how much.....?

Question

fuel does it take to lauch a space shuttle into orbit? i learned last week on 'answers' that a 747 uses roughly 4000 gallons per hour. it's capacity is 54,000 gallons. so thats a lot, but a space shuttle rocket blasts its way into space, and that has to use a bunch of gas. how much?

Answer 1

No fuel at all. When Chuck Norris sings the national Anthem, the shuttle gloriously rises into space.

Answer 2

Taken from how stuff works...
External Fuel Tank
As mentioned above, the fuel for the main engines is stored in the ET. The ET is 158 ft (48 m) long and has a diameter of 27.6 ft (8.4 m). When empty, the ET weighs 78,000 lb (35,455 kg). It holds about 1.6 million lb (719,000 kg) of propellant with a total volume of about 526,000 gallons (2 million liters).

Answer 3

If I am not mistaken, they don't use fuel as aeroplanes do but use other types of energy which weighs less but can last long. Sooner or later, we should be able to use 'helium' which is a very light gas that is colorless and smelless, subject to successful completion of our space exploration! This may take several scores of years if not centuries!!

Answer 4

did you consider that the shuttle fuel is liquid oxygen, and hydrogen? ouch when they combine, there is a lot of energy released, but the only by product is H2O (yeah hydrogen2 oxygen) better known as water...
SO what you need is the volume of the O2 tanks, and the volume of the H tanks, then the density of liquified O2 and Liquifed H. then it is your basic volume/density math. I mean hey, its not like its rocket science....

Answer 5

That huge orange tank that you see strapped to the shuttle at take off is the fuel tank. I'm not sure how much it is, but it is not fossil fuel; it is a hydrogen fuel.

Answer 6

A lot!!!!