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| Multi Stage Shuttle Concepts |
First a correction. Yesterday, Mike pointed me to a website that said the Saturn V was ignited at T-8.9 seconds. See http://gizmodo.com/5079556/happy-birthday-saturn-v-still-the-biggest-rocket-of-all for a great slow motion video of the rocket ignition and take off.
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| Single Stage Concept |
It took a while to come up with the design for the Shuttle. Most of the original plans were for the entire spacecraft to be reused. Many of the models had the first stage look something like the Orbiter so it could be piloted back to Earth. Another model was a single stage craft. Finally after lots of analysis, they determined that to costs to build a piloted first stage were greater than the using an expendable fuel tank. The final shuttle is able to reuse all of the parts except the external fuel tank. Of the components, this was the simplest to build. It is even orange because that is the primer color and it doesn't need to last beyond the time it takes to launch it.
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| Enterprise in Early Test Flight |
The first orbiter built was Enterprise, named after the Star Trek spaceship. It was built to test the aerodynamics and landing abilities. It was expected to be retrofitted for flight, after testing but the changes made to the subsequent orbiters were cost prohibitive to rebuild Enterprise. Enterprise was tested by attaching it to the top of a 747 and then flying it up and letting it go to glide down. See the video of the test flight in 1977.
Glide was a generous word. One of the pilots said it was like gliding a brick. None the less, the orbiters all were accurately glided back to earth. For the video of the flight, see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Space_Shuttle_Enterprise_747_separation.ogg
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