the.com/shuttle
a glorified glider strapped to a controlled explosion, somehow reusable, frequently terrifying.
means A vehicle, craft, or service that travels back and forth between two fixed points on a regular basis — or the spacecraft designed to do exactly that.
from From Old English 'scytel,' meaning a dart or missile, kin to 'shoot' — something flung. Weavers borrowed it first: the shuttle is the little boat-shaped tool that darts the thread back and forth across the loom, over and over, all day long. That tireless to-and-fro motion is the whole idea, so when something else moved the same way — buses, trains, and eventually spacecraft — the name flew along with it.
- weaver's origin
- Named after the loom part that shoots thread across fabric.
- glide ratio
- It descended like a flying brick, no engines on landing.
- speed brag
- Orbited Earth at roughly 17,500 miles per hour.
- flight count
- Five orbiters flew 135 missions over thirty years.
- tile army
- Over 24,000 heat tiles shielded it, each uniquely shaped.
space shuttle columbia — nasa orbiter that disintegrated during reentry on february 1, 2003, killing seven astronauts
space shuttle challenger — nasa orbiter that exploded 73 seconds after launch on january 28, 1986, killing seven crew members
space shuttle discovery — nasa orbiter that completed 39 missions between 1984 and 2011, the most-flown shuttle in the program