Our resident tour guide Dr. Ed said he'd take us over to the OPF (orbiter processing facility) to go see the space shuttle. The OPF is where the shuttle is worked on before its next flight. At the time, Atlantis (our shuttle) was being worked on so we couldn't get in to see it, however our mission requires two orbiters to be prepared so we got to go look around Endeavour.
The OPF doesn't require you to wear bunny suits unless you are working in the payload bay area. And besides running around in the payload bay, you can pretty much go anywhere else. Here's some pics of the bay:
Both pics are looking from front to the back of the orbiter. The left one i'm standing to the left of the nose, right one is from right of the nose.
And speaking of the nose, here's a picture of Jeff, me and Greg:
For those who don't know, Greg is my boss and Jeff is a software guy working on the RNS camera systemThe underside of the shuttle looks way more beat up that you can tell from TV. Here's a shot taken under the shuttle looking towards the front. You can see how the old tiles are kinda chalky colored. New ones are the dark black ones. Apparently you could lightly tap the older ones and they'd crack.
Another interesting factoid about the shuttle is on the side. The flag looks backwards when the shuttle is horizontal, but the public usually sees it mounted vertically on the external tank (orange thing), where it looks normal.
But, of course, the coolest feature of the shuttle are the engines. The shuttle has 3 main engines that each provide 1 million pounds of thrust for a total of 3 million pounds of thrust. The shuttle also has two OMS pods which are are used when the shuttle is in orbit. The OMS pods contain hypergols which are extremely reactive fluids that ignite on contact. The OMS will be used to reboost the hubble into its orbit as well as control the shuttle attitude.
Jeff, Greg and Dr. Ed (from left to right) in front of the rocket engines.We were inches from the engine nozzles and were incredibly lucky to be there right as they were going to test Endeavour's hydraulic system which means we got to see all the wing flaps, rudder, and engines move! Here is a link to my youtube account where i posted all the videos i took. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cool.
One more cool fact: the shuttle is held on to the external tank (ET) by 3 bolts. The solid rocket boosters are held to the ET by, i think, 4 bolts...which means the 8 million pounds of thrust produced by the space shuttle stack is held together by 11 bolts. whoa.
oh and yet one more fact: Pete, the solid rocket boosters fuel is star shaped. that gives the most surface area to burn when it is first lighted. then the star shape burns to a circle, but there is more circumference so it remains about the same.
p.p.s. the fuel used in solid rocket boosters is crazy. nothing yet invented can stop the solid rocket fuel from burning. they did a test where they lit a cube of the fuel and immersed it in liquid nitrogen...and it kept burning. whoooooaaaaaaaa.
