Space Shuttle Launch

2006 Space Shuttle Discovery launch

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[sauerkraut89]

Why in the hell are there 70 dislikes? What is there to dislike about this? It's kick ass and everybody came our safe in this. What a bunch of idiots. 

[MichaelMaira1]

True fact: the entire budget(money spent) of NASA from it's inception spanning almost fifty years to when it was cut was less than the bailout money payed by Obama in 2008...where are our governments' priorities??

[Suncoeur974]

Wath is it the mission number?

[tzedekh]

Obama wasn't president until 2009.

[richardmg9]

missclicks :P

[Jiří Bednář]

Well I guess you could use that method (although I'm sure that if it would be simple, they would have already done it), but getting horizontal speed is what demands most fuel on the Space Shuttle. Once teh vehicle is past Max Q, the air friction decreases over time and climbing is becoming more and more easy.

[tatlerr]

Thanks for the reply. Yes I know it would only lift as far as the air density would allow for, but if you floated a shuttle up to 40k then fired the engines from there, would that save vast amounts of fuel and energy and as a result be more efficient?

[Jiří Bednář]

Because helium would work only as far as there would be some air around to push it up, which is way below the border of the outer space. Weather balloons are used for probing the atmosphere don't exceed altitude 40km, but the ISS is at the altitude 400km. Moreover, it has a huge vertical speed to stay in orbit, so you would need some propulsion anyway once you are up there.

[tatlerr]

why cant they strap a big helium balloon onto a space ship and float it into space?

[MineCraftBowAndBoat]

Yea

[ratbuddy1]

True fact: all but 128 billion of that has been paid back. How much did NASA give back? Besides that, why don't we talk about how much Iraq has cost us. You wanna ride THIS president? How bout the last guy?