Posted on 05/25/2011 3:58:15 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
[Credit: NASA] Explanation: What's that rising from the clouds? The space shuttle. If you looked out the window of an airplane at just the right place and time last week, you could have seen something very unusual -- the space shuttle Endeavour launching to orbit. Images of the rising shuttle and its plume became widely circulated over the web shortly after Endeavour's final launch. The above image was taken from a shuttle training aircraft and is not copyrighted. Taken well above the clouds, the image can be matched with similar images of the same shuttle plume taken below the clouds. Hot glowing gasses expelled by the engines are visible near the rising shuttle, as well as a long smoke plume. A shadow of the plume appears on the cloud deck, indicating the direction of the Sun. The shuttle Endeavour remains docked with the International Space Station and is currently scheduled to return to Earth next week.
(Excerpt) Read more at apod.nasa.gov ...
That's a hot ticket!
That is beautiful!
Oddly enough I actually always thought the Saturn Rockets were the hot rods. I’ve read that a shuttle launch is a pretty gentle ride in comparison.
Cool pic anyway.
as a kid two friends and i cut school and drove from tampa to see a moon launch
great
but no comparison to a shuttle launch.
as a kid two friends and i cut school and drove from tampa to see a moon launch
great
but no comparison to a shuttle launch.
NASA ran the videos from all of the recovered SRBs today...one of them only deployed 2 chutes and streamered the third one all the way down.
PING!
|
It’s a missile!!!!
....Or is it a contrail.
(also can’t rule out swamp gas)
Amazing and beautiful picture, BTW.
Certainly a ‘keeper’, as most of them are.
You shouldn't have cut English class ...
I followed the link to the NASA site and got a gander at the full-sized photo. Phew! That’s amazing! Thanks, Civ.
"Lord please forgive me and may God bless the Pygmies in New Guinea"
Why? Because it leans to the left?
Not trying to be perfect or an ass there SeeSac
I believe you’re right; but the Mercury flights were the hardest, if memory serves, around 5 g’s, while the Shuttle flight is under 3 g’s. Apollo’s kick in the pants got bigger with each succeeding stage. The Saturn V’s job was to lift every bit of mass needed for the entire lunar mission (there and back, including a landing and launch on the lunar surface) off the ground and get it high enough where the subsequent stages could finish the direct ascent. That was a hell of a piece of machinery.
Those are fun to watch. :’)
Weather balloon?
I was lucky to have gotten to know Jim McDivitt a little when I was a kid because he had business dealings with my grandfather.. I was awestruck.
He was an early rocket jock who commanded both the Gemini 4 first space walk mission and the Apollo 9 flight in which the Lunar Module was tested for the first time in earth orbit.
He pushed me down in a chair in his office to show me what a launch was like.
The STS was never used for anything much worth a damn, and we lost lives using it, but it’s a hell of an impressive piece of machinery.
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