Questions about Space Shuttle

Short answers, pulled from the story.

What is the Space Shuttle?

The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program name was the Space Transportation System, taken from the 1969 plan led by U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew for a system of reusable spacecraft where it was the only item funded for development. The Space Shuttle was the first operational orbital spacecraft designed for reuse.

When did the Space Shuttle first launch?

The Space Shuttle launched for the first time on the 12th of April 1981, and was piloted by John Young and Robert Crippen. The first of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights beginning in 1982. The Space Shuttle program ran from 1981 to 2011 with a total of 135 missions.

How many Space Shuttle orbiters were built and what happened to them?

Five complete Space Shuttle orbiter vehicles were built and flown on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. Two were lost in mission accidents: Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003, with a total of 14 astronauts killed. A fifth operational orbiter, Endeavour, was built in 1991 to replace Challenger, and the three surviving operational vehicles were retired from service following Atlantis's final flight on the 21st of July 2011.

Where are the Space Shuttle orbiters currently displayed?

Atlantis is on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, Discovery is on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, Endeavour is on display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, and Enterprise is displayed at the Intrepid Museum in New York. Components from the orbiters were transferred to the US Air Force, ISS program, and Russian and Canadian governments.

What was the total cost of the Space Shuttle program?

The overall NASA budget of the Space Shuttle program has been estimated to be $221 billion in 2012 dollars. Accounting for the entire Space Shuttle program budget, the per-launch cost was $1.642 billion in 2012. The Space Shuttle fleet's total mission time was 1,323 days.

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