Kennedy Space Center Tour
Here are some ships at the Kennedy Space Center.
Delta Titan Atlas
The most important business at the Kennedy Space Center is preparing and launching manned and unmanned space ships. Most of America's empty rockets are launched on the other side of the Banana River at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Included in America's fleet of unmanned rockets are the Delta, Atlas-Centaur, and the Titan. A Titan Centaur was used to send the two Viking probes to Mars in 1976 and the Voyager I & II satellites to Neptune.
Most of the public focus today involves human space flight. Our Shuttle fleet includes four orbiters: Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. The Space Shuttle actually consists of four major components: the two solid rocket boosters, the large orange external tank, and the orbiter itself. The entire system weighs about four and a half million pounds at launch and provides about seven million pounds of thrust. It's surprising that in just eight and a half minutes, this 220,000-pound orbiter will go from a standing start to almost 10 times the speed of a rifle bullet.
The shuttle orbiter arrives at KSC in one of two ways. It either lands from space on our 15,000-foot runway or it is ferried on the back of a Boeing 747. As a result of orbiter modifications including modified carbon-carbon brakes and use of a drag chute, the Kennedy Space Center is now the prime landing site for the shuttle fleet.
After a landing at KSC, the orbiter must be made safe for the engineers and technicians to work around it. The KSC recovery team takes over control and responsibility of the orbiter after the astronauts exit the crew module.
If it arrives on the 747 after landing at another site, such as Edwards Air Force Base (EAFB) in California, it has to be removed using the huge 11-story-high Mate-Demate Device at the Shuttle Landing Facility. This operation is usually performed around midnight when winds are the most calm.
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Last updated June 3, 2003Nicole, Mari, and Becky's Webpage
