NASA grounds Space Shuttle
 

BBC News

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

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.

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

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

http://www.space.com/