Space Shuttle Fuel Tank
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curtisconners
Greetings from the netherworld.
That's pretty cool, one of the great things about this forum is that you can put almost anything on here, cp related or not. By the way, what were they doing with that tank?
It's on its way to the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center of the California Science Center Museums in Los Angeles. To be on exhibit along with the shuttle Endeavour.
Still amazes me how huge those things have to be to get a shuttle to escape velocity. So glad we're making progress with spaceplane technology. Hopefully a cheaper, more efficient delivery system will mean more public interest in space operations, now that the opponents can't spin the money side quite as much. (I actually wrote an essay in college detailing NASA's funding, and it was a literal drop in the bucket compared to everything else that gets allotted money yearly. Quite sad, actually.)
tommyr
Gardening freak!
FYI that is tank #94. It never flew to space. Pretty cool though!
curtisconners
Greetings from the netherworld.
If I recall correctly from my trip to Kennedy space center a couple years ago. The big orange fuel tank is not reused. once they're in space, they drop the tank and it burns up in the atmosphere.
tommyr
Gardening freak!
That is correct.
Some factoids from the handout I got at the site:
Length: 154 ft
Diameter: 27.5 ft
Weight (empty tank): 65,000 lbs
Total Weight (Propellant + tank): 1,694,577 lbs
This ET (ET-94) was built for flight, but never used.
According to one of the volunteers on site after the Columbia loss from pieces of the foam insulation damaging the tiles on the wing leading edge this tank was used for study of the problem. That's why there are sections of foam missing.
Length: 154 ft
Diameter: 27.5 ft
Weight (empty tank): 65,000 lbs
Total Weight (Propellant + tank): 1,694,577 lbs
This ET (ET-94) was built for flight, but never used.
According to one of the volunteers on site after the Columbia loss from pieces of the foam insulation damaging the tiles on the wing leading edge this tank was used for study of the problem. That's why there are sections of foam missing.
Thanks NAN, I was wondering why it looked like that.
