It made its public debut at the California Science Center on Oct. 30, 2012 at a temporary display until 2017 when it will be in the center's new home, mounted vertically with an external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters and with one of the orbiter's payload bay doors open.
Mounted on twin pallets in Atlantis's payload bay are two spare gyroscopes, used to control the space station's orientation in space, a high-pressure oxygen tank for the lab's airlock, and a spare pump module, ammonia coolant and nitrogen that will be needed at some point by the station's cooling system.
The Air Force had substituted other equipment for Mr. Cantrell's payload.
These included the first attempt to convert the space shuttle's external tank into an orbiting space station, one of the first efforts at building a private spaceplane to compete with the shuttle, and a successful company, Spacehab, that built and flew experimental modules in the shuttle's payload bay.
"It's just a payload delivery system with extra stealth".
The B-52's carried payloads of 500-pound gravity bombs, called Mark-82, which are more traditional explosives intended to kill massed troops, to destroy tanks or other weapons or to level structures like those found at military training camps or to gut airstrips.
But getting there and returning home on one tank of gas while carrying a sizable payload is almost impossible.
In this study, a FEM optimisation procedure has been developed in order to both increase payload (by decreasing tank mass) and improve aerodynamic and controllability (by increasing global flexural stiffness).
The final design was built out of lightweight materials like carbon fiber and Kevlar, weighing a total of 55 pounds (closer to 150 with payload and a tank full of gas).
A launch vehicle thus comprises one or more rocket engines; fuel for those engines carried in fuel tanks; guidance, navigation, and control systems; a payload; and a structure housing all of these elements, to which extra engines may be attached for added lift.
Could be a side-mount rocket like the Shuttles, with a tank-and-booster set flanked by a payload pod jammed full of cargo-or a space capsule with astronauts in tow.
