybe its because I grew up with the Space Shuttle and watching its launches on TV. Maybe it was the countless Space Shuttle models and Legos and documentaries that I have watched about it. That being said, its very likely that the Space Shuttle is arguably one of the most impressive creations the human race has ever made. The combined mileage of all five orbiters is five hundred and thirteen million miles. Each orbiter, except for Challenger, traveled farther than the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The Space Shuttle is an awesome machine. The advancements made during the Space Shuttle program have helped us cure diseases, see further into space than we have ever seen, “to seek out new life, and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.” Ok that last part is from Star Trek but honestly there is an interesting and funny story that links Star Trek and the Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle program taught us that humans could actually, live, survive, and even thrive in space. The program laid the ground work for all of the current human endeavors in space and what ever comes next. 

The Starship Enterprise

The first Space Shuttle was called Enterprise. Although its tough to call Enterprise a Space Shuttle since it never actually flew in space, still it was the prototype and aerodynamic testing vehicle. Enterprise only flew within the earths atmosphere and was launched on the back of a Boeing 747. Enterprise was originally supposed to be called The Constitution. The idea of calling the first Space Shuttle “Constitution”, excited Star Trek fans. The Starship Enterprise from the show was a “Constitution Class” starship. They thought it would be fitting that NASA name their shuttle Enterprise as the “first ship of the line” to have that name. So in their head canon the history of federation starships could be traced back to the Space Shuttle. Confused? A nice way to say it would be that Trekkies are very passionate about Star Trek. However their passion also leads to persistence. Star Trek fans all over the country wrote in to President Ford, to change the name of the first Space Shuttle to Enterprise. After receiving hundreds of thousands of letters, and because of this letter writing campaign, NASA officially changed the name to Enterprise. It was even christened by the cast of the original Star Trek television show and movies. The Enterprise can be seen on display today at the Intrepid Air and Space Museum in New York City. 

Health and Science

The Space shuttle led to changes and important advances in medicine. Experiments with bacteria in microgravity and how it behaved led to the development of a unique growth method that encourages healthier cell cultures for research into curing diseases. Today the development of these clean cultures are used to research cures for scores of diseases including cancer and diabetes. 

It turns out that moving and mixing five hundred thousand gallons of fuel through three engines from an external tank the size of the statue of liberty, all while traveling 17,329 mph isn’t easy. NASA engineers obviously had a lot of experience building engines in the past, but because the engines needed to be reusable and used a new and efficient mixture of fuels they needed to solve a few problems if the ship was ever going to get off the ground. Ultimately the fuel flow problems that plagued NASA for months was eventually solved, however one of the engineers realized the they unexpectedly solved a problem that had been baffling artificial heart pump researchers for years. A miniaturized version of the Space Shuttle fuel pump assembly is almost exactly what pumps blood through heart pumps. This breakthrough has been a proven method of keeping people alive while they wait for heart transplants. 

The Hubble Telescope

Edwin Hubble is arguably the most significant astronomer of all time. His list of important discoveries and theories are quite extensive. Many of which are a bit beyond me to understand and attempt to explain. He theorized that the universe was expanding (Hubble’s Law) nearly a decade before it would be proven. Hubble also discovered that some of the clouds of dust and gas that many astronomers at the time classified as nebulae were actually other galaxies. So its fitting that a telescope that would eventually capture some of the most beautiful and significant photos in human history bear his name. 

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990 by the Space Shuttle Discovery. The telescope was not perfect from launch. Several weeks after launch NASA realized that there was a flaw with the telescopes mirror. The alignment of the mirror was off by just 2.2 micrometers. That ever so slight flaw returned blurry pictures that lacked detail. That being said NASA engineers worked the problem as usual and discovered ways to compensate from the ground. Astronomers were able to utilize the telescope for three years exploring the Cosmos like never before. However this very public and expensive mistake was hurting NASA. Hubble’s misaligned mirror was part of a string a public failures from NASA starting with the Challenger disaster in 1986. The nearly five billion dollar telescope couldn’t focus properly. Besides the public’s confidence in NASA fading, the telescope was not living up to its full potential, so a repair mission was planned. If a satellite was launched in the past there was no way to fix the problem. Either the satellite would become expensive space debris, re-enter the earths atmosphere and burn up, or NASA would somehow figure out a way to reprogram it from earth. Hubble however needed a complete overhaul and NASA wasn’t prepared to let $4.7 billion dollars burn up in the earths atmosphere. So in December of 1993 NASA launched Discovery to service and completely overhaul the Hubble telescope. The mission was an overwhelming success and with Hubble working at its full potential the human race could see for the first time just how immense and beautiful our universe really is. 

The Hubble is still taking pictures and exploring our universe today. It was serviced in May of 2009 once again by Discovery. Discovery besides servicing, also boosted the orbit of the telescope for the last time. Extending the life of the telescope into the mid to late 2030’s. However unless the Space Shuttle fleet is recommissioned somehow or NASA builds another orbiter capable of capturing and returning the telescope to earth to be put on display at the Smithsonian. The Hubble will renter the earths Atmosphere and most likely burn up over one of the oceans. 

The Space Shuttle was expensive and in many ways was an unsafe and inefficient method of traveling into low earth orbit. In over thirty years of service the Space Shuttle hauled over three and half million pounds of cargo into space, two hundred thousand hours spent in low earth orbit, made over twenty thousand orbits, spent close to fifteen hundred days in space, launched eight hundred and thirty three people, one hundred and eighty satellites released from its cargo bay, docked with the Russian Space Station Mir nine times, and finally thirty seven missions dedicated to the construction and supply of the International Space Station.