It's truly incredible that the Space Shuttle even existed considering it was late 70's early 80's technology.

@8:00m Comms Blackout was actually not a thing for the STS Missions after they got a certain set of satellites up ! Comms blackout only affects Ground to Craft Direct Comms, but if you route the signal ABOVE the orbiter, then send it to it, comms blackout doesn't happen since the top half of the craft is not engulfed in a plasma bubble, only the bottom half.

The time between the Wright Flyer and the Space Shuttle was 77 years. It is possible for a human being to see the Wright Flyer go 250ft down a beach and watch a plane land from freaking space in one lifetime. Thats pretty incredible.

As a kid I got an opportunity to see and touch a demonstration of the amazing heat shedding shuttle tiles were capable. They brought in a used shuttle tile, heated it to glowing hot orange with a blowtorch, then the moment they took the heat away told us "Touch it." Both times I tried touching it the thing was room temperature. Not even the slightest bit of residual warmth remained. Still blows my mind the level of materials science brought about by the shuttle program.

20:04 When I was in 5th grade my grandpa, who was a retired Air Force pilot, flew me from CA to FL to attend Space Camp. As we were somewhere over AZ my grandpa brought me up front and told me to listen to the controller. We were being told to move over. He had me go look out one of the windows. At first I didn’t see anything interesting as we were above the clouds. Then all of a sudden the Space Shuttle comes through the clouds! It had previously landed at Edwards and was being carried back to FL on the back of a 747. We were left in the dust very quickly, however, those moments were incredible. (Edit: 737 -> 747)

one of my favorites quotes when describing the shuttle during re-entry is that its a "flying brick on approach" from the Clint Eastwood film "Space Cowboys"

One small thing: 177°C = 450K; 980°C = 1253K. So Inconel X can withstand a little less than 3 times the temperature of Aluminium, not more than 5!!! That’s why we always do temperatures in Kelvin 😅

Holy crap has the CGI gotten good on this channel... Congratulations to the production team working on these.

me playing ksp and blowing up 20 of my rockets before 1 successful reentry: "im something of an engineer myself too"

One of the best quotes about the shuttle in the Atlantis exhibit as you go in is "it was like bolting a butterfly to a bullet" in describing its launch configuration

In fourth grade, a NASA engineer was invited to come to my school to hold an assembly where he demonstrated some of the advanced technology NASA was using at that time. At one point, he held up one of the insulating tiles, describing it's function on the space shuttle. He then proceeded to get it brightly glowing hot with a large blow torch. As the tile was heating up, he asked for a volunteer. I immediately raised my hand, and he motioned me to come forward. I stood there for a moment in awe of the glowing white-hot brick in front of me. He picked it up using a thermal glove and asked if I wanted to touch it. I shook my head, no, no, no, and everyone laughed. He winked at me and took my hand and guided it above the still glowing tile. He told me to pick it up off his gloved hand, and to the shock and awe of myself and the rest of the school, I picked it up. It was only slightly warm, and sort of made a slight hissing sound when my skin made contact with it. I was scared, but the fear quickly turned into amazement at what I had just experienced. One of my fondest memories, for sure. It left a lasting impression, to say the least.

I absolutely believe the space shuttle is one of the single most impressive feats of engineering in human history. In addition to the Apollo missions, it's incredible we could do what we did with the tech of that time and have such a high success rate.

The first time I saw an orbiter in person I was completely taken back by the thermal protection system. As a kid, I would write to NASA to get information on the STS (no internet at the time) and would read it over and over, so I knew that the shuttle was not just a painted aluminum aircraft (like it appeared on 80's television). When I first saw it in person at Kennedy the first thing I thought was 'it looks dirty' and pieced together, and not as refined as it did in the photos that I had. It gave me a better appreciation for the careful design, engineering and fabrication that went into it.

The space shuttle really was a marvel of it's time

my dad worked at the company that made those parachutes! I remember him telling a story about testing some of them early in the development period, they went out to a local airfield and tested a scaled down design by attaching it to the rear frame of my dads blazer. From his telling it stopped the car dead in its tracks and nearly tore apart the frame! Side bonus for me as a kid was all expense paid corporate visits to Canaveral to shuttle launches and landings!

I made those thermal blankets with my fellow "Sew Sisters." The correct range of temperatures for those blankets were roughly 650-1200 degrees. The majority of the blankets were about 1/2" thick -Class 4. Most of the orbiter was covered in that thickness. The OMS Pods were covered with Class 10 or 11- approx 1,000-1,200 protection. The blankets were thick in the area because the OMS Pod skin was made of composite materials. NASA required the blankets in that area to be that thickness because the temperature couldn't exceed 350 degrees. Otherwise, it could soften the airframe there.

I've never heard steel being described as 'a poor heat conductor' before. You learn something new every day.

What they managed to achieve with the technology of the time is so remarkable. My all-time favourite spacecraft.

As a child of the 1980s the Shuttle will always have a huge place in my heart. What the kids in the 60s loved about the Apollo missions, I loved as a kid in the 80s with the Shuttle.

These 3d models are unbelievably impressive and really add so much to the explanations.

3:40 A small note here: 177 degrees Celsius for aluminium is not 5 times lower than the 980 degrees Celsius for inconel x, as the Celsius scale continues below 0. Such statements make more sense on the Kelvin scale where 0 is absolute, and if we convert the temperatures it's 450K against 1250K, meaning inconel can only get only 2.8 times hotter, not 5.

Is this a coincidence that the video about re-entry was uploaded on the 1st of February? Because it's the date of the Columbia disaster

Describing the banking procedure of re-entry as "the fastest drift in history" has forever etched in my brain the image of the crew switching on Gas Gas Gas during those portions.

Man, I thought I knew a decent amount about the Shuttle but you taught me a lot on this one! The crossrange considerations of single orbit missions, the deployable Air Data Sensors, how the tiles were made, the inconel intermediate connections, the nomex felt base layer, etc. But especially the reversed aileron control at those speeds and AoA! Outstanding video!

"The space shuttle is doing the fastest drift" Tokyo drift starts playing 😂

The more I learn about the problems they solved, the more I learn what a miracle it is that we got as many successful missions as we did with the Shuttle.

13:10 - on orbit, the shuttle was oriented with the top side facing earth meaning the black underside was the side which faced the sun. The choice of white on top was driven almost entirely by reentry considerations. Because the upper side is only receiving heat radiatively rather than directly, white is the better choice to reject it. Also the vast majority of the white TPS was changed to thermal fabric blankets made of either woven silica fibers or nomex fibers depending on temperature - rigid tiles were almost entirely replaced on the upper side in the 80's.

20:26 Not just the Cape! The USAF wanted it to have the same once-around capability from Vandenberg, too. That's much tougher because the orbital inclination is about double what you get launching from Frorida. In other words, you still need to fly the same distance sideways, but you have to pull twice as hard to make the turn.

I swear this is the coolest shit ever

this fucking channel..makes me delete my bad channels..pure quality, I thank you whoever you are.

For a brick, it flew pretty good!

Love your videos. They are a great source of joy for those of us who are curious about technology! Forgive me for being pedantic, but at 12:04 you state that Inconel is mostly made of steel. Unless this is an alloy I am not familiar with, Inconel is a Nickel based alloy, typically >50% of the composition being Nickel. Thanks again for all your great work in these videos!

The space shuttle was too advanced for its own good 😢 Edit: YAY 1K also nice also pls sub

the thing that amazes me is how many of these materials are now available and even common commercially

What I wish more people would understand is that neither of the two Shuttle losses were due to the orbiter (what everyone thinks of as “the shuttle”). The first was destroyed by the SRB’s, and the second by foam fatally damaging it. The orbiter itself did everything it was asked.

One of my favorite videos of yours. The editing, storytelling, info shared, and the phenomenal renders and animations make this far better than most professional space docs I've seen... and I've seen a lot. Incredible all around!

7:18 The region between a bow show and the body which generates that shock in a supersonic flow is not low pressure. It is actually very high pressure, depending on Mach number. At Mach 7 the pressure in this region is 57 times that of the free stream. At Mach 20, it’s 466 times that of the free stream. This is an elementary concept in supersonic flows. Blunt bodies produce normal shocks and do experience much less aerodynamic heating. But this is primarily due to a reduction in viscous dissipation heating. Source: Fundamentals of Aerodynamics, John D Anderson 12:10 Inconel is not mostly made of steel. Steels are alloys of iron. Inconel is a family of nickel alloys, none of which are mostly steel.

I don’t know why but I cried watching this. As an aerospace engineer I can say without a doubt that this is one of the coolest videos I’ve ever seen. It makes me proud to be in the field I’m in. Thank you for this ✈️🚀

Even though the shuttle didnt achieve its main objective (reuseable shuttle with cheap access to space), it was a massive achievement in Engineering and Aerodynamics. The biggest surprise and something new I learnt from this video was the hypersonic re entry profile and behaviour or airflow in such profile.

Considering the Space Shuttle, Concorde and SR-71 were designed in the ‘60’s and 70’s, I feel like we’ve stagnated in the last few decades in terms of progressing space and flight vehicle development. Why are these 50+ year old platforms still seen as such technological marvels? If the pace of experimentation and development had continued, they should be seen as absolute relics given what should be flying today.

20:39 talks about how shuttle's design was dictated by a mission from cape Canaveral mission but i think that this is supposed to be refrencing a mission from Vandenberg AFB? Scott Manley has a great video about it

This is true over engineering. With such a complex system it’s a miracle we didn’t have more failures with this craft. A finely tuned machine indeed!

I remember watching the shuttle enter the atmosphere, it was at night here, and looked like a fireball passing over Calgary, watching it enter the atmosphere was the most amazing thing I even saw. I also watched live as the shuttle exploded during launch in February of '86, was so shocking it took me a few days to process, I was only 16 years old and had never felt those emotions before. Keep up the awesome videos, your one of the few you tubers I trust the information from.

Was flying back from Miami Fl. to NYC when the captain of our airliner announced the space shuttle would be departing off our right side miles away. I got to see it climb from below and then above our cruising altitude until I couldn't see it anymore. One of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Thank you for the video. I just wanted to comment that this is the first time I not only watched the sponsor video, but found your pitch appealing enough to give it a try. I usually use solidworks, but it has it limitations, let's see how onshape measures up. Kudos!

15:09 communication blackouts were only an issue early in the program. TDRS (tracking and data relay satellites) - launched during early missions - allowed communication upwards, via an antenna in the tail, during entry.

The cross-range requirement was 1100 miles by the Air Force because they wanted the capability to launch into polar trajectory from Vandenberg AFB and land after a single orbit, by which time, Vandenberg would have been 1100 miles further east. This polar orbit requirement was driven by the USAF desire to be able to deploy reconnaissance satellites to cover the Soviet Union, much of which was at high latitudes (which would not be fully covered by the the approx max orbital inclination of about 62 degrees w/ a "dog-leg" maneuver up the east coast), and then land again before the shuttle's presence was detected. Amazing video BTW!

What a lot of people don't know is that in the majority of later missions the shuttles landing was completely autonomous. The commanders insisted on having a role so they were given the task to press the button to lower the landing gear. Of course in an emergency they could take control and were certainly over qualified to land these things manually but the automated system worked so well they most just lowered the landing gear. I loved the Spaced shuttle, John Young and Bob Crippen are still my heroes from 1981.

We need a supercut of this series. Long form content is suprisingly well performing in yt for revenue. Especially if there is decent retention / premium viewers.

@18:33 this is a phenomena of high degrees of AOA not necessarily high altitude or high speed, it has a specific name called adverse yaw. modern flight control systems are now designed to, in high performance planes mostly, to have differential aileron control higher degrees of AOA. the effects of this have actually been mapped by the advisory group for aerospace research and development, AGARD in 1979. their white paper called "high angle of attack aerodynamics" in section 2-6 sub 4.1.1 and accompaning fig 15 for the chart. adverse yaw in traditional configuration begins to happen around 30d of aoa/alpha. before flight control systems basically solved the input problem, pilots were actually trained to change control regime at high alpha, most notably in the F-4 phantom where rudder was used for roll authority in high alpha regimes. a period training video also showing this effect is on youtube called "F-4 flight characteristics TF-6771" and the section on adverse yaw starts at around 10min.

I love the shuttle program. Seeing a launch today generates the same chills and tears it did in the 80s when it first took flight. I have seen numerous documentaries on the shuttle program, and this was one of THE most in-depth analyses of material design and reentry that I have seen to date. Great work. Earned a like and a sub.

Can you imagine the first person to turn right and go left in a super sonic plane? My heart would skip a beat.

As usual, an excellent explanation of a very technical subject. Very well done!

i just want to take a second to appreciate the insane engineering of your 3D animations

I think my fav thing I learned in this was around 8:40. I’ve never seen (read:noticed) the rear body flap on the shuttle, let alone knew it even existed. That’s awesome

Thank you. The animations are incredible. It's brought me back to the early days of why I got into science and engineering.

The thumbnail looks like a giant snail colliding with Earth and now I can't unsee it 😂

I just want to say I’ve always watched your videos but just recently I started watching them to fall asleep and it’s amazing and that’s not me calling your videos boring quite the opposite I find it stimulating enough that it actually relaxes me and I end up having a good night sleep I’ll definitely be subscribing to your other platforms in the near future keep at it !

For certain orbital inclinations the last abort base short of orbit was Kadina AB, Okinawa. In 1982 I helped save a shuttle launch. The Tacan (Tactical Air Navigation System) at Kadina went down and base supply did not have a replacement part. I was working Communications Job Control and Navaids Communications Management Office at Yokota AB, Japan. NCMO Kadina called me to see if we had the part. I woke the NCOIC of Supply in the Communications Group, Elmer Troxel, up in the middle of the night. While Trox worked on getting the part, I called in some IOUs and got it a ride to Kadina. We were working against the clock. If the TACAN at Kadina was not back up in time they would have to scrub that launch. Trox got me the part and I got it a ride. The guys at Kadina got the TACAN back up with 2 hours to spare so the launch proceeded as scheduled. Instead of some sort of commendation medal Trox and I got a letter read at Commander's call. Bit Whoop!

The skill of the designers is absolutely amazing. They thought of so many factors.

I LOVE this series. Thank you!

This is one of the best Space Shuttle videos I've ever seen...

This is an incredible video. Better than anything I've ever seen on the Shuttle, and that includes all the Discovery and other stuff as I was growing up.

What blows my mind about all the cold war era tech between the 60's and 80's is that it was all designed by a group of brilliant engineers working with nothing but a pencil, some draft paper and a calculator. CAD was just in its infancy and may have been used for little 2d sketches here and there but that's about it. Today an engineer could open a cad file, change the heat absorbing material or shape of a wing on a shuttle and run a re-entry simulation in a couple of hours. Make another little tweak then run again. Back then all of that math had to be worked out by hand, hand crafted models built from hand made drawings having tests done in wind tunnels. There was no previous space technology to base your designs on. Everything was all original, you had an idea in a dream, you wrote it down and spent months sketching it out. Engineers in the space program truly must have been some of the most influential geniuses of our time. There is probably so much mechanical tech we use everyday that has its roots in some drawing for some obscure part of a shuttle and we don't even realize it. As JFK once famously said "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard" That spirit is lost on us today and we desperately need it back.

I love what Onshape have been doing so far. And pray that it won't turn rogue on their openness in future.

Bit of a nitpick but the primary amount of radiative heating during reentry wouldn't come from solar radiation but from radiation coming from the reentry plasma.

I've thoroughly enjoyed this series. Thank you so much!

I went the whole video waiting for you to credit the Dyna-Soar/X-20 program for the basics of the shuttle's mission performance. I'm amazed that you failed to mention it once, and seemed to think it was an outgrowth of the X-15. 2:40 The X-15 may have experimentally proven the thermal techniques, but the entire reentry sequence was developed during the Dyna-Soar program. Dyna-Soar did not use ablatives nor the super-fragile tiles. It's main body was made from a Rene 41 (a nickel alloy developed for gas turbine blades, not that different from Inconel) truss covered with Rene 41 panels. On the bottom surface were additional, non-load-bearing panels of columbium that would last ~4 flights before needing replacement. Also, there were only a couple dozen panels, rather than the thousands of tiles on the shuttle. 20:12 The shuttle got it's delta wings from Dyna-Soar as well. Even North American's X-20 proposal was basically an upgraded X-15 with delta wings since that design requirement was already well understood at the time. This let the shuttle designers use the 14,000 hours of wind tunnel testing done on the Dyna-Soar as a starting point, saving years of basic research. 20:55 The whole cross-range requirement was another Dyna-Soar legacy. It's mission was to launch from Florida, fly over the "area of interest" anywhere in the world, gather its intel, then land at Edwards AFB. For the reason you mention, this required a large cross-range capability, and Dyna-Soar could land 1,500 miles (2.500 km) to either side of the ballistic trajectory This is all covered in the book "Dyna-Soar" by Roy Houchin, available on amazon or directly from the publisher: www.arapress.com/dyna-soar-book/

Every time I see a video about space, I always get the interstellar song stuck in my head

Wow, this was an eye-opener for me, who lived through the Shuttle era. Fascinating, thank you.

I have no idea why it was here. But I got to see the space shuttle in Salt Lake City when I was a kid. It was flying piggy backed on a 747. They were flying low, and looked absolutely massive in the sky. I was nowhere near a direct flight path to the airport, which I imagine they were on. I could clearly make out the shuttle with its tail cone attached, and even see the black and white color scheme in spite of looking west against the evening sun. Cool memory.

I really appreciate the correct term of “orbiter” being used instead of the often misused “shuttle,” which is the booster that gets the orbiter into, well, orbit.

18:47 Wow, even as a pilot I didn't know this. Amazing!!

Very informative video. Really interesting to learn about some of the Space Shuttle's engineering problems and the brilliant solutions devised to deal with them. With all the perils involved, you really had to be a brave soul to crew one of these things.

Brilliant job on this video, thanks for doing this; I doubt we'll ever see a vehicle like this again.

this made my day thx

Those Delta wings literally carried the whole thing, what a feat of engineering...

Your videos are incredibly mind blowing. Thank you for the meticulous details and visuals.

The human ingenuity, craftsmanship, perseverance and teamwork that has to go into a project like this is something that gives me hope for humanity. Despite all the disagreements that they can have, when they want to, people can come together and make something like this. Even airliners, fighter jets, space telescopes etc. It's amazing that we manage to do these things. Also your videos on these things are epic. Doing Ireland proud :)

This answered so many questions I had about the shuttles. Thank you!

The true masterpiece of space

I find the ceramic tiles details fascinating like a work of art to me. A bit like a finely crafted watch. Made with precision and exactitude in mind.

Our family was heavily involved in yacht racing on both coasts. I love it when we had a gaggle of engineers as crew. They simply can't sit on their asses. They are constantly fiddling with something trying to squeeze another 1/17 th of a knot out of the hull 😂

My dad worked for Rockwell and helped construct the space shuttles.

This was a great series. I knew the Shuttle was complex but wow this makes it even that much more incredible this thing was built and worked. Truly amazing machine.

Entering the Ertz atmosphere at turty times the speed of sound is incredible! For real, love the channel and you always get a like from this subscriber!

The animations are top notch

At 24:00 is mentioned the "runway at Cape Canaveral", but is showing footage of somewhere with mountains, probably Edwards AFB or White Sands.

I think I was never so excited for a youtube video until I saw this series! Please keep you insane work up! :)

From 1984 to 1992 I grew up around Edwards Air Force Base. I was lucky enough to have witnessed the shuttle landing many times.

21:54 Who remembers The Krypton Factor finals where the contestants got to land the Shuttle in the specialized simulator? I was so _jealous._ 💚😒

This is some of your best work yet, B. Be proud, you took all these things, highly complex and uniquely derivative and put it across clear as day, in a solid engaging pace, with enough nuance so everyone can get a taste of the difficulty and ingenuity involved. While ALSO leaving enough detail, eg with the different unique types of metallurgy involved, that essentially act as a trail of candy for sparked curiosity. I can see this playing in every English speaking middle school world over. Seriously, bravo.

I love his voice, something about it is just so welcoming and makes learning about these topics so much easier

Just wanted to say one thing, great renders dude. Really high quality production!

3:45 - 1650 degrees Celsius is not ten times greater than 170 degrees. It's less than five times greater.

I remember going to Kennedy Space Center when I was a kid in the 90s. They did a live demonstration of a space shuttle tile. The guy turned on a blow torch on one side of the tile and put his hand on the other side.

The quality of CGI in this video is absolutely mind blowing!! Thank you for creating such a perfectly done educational video!

well done on this series, thanks!

The space shuttle was a answer looking for a problem

Space Shuttle Colombia disintegrated during re-entry because of damage to thermal protection tiles. Re-entry is dangerous. Thanks to this video I become more appreciative to how NASA is able to make Space Shuttle acted like a plane after re-entry, a feat that is not repeated even until today.