On Mon, 1 Jul 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Anyone know why the main tank has a rounded bottom .vs. cone? My
> guess was the added mass and difficulty flowing the H2 into the
> shuttle overwhelmed the potential lower drag.
The tank is generally not anything that would be called a low-drag shape,
at least not at supersonic speeds. Too fat, too blunt. Structural mass
obviously dominated drag issues. Indeed, Sutton7 has a table breaking
down the shuttle delta-V requirements, showing only 118m/s of drag loss
out of a total of 9633m/s required for ascent (408m/s of which is
contributed by the Earth's rotation).
Henry Spencer
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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