Space Shuttle Discovery "back flip" Maneuver

[xy274]

now do a barrel roll

[chrissyman4000]

Can someone please remove the microphone!!!!

[hardstyle905]

Comments here are saddening. I gotta wonder if I'm the only adult on this video. sigh..

[Chuckles123thefish]

@hardstyle905 I am an adult, lol, and no you are not the only one who notices these kind of sad comments. You probably love viewing these videos of the shuttle at work and what it looks like from space. Cheer up.

[haynespeterson]

If I were piloting the shuttle, I think I'd flip like that through the whole flight just for the heck of it!

[AdvHacker]

Smart Girls accent is so sexy

[Platinumpitviper]

the purpose of the maneuver is??????

[hardstyle905]

@Platinumpitviper are you stupid? It's all said in the video. They're checking the condition of the shuttle's heat shield. If it's damaged, the shuttle won't be able to land safely.

[AwesomeCoasters]

By the time the manoeuver was over, they had crossed a whole continent. How amazing is that.

[rrr1sportrider]

Are the taliban capable of this technology??

[kevin462]

i'd like to see travis pastrana out-do this backflip!!

[jonzo22]

lol WHY would you do this haha. its so cool but its a freakin space ship and your doing a back flip just for fun? xD

[bigbendover69]

@jonzo22 are you retarded? listen to what there saying they are photographing the heatshield on the bottom of the shuttle

[finger2546]

ทำไม ดู vdo ไม่ได้ครับ

[godboy114]

@finger2546 WHAT!?

[popceed]

How often has man taken a step back?

Damn us for our lack of vision.

An inherently dangerous activity has been brought into the medias idiotic eye, and our future is jeopordised.

Damn us for our lack of vision...

[popceed]

HOW THE HELL can we allow the space shuttle to pass into extinction?

Im so sad...

[mindsoulbody]

@popceed so that we can have a new type of space shuttle

[julionica]

is that a microphone in front of the camera? if so, for what purpose?

[Rayden440]

Why is the image on his video so crappy?

[miraeja]

my dog does that and i rub its belly. i wanna rub the shuttle's belly

[ahuachapan2]

That voice is so sexy.

[Moscovo]

Nice!! Cool view from Lisbon. I can actually see my house from here. lol.

[EXECUTiVEKiNG]

dat nigga just did a backflip over spain

[suzukirizla11]

too much time for a back flip

[mach25man]

This flip is just one of the ways they check for damage.The station astronauts use a 400mm & 800mm camera to take photos during the flip to document damage if any. These are beamed down to Houston for evaluation.

[vinnyz3]

ya the lady in the video kinda says that already

[NfldBiker]

LMAO

[titod420]

if you think your a pilot... F**K with these guys they got zero gravity orbits tangents logarithms any kind of wacked out physics you can think of, and they have to check to make sure they can make it back into the atmosphere.. (checking their heat shield) in this vid

[assasing123]

that's just sOOO Cool ! ;_; i wish i was piloting the shuttle and would take some piccies of the earth while at it.

just for curiosty but wouldn't a space walk be a better way to check instead of rotating the shuttle?

[cocomaan]

My best guess is that spacewalks are a pain in the ass and taking photos is easier :P

[Andrewmcmelonse]

yeah but then the astronauts could accidently damage it

[bg1379]

So filmed in a studio :)

[nicky416dos]

there going over 37,000 m.p.h while doing this

[PatateDrogueii]

@nicky416dos

No 37.000, max 20.000 mph.

[nicky416dos]

@PatateDrogueii Well thank you sir for the correction.

[datzfast]

@nicky 416dos in a vacuum speed is meaningless a man could be outside the ship at the same time.

[denissianto]

@nicky416dos how do u know its 37000 mph??

[nicky416dos]

@denissianto I don't remember now. It was a year ago. Maybe Wikipedia. Maybe nasa.com. I have no idea now.

[DHMaNiAc96]

@denissianto look just behind the space shutle and you will understand why :P

[peanuts2105]

@nicky416dos Actually it's 17500 mph :)

[josetomaslf]

@nicky416dos fml

[silentpounce]

actually they are going about 7,000km`s per second they move around the earth 16 times a day

[warner735]

@silentpounce I think you mean 7,000km per hour, lol

[TheBrewski10]

@nicky416dos relative to earth but sure

[Itsooz]

@nicky416dos They're not going. It's the Earth that's spinning.

[robman8855]

@Itsooz

no... they are moving... you have to move to orbit

[Itsooz]

@robman8855 They are already THERE?..-_- I'm talking about the backflip

[hardstyle905]

@nicky416dos No, they are not. At 37,000 mph they wouldn't even be in orbit anymore. The Earth's escape velocity is about 25,000 mph.

[moveaxebx]

@nicky416dos

From moon's POV, you were doing ~1,674.4 km/h or ~1,040.4 mi/h while you were typing that comment.

From sun's POV you were doing ~107,300 km/h or ~67,062 mi/h.

Speed is relative.

[phantomofopera91]

That is so cool. but how do they do the flip? It doesn't look like there are rockets firing or anything.. u can't use wind. Wouldn't moving like that disrupt the orbit? Well i mean obviously not but its interesting to know why!

[freedomtobelieve]

gyros

[RtGFuSiOn]

The roket only needs to fire briefly to start and stop the rotation. So u wont see them fire.

[jimflane]

They're called maneuvering thrusters and are located at the front and rear of the shuttle at various angles to allow for rotation and attitude changes while in orbit.

They use hydrazine as fuel and since they are in orbit in a weightless environment, just a tiny amount of thrust can be used to flip a very massive object like the shuttle.

[Revilo2990]

Small Rockets armed on the shuttle diffrend places on the shuttle just have to fire for 1 sec and they keep turning (Because of no wind) untill they fire the other way to stop the spinning

[wfbaldwin1]

like the guy said a few comments below, maneuvering thrusters, little rockets located around the shuttle

[JahobesDaGreatest]

you wouldnt need rockets to flip the spacecraft over... im sure just the slightest thrust would do the job... since their is no air meaning no friction.

But of course im probably wrong so dont quote me on that.

[yascumbag]

@JahobesDaGreatest yes technically yes its incorrect; there is atomic oxygen in space like 4 molucles per meter squared and that does have friction on things orbiting earth. these usually results in orbits decaying as the friction slows the space station down fractionally, when it slows down it loses its... i think centrifugal force would be the term?(but im not sure) and thus gets pulled back towards earth's gravity! that is when a reboost comes in to restore the orbit

[datzfast]

@ya scumbag its not per meter squared try per meter cubed or cubic meter and then you have a measure of volume instead of aera. im sure hydrogen gas can also be found in space along with every gas imaginable but your point is right on target. actually i give your description an A for your understanding. molecules like in a mole of gas. i hate spelling also. have to spell check eveything.

[yascumbag]

@datzfast sorry silly me i forgot that it was volume... a stupid mistake but the rest stands up to reason

cheers

[Tijger2099]

There are very small rockets on the shuttle, pretty much everywhere. There's a few in the nose and more in the back. These 'rockets' produce a very little boost, but due to the fact you are in space they can make the entire shuttle flip easily.

[drsheikhjunior]

A manuever you cant do on Earth.5 stars.

[RyskViking]

Superb maneuver. Kudos to all staff behind space program.

P.S.

Loved that girl's accent. She sounds very cute!

[sthibo]

me too , dude me too.

[TheJeffreyklm]

@RyskViking And she sounds very smart as well!

[RyskViking]

@TheJeffreyklm

She got to! I don't think NASA employs girls only for cuteness of their voice, eh!

Although - who knows... ;)

[datzfast]

@The Jeffrey klm she sounds smart because she lacks any regional accent. like most newscasters she might have the IQ of a fish. IQ and the lack of an regional accent show no correlation. i hope she is smarter than a newscaster.

[datzfast]

@RyskViking i agree her voice has lots of mosture and warmth in it. she may be ugly though because voice and looks are not connected.

[RyskViking]

@datzfast

C'mon, man - give this girl a break! How about benefit of the doubt? Of course she is pretty too!

[itsCLICHE]

@RyskViking She didn't have an accent? haha

[IchiCrack]

@itsCLICHE

Any spoken form of english has an accent

[AwesomeCoasters]

@RyskViking

You wanted to fuck her.

[iSim0641]

@AwesomeCoasters that was childish

[AwesomeCoasters]

@iSim0641

Not childish.. Stupid

[OrbitalResearch]

Nice

[dmc142006]

Well VickeX it is light because it is in the sun light u dip, look at the earth, its in sunlight isnt it? So geuss what, so will be the shuttle

[BNRG]

the space shuttle colombia went down ( crashed, fell apart,... whatever) because it had a hole on a front panel of the left wing. And with a roll, you wouldn't be able to see the front of the wings ;)

[elpatriotaLX]

You get a better perspective of the nose, back, and wings if you do back flip. If you roll you would be missing a lot more due to the triangular shape of the orbiter. For example you see more of the wings back and front if you flip it.

[paramchi]

I have an idea: to save fuel on retro rockets, why not install a few gyroscopes? Then they can work with a computer to manouver the Shuttle in any position with no fuel used.

[VickeX]

Lol.

07/06/06.

First of all the 7th dec launch attempt failed. They got launched the 9th. And from that. They need a whole day to catch up with ISS so that would be taken the 10th dec. 06. And anyway, that cant be real becouse it looks computeranimated as hell and how the piiip can the spaceshuttle be so light? I mean since the earth is visible the spaceshuttle should just be black.

[nihil1]

Because rolling lacks style... :P

But really, neither rolling nor a flip should move the orbit or it's sync, so I don't know the reason for the choice, BUT, I can have a try:

Perhaps the flip is a more economical movement than the roll in some way... there could be a lot of reasons for that, as, for example, the thrusts are further from the rotation axis, so it needs less impulse to turn the ship in the same time.... perhaps... :S

[maydayfire]

why not roll and then take pictures?

[shemraschke]

i think a roll would be much harder to perform while trying to stay on the exact same orbit path. thrusting all on one side as a roll might require might cause them to float off one way or another ?

[nimaside]

ha, good question.

[perri6]

When the shuttle enters the earth's atmosphere at 400,000 feet it's in free fall. The only force working on it is gravity. It travels at something like mach 25. In order to slow down, so it doesn't overshoot the runway, it has to perform a series of S-turns. It also flies with its nose turned up in a 40 degree angle. This produces drag which helps to slow it down, as well.

[Jaredster]

Wow, the ISS and the shuttle are so perfectly lined up with each other.

[nimaside]

They get pretty lined up when they dock as well. ;)