re: Picture of a space shuttle leaving Earth, taken by NASA

quote:

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The picture is not from a commercial airplane - the airspace is closed within that range during launch window except to military aircraft.

At launch, by the time the Shuttle clears the pad, it is traveling more than 100 mph - real acceleration.

A few seconds after launch, the Shuttle executed the "roll program" when it would flip on its back. That was done in order to allow gravity to feed the liquid fuel from the External Tank to the Space Shuttle Main Engines - this eliminated the requirement for fuel pumps.

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Literally nothing you have said here is true.


1. The photo is from a normal citizen on a commercial flight and is of the final launch of Endeavor. STS-134. There was an exceptionally low cloud deck and ceiling that were basically the same low altitude--the weather above that was perfectly clear making this picture possible. The story of the photo was all over the press.

2. That's simply not true. The shuttle reaches 100 mph after clearing the tower--approximately 15 seconds into flight according to the velocity curve. That acceleration isn't actually very impressive--it's a bit of a slow start, but a hell of a lot of force application given the weight of the vehicle.

3. The orbital roll maneuver accomplishes many things--not one of them has anything to do with a gravity assist of draining the external tank. The forward acceleration is far too great to make any sort of orientation to Earth's gravity any way impactful. Just googling "orbital roll maneuver" disproves that statement.