NASA has released this beautiful, crystal-clear video of Discovery’s launch. It was taken from an HD camera mounted on the left solid rocket booster, during the STS-133.
Take a close look. There have been other booster videos before, but not only this one is especially impressive, but it’s also the last time you are going to see Discovery rising up to the stars.
The space shuttle uses two solid fuel boosters, giant fireworks that produce 1.3 million kilograms of force each. At liftoff, each produces 12,500,000 newtons and continue to burn for 124 seconds. The spacecraft’s own engines produce a combined 12,000 pounds of force (54.4 kN), and accelerate and decelerate as the shuttle goes through different launch phases, to reduce shock.
Flick
Saturday, March 5, 2011 at 3:56 PMThat is truly awesome. I wish i could ride into space on a rocket.
matt
Sunday, March 6, 2011 at 12:34 AMholy hell! that is amazing! nothing on the rockets or the ship rattle, vibrate, warp, or move in any way! you would swear it wasn’t even moving!
oh, and I bet even if you had 100 million horses, you’d never get into space…
like saying the fastest car in the world goes 250mph… no it doesn’t, because at it’s max speed, it would run out of fuel 4 times in an hour and would have to stop and refuel! so it ain’t gonna get 250 miles in an hour!
Tim Blane
Monday, March 7, 2011 at 11:05 PMMatt, try taking that argument to court. The speed of an object is the magnitude of its velocity, not distance covered per hour, a car travelling at 250mph is in fact traveling at 250mph, even if it only covers 20cm.
Paul Clift
Wednesday, March 9, 2011 at 11:04 AMWell done, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve read today and its only 00:04am. Yes I know that leaves 23 hours and 56 minutes but I’m pretty sure I won’t read anything quite like it.
Ward Paterson
Sunday, March 6, 2011 at 11:18 AMwhen you take gravity into consideration, isn’t it only 53.39kN