The 50th anniversary of the first human space flight comes at a bittersweet moment in the history of space travel. After exactly 30 years of ferrying astronauts and equipment into orbit, the space shuttle era is coming to an end. Private spaceflight companies are hard at work designing new ways to get into space, but there’s no ready replacement for the shuttle when it retires. NASA’s budget is in flux (along with the rest of the country’s finances), and the future of American spaceflight is fuzzier than it’s ever been.

With all this uncertainty, technologist and space historian David Baker...

The following is an excerpt from the new book NASA Space Shuttle Owners’ Workshop Manual.

Chapter 3: Anatomy of the Space Shuttle

The Shuttle Orbiter is a reusable vehicle intended to carry astronauts and cargo to and from space. It is about the size of a DC-9 airliner and is designed to survive the rigors of launch and landing, including vibration, high acoustic levels from the rocket engines, high levels of acceleration and various heat loads on different parts of the structure. The layout is dominated by just two requirements – to carry a design payload of up to 65,000 lb to orbit, and to f...