LA LOS ANGELES (Oct. 13, 2012) Without any additional modifications, a Toyota Tundra half-ton pickup truck successfully hauled the space shuttle Endeavour and a specially made dolly, weighing a combined total of approximately 300,000 pounds, across a bridge over the busiest motorway in the country on Friday, October 12. The tow was the outcome of a 20-year collaboration between Toyota and the California Science Center to promote public education about the space program through exhibits and activities.
The shuttle travels through city streets for 12 miles, crossing the 405 Freeway once on the way to its new location at the California Science Center. The Tundra helped tow the Endeavour across the Manchester Boulevard Bridge, which needed a different towing setup than the rest of the trip in order to distribute weight more evenly. To create a dolly to transfer the Endeavour across the bridge, Toyota conducted significant testing and collaborated with the Sarens Group, a heavy lifting and engineering transport company.
Michael Rouse, Toyota’s vice president of community affairs and philanthropy, said, “We’ve partnered with the California Science Center since the early ’90s as part of our ongoing commitment to inspiring youth in the fields of engineering, innovation, and future technology. We are honored to lend our support to this historic event.
The model chosen was a factory 2012 Tundra CrewMax 44 powered by a 381 horsepower, 5.7-liter Toyota iForce V8. Only at Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Texas in San Antonio are all Tundra trucks made. No modifications or unique gear were made to the truck before it was bought from a Toyota dealer in Southern California to tow the Endeavour.
Matt McBride, a veteran Toyota professional driver, was operating the Tundra. Garrett Reisman, one of the astronauts on board the orbiter during its 2008 trip to the International Space Station, was traveling alongside. It took around five minutes to traverse the bridge from beginning to end.
Garrett Reisman, an engineer and former NASA astronaut, stated, “I’m honored to be a part of the space shuttle Endeavour’s final trip to the California Science Center. ” I appreciate Toyota’s assistance in bringing this space icon to the people of Southern California.
The Science Center includes a well-liked functional exhibit that uses a Tundra to show the principles of leverage. When the Endeavour display debuts on October 30, 2012, the current truck will be swapped out for a Tundra.
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Was the space shuttle indeed towed by the Tundra?
On Friday, October 12, an unmodified 2012 Tundra pulled the massive space shuttle across an I-405 bridge in Los Angeles. The trip took around five minutes. Given that its maximum towing capacity is only 10,000 lb, the Tundra’s accomplishment was all the more impressive. It is powered by a 5.7-liter V8 with 381 horsepower.
The space shuttle was hauled by what Toyota.
Last night in Inglewood, California, a Toyota Tundra pickup pulled the defunct space shuttle Endeavour across a motorway bridge in a publicity coup that highlighted Toyota’s ties to the United States.
From Los Angeles International Airport, the shuttle is making its way windingly toward a museum close to downtown Los Angeles. It is being towed the majority of the way by a tractor on top of a sophisticated vehicle. However, the crews had to lessen the load for roughly 100 yards in order to bring it over the Manchester Avenue overpass and across the San Diego Freeway.
Toyota has been preparing for the transition for months, as we have previously stated. We discovered last night that the operation’s internal code name, Blue Ox, was actually given by executives, and that training for the move, which would cover around 100 yards, started months ago.
In fact, the reason for the short wait before the draw was mostly to set up workers and equipment for the Toyota television ad that is being shot. At one point, a director instructed staff to impersonate an inspection of the rig carrying the shuttle. He requested, “Give me a few of guys in front of the tow hitch.”
Silver truck with 2-foot-tall Tundra letters printed on the side, this vehicle pulled the trailer. The words “Born in America” were printed on the front, making it plain that Toyota, a Japanese automaker, is attempting to utilize the shuttle pull to once more try to convince Americans that it is an American manufacturer. San Antonio is where the Tundra is produced.
Pulling the 292,000-pound trailer turned out to be simple, despite months of effort. The engine seldom ever even made high revs. A few hundred people started chanting “USA, USA” when the truck began to pull the shuttle with ease while in low four-wheel drive.
How far was the space shuttle pulled by the Tundra?
From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to the research center, Endeavour will travel 12 miles (19 kilometers) on city streets with the Tundra towing the shuttle for the final 0.1 miles (400 meters).
The space shuttle weighed how much?
A shuttle weighs 4,500,000 pounds and is 184 feet tall when fully constructed. The bay is large enough to accommodate a school bus or 50,000 pounds of payload because it is 15 feet in diameter and 60 feet long.
How much does a space shuttle weigh when it is empty?
The empty weight of the Space Shuttle was 165,000 pounds. Its two solid rocket boosters each weighed 185,000 pounds when empty, and its external tank weighed 78,100 pounds. 1.1 million pounds of fuel were contained in each solid rocket booster. The exterior tank contained 383,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and 143,000 gallons of liquid oxygen, totaling 1,359,000 pounds (226,000 pounds). Nearly 20 times as much fuel as the Space Shuttle. The weight of the entire launch systemthe Shuttle, external tank, solid rocket boosters, and fuelwas 4.4 million pounds. The payload capacity of the Shuttle was 65,000 pounds.
What does a gallon of rocket fuel cost?
In reality, they increased the volume a little bit past full blast. The RS-25 burned through 60,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and 150,000 liters of liquid oxygen during the 535-second test. As a result, the engine quickly overcame its approved maximum sea-level output and reached 109 percent of its rated capacity, or 512,000 pounds of “vacuum thrust.”
A NASA fact page states that the cost of LOX and LH propellant to the agency is roughly $1.65 per gallon. So, approximately speaking, the cost to the taxpayers of the test firing last month was around $346,500, or $647.66 per second over the course of a nine-minute test.
The amount of fuel used by space shuttles
A fantastic new movie shows what rocket launches would look like if the rockets were fully transparent, giving an awesome sight of how much fuel is burnt by four distinct rockets from launch to the various stage separations.
The Space Launch System (SLS) rockets are being launched from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39, and the animation from YouTuber Hazegrayart contrasts the four rockets: the Saturn V, the Space Shuttle, the Falcon Heavy, and the SLS rockets.
The video has fantastic audio of significant moments for each rocketsounds that any rocket enthusiast will recognize!
As the fuel is burned to launch the rockets into orbit, the footage shows the fuel tanks being drained. Different types of fuel are color-coded:
Do they use a lot of fuel? The biggest gas guzzler is, of course, the Saturn V, a three-stage launch vehicle utilized by NASA from 1967 to 1973 for the Apollo program and the most potent rocket ever launched.
Despite the fact that the amount of fuel used varied depending on the mission, on average 4,578,000 pounds (2,076,545 kg) of fuel was consumed. It could launch a payload weighing 107,100 lb (48,600 kg) to the Moon and hoist a payload weighing 310,000 lb (140,000 kg) into low Earth orbit.
How much fuel does it take to launch a space shuttle, in gallons?
The total amount consumed is around 250,000 gallons (2,580,000 pounds). Small amounts are also needed to create the orbiter’s breathable environment on board. 2. A four-tank set of the purer, more expensive oxygen used in the Shuttle PRSDS requires 327 gallons (2,340 pounds) of fuel per trip.
How many shuttles have exploded?
Research the space shuttle program more. After 135 missions, including the disastrous disasters of Challenger in 1986 (opens in new tab) and Columbia in 2003, which resulted in the deaths of a total of 14 astronauts, the space shuttle program was shut down in July 2011.
Amount of lost space shuttles
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) operated the Space Shuttle, a decommissioned, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system, from 1981 to 2011 as part of the Space Shuttle program. The moniker Space Transportation System (STS), which was adopted from a 1969 proposal for a network of reusable spacecraft in which it was the only component funded for development, served as the official program name. Four orbital test flights were conducted, starting with the first (STS-1) in 1981, and operational flights (STS-5) started in 1982. From 1981 through 2011, a total of 135 flights were launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) using five full Space Shuttle orbiter vehicles. Operational missions included the launching of several satellites, planetary probes, and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), as well as the performance of science experiments in orbit and participation in the Shuttle-Mir program with Russia (ISS). Total mission time for the Space Shuttle fleet was 1,323 days.
The Orbiter Vehicle (OV) with its three clustered Rocketdyne RS-25 main engines, two recoverable solid rocket boosters (SRBs), and the expendable external tank (ET) with liquid oxygen and hydrogen are all parts of the Space Shuttle. The two SRBs were used in tandem with the three main engines of the orbiter, which were powered by the ET, to launch the Space Shuttle vertically, like a typical rocket. While the main engines were still running, the SRBs were destroyed before the spacecraft entered orbit, and the ET was destroyed shortly before orbit insertion using the orbiter’s two Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines. The orbiter fired its OMS to deorbit and reenter the atmosphere at the end of the mission. The orbiter glided as a spaceplane to a runway landing, often at the Shuttle Landing Facility at KSC in Florida or at Rogers Dry Lake in Edwards Air Force Base in California. The orbiter was shielded during reentry by its thermal protection system tiles. If the landing took place at Edwards, the orbiter was transported back to the KSC aboard the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), a Boeing 747 that had undergone special modifications.
Enterprise, the first orbiter, was created in 1976 and utilized in ALTs (approach and landing tests), although it lacked orbital capabilities. At first, four fully functional orbitersColumbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantiswere constructed. Two of themthe Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003were lost in mission mishaps, with a combined death toll of 14 astronauts. Endeavour, the sixth orbiter overall and fifth operational, was created in 1991 to replace Challenger. After Atlantis, the three functioning vehicles that were still in use were retired.