Ten degrees

It is interesting to view the tilt angle of the space shuttle main engines.



In this NASA video, you can see about ten degrees of tilt away from the central axis. Think of why this must be done when the solid rocket boosters are still strapped on. Lots of physics concepts show up in this one video.

What a launch for space shuttle Discovery!

What a great liftoff for orbiter Discovery.

It was interesting that about the time the solid rocket engines cut out, maybe a little later, there was a deep rumble outside my apartment in Casselberry: the sound of the engines during launch finally reached here from Kennedy 39A. Excellent.

Just finished more Tw for space shuttle exercise

I just streamed a bunch of narration and a diagram related to exercise 10, p. 73, which asks about the relative strength of gravity for the space shuttle on orbit at 400 km altitude.

Diagram is to scale, big and nice, and might help you sort out a bunch of other gravitational questions. Go into the Tw stream and click on the link to Week 2 files.