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Two quibbles with the question: 17500 is roughly orbital speed in miles per hour, not km/h It's probably best not to discuss it in terms of "leaving the Earth's atmosphere". The shuttle never really …

Attitude control during first stage was achieved by SRB thrust vector control. The large distance between the nozzles and the high thrust levels meant that the SRB TVC had enormous control authority. …

It was built solely for display at KSC's visitor center, as described in the Wikipedia article you reference, and in this article about Orbiter mockups. Explorer was built primarily for display an …

tl;dr The Space Shuttle mission numbers were assigned in numerical order of their planned launch sequence.1 When that sequence changed, the mission numbers were not changed. The Shuttles and their …

The Space Transportation System was intended to provide the United States with a low-cost, reliable means of transportation into low Earth orbit. The expectation was that all United States space laun …

Supplemental answer to this un-addressed part of the question "Were the shuttles capable of back-to-back missions?" It happened throughout the program. More frequently early on as orbiters were intro …

The IBM laptops were flown unmodified and a special "brick" was used to convert the Orbiter 28 VDC to the regular power supply voltage and current used by the laptops. The "brick" is shown as DC PWR …

The Delta-V for most OMS 1 & 2 burns performed during the Space Shuttle program is available in the ever-useful Space Shuttle Missions Summary document in the LAUNCH SITE LIFTOFF TIME column. For exam …

Supplementary answer because I like pictures. Here's a schematic of the APU system. You can see the 3 exhaust ducts at the top, two on one side of where the vertical tail goes, one on the other. This …

That comment is incomplete, the first two Orbiters (Columbia and Challenger) always had a nosewheel steering system (NWS)...but it was only used for the first 4 missions, and got turned off for years …

The sparks are emitted by pyrotechnic devices called technically Radial Outward Firing Igniters (ROFIs) and colloquially "sparklers". The startup sequence of the Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs) cau …

There were metal halide floodlights in the payload bay floor and one on the forward bulkhead pointing towards the bay. Reference: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/stsref-toc. …

Here's the normal orbit configuration for the Orbiter's Pressure Control System (PCS). ~850 psi O2 (yellow) flows in from the cryogenic tanks (also used to feed the fuel cells) in the Orbiter midbody …

No actually flown Shuttle mission executed such a quick timeline. The likelihood of crewmembers experiencing Space Adaptation Syndrome would have made it...interesting. Crews were trained throughout …

This graph shows the "base force" which is a force produced by pressure differential due to propulsion plume effects acting on the vehicle. This effect was poorly predicted in tests and calculations …