NASA Space Shuttle Owners' workshop Manual - 1981 onwards (all models)

An insight into the design, construction and operation of the NASA Space Shuttle

Designed between 1969 and 1972 and first flown into space in 1981, the NASA Shuttle will have flown almost 140 missions by the time it is retired in 2010. David Baker describes the origin of the reusable launch vehicle concept during the 1960s, its evolution into a viable flying machine in the early 1970s, and its subsequent design, engineering, construction and operation. The Shuttle's internal layout and systems are explained, including the operation of life support, electrical power production, cooling, propulsion, flight control, communications, landing and avionics systems.

Part glider, part spacecraft, the Shuttle was designed between 1969 and 1972 and first flown into space in 1981. By the time it makes its last flight later this year, the Shuttle will have flown almost 140 missions.

Author of the NASA Space Shuttle Manual, David Baker, joined the US space programme during the Apollo years and later worked on the development of NASA's Shuttle. He uses his personal experience to describe the origins of the reusable launch vehicle concept during the 1960s, its evolution into a viable flying machine in the early 1970s, and its subsequent design, engineering, construction and operation. The Shuttle's internal layout and systems are explained, including the operation of life support, electrical power production, cooling, propulsion, flight control, communications, landing and avionics systems.

The Shuttle, with its many and varied activities, makes a stunning subject for the camera - a feast of dramatic photographs supports the Haynes NASA Space Shuttle Manual, drawn from NASA's official archives.

It is a measure of the Shuttle's longevity that in the final years of its flight operations very few technicians working to prepare it for launch at the Kennedy Space Center knew much about its origin, or the sweat and tears offered up when it was designed more than 40 years ago.

Very few of the young engineers working on it were even born when it first flew! Yet anyone who has stood alongside, let alone sat inside, this living, breathing entity, hissing, popping, seeming to breathe life from the very depths of its interior, can have failed to have been moved by the sheer scale of this remarkable aerospace achievement; in every essence, to the very last, an