Just for Fun: Paper Shuttle Glider
Assemble & test-fly your own space shuttle glider with this at-home activity from NASA!
Background information:
A glider is a special kind of aircraft that has no engine. In flight, a glider has three forces acting on it: lift, drag, and weight. A powered aircraft has an engine that generates one more force—thrust—which does not act on an engine-less glider.
There are many different types of glider aircraft, both piloted and unpiloted. Paper airplanes are the simplest kind of unpiloted glider. Some people make toy gliders out of balsa wood or Styrofoam. Hang-gliders (first photo in slideshow below) are piloted aircraft that are launched by leaping off the side of a hill or by being towed. The Wright Brothers perfected the design of the first airplane and gained piloting experience through a series of glider flights from 1900 to 1903 (second photo in the slideshow below).
Space shuttles (like the Discovery, seen in third photo) act as gliders during reentry and landing. During ascent, thrust is provided to the shuttle by three Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME's) at the base of the orbiter and the two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB's) that are joined to the orange External Fuel Tank (ET). The solids are jetisioned about two minutes into the ascent, and the fuel tank is jetisioned as the shuttle enters Earth’s orbit. So there are no propellants available to the SSME's during descent and, though the engines are still present, the shuttle returns as an unpowered glider.
Have you tried landing the scale-model Discovery Shuttle at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center? It’s harder than it looks! Learn more about NASA’s shuttle program here.
Design and test your own paper glider!
Materials required:
Computer printer
Cardstock
Scissors
Tape or glue
