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Space Lingo 101: Quick Guide to NASA Acronym-Speak (Part I)
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Shuttle patch on NASA Info documents/NASA
If you're trying to keep up with space news, you've probably discovered that it sounds like space insiders speak an entirely different language. In fact, they do.
The use of acronyms has led to long-standing jokes among space hands that it's possible to hold entire conversations with no more than a word or two of normal English. That's asolutely true (been there, done that!).
But translating the space lingo isn't that hard, once you have a guide. Occasionally, I'll post a quick guide to some of the acronyms you're likely to encounter in following space news.
Let's start with a few basics.
STS -Space Ttransportation System. That's the formal way of saying "space shuttle". You'll see it used like this: STS-125. The numbers are a code to identify shuttle missions. Note: they don't necessarily launch in numerical order. (A mystery I'll unravel in a later guide.)
KSC-Kennedy Space Center, America's manned space launch facility. Every manned American mission, from Mercury through Apollo to the Space Shuttle has flown from KSC.
JSC-Johnson Space Center, where Mission Control guides and directs missions once they're in-flight. If you watched Tom Hanks' "From the Earth to the Moon", you'll see a lot of mission control stories.
VAB-Vehicle Assembly Building at KSC, but don't be surprised if you hear older space veterans refer to the "Vertical Assembly Building", which was its name during Apollo days. The VAB is where the orbiter "goes vertical" to be mated with its rocket and fuel tank stack. It's an amazing building and is one of the largest by volume in the world. It encloses 129,428,000 cubic feet (3,666,930 cubic meters) of space. It covers 8 acres (3.2 hectares), is 525 feet tall (160 meters), 716 feet long (218 meters); and 518 feet wide (158 meters).
OPF-Orbiter Processing Facility. The garages at KSC where technicians work on space shuttles before they're towed to the VAB for mating with the stack.
ET--External tank. It's the gas tank for the Space Shuttle. It has three components and at launch carries 526,126 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. It's the only part of the STS assembly that isn't re-used, and is jettisoned at about eight and one-half minutes of flight. It burns up in the atmosphere and any remnants fall into the Pacific Ocean, far from land.
SRB(s)-Solid Rocket Booster(s). A pair of SRBs, fully loaded with propellant, weigh about 1.4 million pounds (635,040 kilograms) apiece. They stand 149.2 feet (45.5 meters) tall, and have a diameter of 12 feet (3.6 meters). The boosters in use today are the largest solid propellant motors ever developed for space flight and the first to be used on a manned space vehicle. These boosters will propel the orbiter to a speed of 3,512 miles per hour (5,652 kilometers per hour). The re-usable SRBs jettisoned at about two minutes of flight.
ISS-the International Space Station. Assembly began in 1998, and has required numerous spacewalks from astronauts. The first full-time resident crew entered the station on November 2, 2000. The ISS is a joint project of the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, and the eleven European countries of the European Space Agency (ESA). Three crew members, called "Expedition" teams, live onboard the ISS full-time.
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