NASA grounds Space Shuttle

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BBC News

Good to see a more responsible NASA attitude than in Jan '86....

[Max Angle]

Shame to see they have problems but a good call in halting missions to sort it out, they can't afford another Challenger stlye cock-up. The engines on the shuttle are an amazing piece of work, they produce over 1,000,000 pounds of thrust each and are about the same size as a medium size (CFM,V2500) jet engine. Fuel consumption is rather high though, the three engines manage to burn about 240,000 litres a minute. Liquid oxygen and hydrogen are quite light but it's still about 720 tons of fuel for the 8.5 minute burn.

[Big Tudor]

Remember reading somewhere that the Shuttle is doing almost 200mph by the time it clears the tower. Pretty impressive acceleration.

[McD]

Here's a good website for more news and info regarding the shuttle, missions, etc.:

http://www.space.com/