The Insane Engineering of Re-Entry

It's truly incredible that the Space Shuttle even existed considering it was late 70's early 80's technology.

@8:00m Comms Blackout was actually not a thing for the STS Missions after they got a certain set of satellites up ! Comms blackout only affects Ground to Craft Direct Comms, but if you route the signal ABOVE the orbiter, then send it to it, comms blackout doesn't happen since the top half of the craft is not engulfed in a plasma bubble, only the bottom half.

The time between the Wright Flyer and the Space Shuttle was 77 years. It is possible for a human being to see the Wright Flyer go 250ft down a beach and watch a plane land from freaking space in one lifetime. Thats pretty incredible.

As a kid I got an opportunity to see and touch a demonstration of the amazing heat shedding shuttle tiles were capable. They brought in a used shuttle tile, heated it to glowing hot orange with a blowtorch, then the moment they took the heat away told us "Touch it." Both times I tried touching it the thing was room temperature. Not even the slightest bit of residual warmth remained. Still blows my mind the level of materials science brought about by the shuttle program.

20:04 When I was in 5th grade my grandpa, who was a retired Air Force pilot, flew me from CA to FL to attend Space Camp. As we were somewhere over AZ my grandpa brought me up front and told me to listen to the controller. We were being told to move over. He had me go look out one of the windows. At first I didn’t see anything interesting as we were above the clouds. Then all of a sudden the Space Shuttle comes through the clouds! It had previously landed at Edwards and was being carried back to FL on the back of a 747. We were left in the dust very quickly, however, those moments were incredible. (Edit: 737 -> 747)

one of my favorites quotes when describing the shuttle during re-entry is that its a "flying brick on approach" from the Clint Eastwood film "Space Cowboys"

One small thing: 177°C = 450K; 980°C = 1253K. So Inconel X can withstand a little less than 3 times the temperature of Aluminium, not more than 5!!! That’s why we always do temperatures in Kelvin 😅

Holy crap has the CGI gotten good on this channel... Congratulations to the production team working on these.

me playing ksp and blowing up 20 of my rockets before 1 successful reentry: "im something of an engineer myself too"

One of the best quotes about the shuttle in the Atlantis exhibit as you go in is "it was like bolting a butterfly to a bullet" in describing its launch configuration

In fourth grade, a NASA engineer was invited to come to my school to hold an assembly where he demonstrated some of the advanced technology NASA was using at that time. At one point, he held up one of the insulating tiles, describing it's function on the space shuttle. He then proceeded to get it brightly glowing hot with a large blow torch. As the tile was heating up, he asked for a volunteer. I immediately raised my hand, and he motioned me to come forward. I stood there for a moment in awe of the glowing white-hot brick in front of me. He picked it up using a thermal glove and asked if I wanted to touch it. I shook my head, no, no, no, and everyone laughed. He winked at me and took my hand and guided it above the still glowing tile. He told me to pick it up off his gloved hand, and to the shock and awe of myself and the rest of the school, I picked it up. It was only slightly warm, and sort of made a slight hissing sound when my skin made contact with it. I was scared, but the fear quickly turned into amazement at what I had just experienced. One of my fondest memories, for sure. It left a lasting impression, to say the least.

I absolutely believe the space shuttle is one of the single most impressive feats of engineering in human history. In addition to the Apollo missions, it's incredible we could do what we did with the tech of that time and have such a high success rate.

The first time I saw an orbiter in person I was completely taken back by the thermal protection system. As a kid, I would write to NASA to get information on the STS (no internet at the time) and would read it over and over, so I knew that the shuttle was not just a painted aluminum aircraft (like it appeared on 80's television). When I first saw it in person at Kennedy the first thing I thought was 'it looks dirty' and pieced together, and not as refined as it did in the photos that I had. It gave me a better appreciation for the careful design, engineering and fabrication that went into it.

The space shuttle really was a marvel of it's time

I made those thermal blankets with my fellow "Sew Sisters." The correct range of temperatures for those blankets were roughly 650-1200 degrees. The majority of the blankets were about 1/2" thick Class 4. Most of the orbiter was covered in that thickness. The OMS Pods were covered with Class 10 or 11 approx 1,000-1,200 protection. The blankets were thick in the area because the OMS Pod skin was made of composite materials. NASA required the blankets in that area to be that thickness because the temperature couldn't exceed 350 degrees. Otherwise, it could soften the airframe there.

my dad worked at the company that made those parachutes! I remember him telling a story about testing some of them early in the development period, they went out to a local airfield and tested a scaled down design by attaching it to the rear frame of my dads blazer. From his telling it stopped the car dead in its tracks and nearly tore apart the frame! Side bonus for me as a kid was all expense paid corporate visits to Canaveral to shuttle launches and landings!

I've never heard steel being described as 'a poor heat conductor' before. You learn something new every day.

What they managed to achieve with the technology of the time is so remarkable. My all-time favourite spacecraft.

As a child of the 1980s the Shuttle will always have a huge place in my heart. What the kids in the 60s loved about the Apollo missions, I loved as a kid in the 80s with the Shuttle.

3:40 A small note here: 177 degrees Celsius for aluminium is not 5 times lower than the 980 degrees Celsius for inconel x, as the Celsius scale continues below 0. Such statements make more sense on the Kelvin scale where 0 is absolute, and if we convert the temperatures it's 450K against 1250K, meaning inconel can only get only 2.8 times hotter, not 5.