Space Shuttle

But to really grasp how powerful and destructive this architecture is, we need to look at a life or death historical example provided in the text.

NASA's space shuttle program.

Yeah.

The details from the Rogers Commission report regarding the Challenger tragedy in 1986 are just staggering.

The local objective of program continuity became the substitute priority over flight safety.

Here's where it gets really interesting, though.

Fast forward 17 years to 2003 and the loss of the space shuttle Columbia.

After Challenger, NASA supposedly implemented massive sweeping reforms.

I was trying to think what were other times where a teacher got out of TV It's a double-A basketball tournament.

The other was the Space Shuttle.

Oh, yes.

I think that was one where kids were, of course, that was a

He flew space missions and worked closely with Russian, Japanese, and European astronauts and their affiliated space agencies.

In addition to being a space station commander and space shuttle mission specialist, Leroy was also a certified co-pilot of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

In September 2006, Leroy became the first American to visit the Astronaut Research and Training Center of China.

There, he met the first two national Chinese astronauts, Yang Liwei and Fei Junlong.

Um, but yeah, yeah, obviously he must have had some conflict in his heart and his, and his mind, you know, going over to Nazi Germany and recruiting these, these, um, you know, Nazi engineers to come to the, to America.

And I think, you know, there were, um, uh, some of the people, you know, we've des- I've described in the book, or Vicky and I have described in the book, about some of the people that worked in, you know, the worst of the factories that, uh, were building the V2 rockets, and some of them were able to, you know, effectively sabotage a lot of the rockets so that they wouldn't work right, you know.

But, uh, they, they said later, three in particular, uh, that I, I remember, they were invited to a space shuttle launch decades later, and they said, "Well, you know, we, we understand, uh, that you needed to bring out the best and brightest minds of this missile program and help you develop your own missile program and, you know, eventually these rockets that take humans into space." He said, "But we c- what we can't forgive is you actually making these guys Americans, you know, and praising them and whitewashing their past." Uh, you know, he said, "That was just a, a step too far for, for those of us who suffered under, under those conditions and under them." Um, so you know, very Kind of difficult to, uh, reconcile that, you know, because yeah, these guys were, uh, you know, and von Braun in particular was an officer in the SS and, you know, he was certainly aware of what was going on at Dora and the other, the other underground factories.

And, and I think he was quoted as saying, uh, at one point that when he visited, he was taken aback at how awful the conditions were, but, you know, it didn't stop him from, um, participating, continuing to, to do the work he was doing.

This is why they dominate missile applications, and why they are so often used as strap-on boosters that supplement a liquid core during the first two minutes of flight.

The Space Shuttle used both approaches simultaneously, with two large solid rocket boosters flanking a tank that fed three liquid hydrogen and oxygen main engines.

it is a fair illustration of the philosophy use solids for brute lifting power at low altitude use liquids for efficiency and control hybrid rockets sit between the two a hybrid holds a solid fuel grain inside the combustion chamber and injects a liquid or gaseous oxidizer into it during operation The fuel grain on its own cannot burn because it contains no oxidizer, which makes it far safer to manufacture, transport and store than a conventional solid motor.

Because the oxidizer flow passes through a valve, a hybrid can be throttled and shut down like a liquid engine.

The propellants remain liquid at ordinary temperatures, so there is no cryogenic plumbing, no insulation, no boil-off and no need to load them at the last possible moment.

A hypergolic engine can sit dormant for years and then start reliably on command, and it can be started and stopped hundreds or thousands of times.

That combination of storability and dependable restart is why these propellants powered the Apollo service module and the lunar module ascent engine, why they ran the space shuttle's orbital maneuvering system and reaction control thrusters.

and why they still run station-keeping thrusters on satellites in orbit right now.