Here are some pictures of me inside and around the Space Shuttle Endeavor

Here I am with the "bunny suit" just prior to entering the cockpit of the Space Shuttle Endeavor. The entire cockpit is a clean room environment and you have to go through decontamination and then don the bunny suit before you can enter it.	As soon as you enter the cabin the first thing you notice is this large rack of computer equipment that is in the fore of the compartment. The actual cockpit where the shuttle is piloted from it directly above this compartment.	All of this computer equipment put together has the processing power of a 386! Why so low? Two reasons, low power consumption on the batteries and very rugged.
Climbing up into the pilot's cabin you can look back through a window into the payload bay.	And here is the control center for the Space Shuttle. The lights are deliberately kept dark to protect the displays.	And here's me with a stupid grin on my face because I am sitting in the captain's chair where the shuttle is piloted from during reorbit and landing.
And me with my hand on the flight control stick.	Here we brought in some artificial light so that you can see the new "glass" cockpit. It is called a glass cockpit because all of the analog displays have been replaced by digital readouts and touchscreens.	This is a look down through an emergency exit hatch.
Another cool shot of the instrumentation.	And another cool shot out into the payload bay.	Back downstairs (or down ladder as the case may be) this is the doorway into the payload bay. This door is only about five feet across. See all of the blue squares? That's velcro that is used to secure things to the walls, like sleeping crew members.
Here is Endeavor close up from the outside.	I bet you thought that the Space Shuttle had a smooth exterior didn't ya? Well, in actuality the outter surface is sewn and fitted over the body of the shuttle like a giant suit. It is made up of some serious high tech components to protect it from space debris and the burn of orbital re-entry.	After each window is checked for microscopic scratches these big and heavy lead plates are put over them to protect them from light and dust and to keep things from falling onto the windows which could damage them.
Here you can see the Orbital Maneuvering Jets covered up. To maneuver in space the Orbiter squirts small amount of Anhydrous Ammonia and Nitrogen Tetraoxide together inside these jets. When they combine they explode and the jets direct the explosions to manuever the Orbiter.	Another shot from the side.	Here you can see the nose cone poking out in the background. The nosecone of each shuttle is made from a solid piece of carbon to protect it from space debris and from the extreme heat generated upon orbital re-entry.
And here I am underneath Endeavor looking at some of the 36,000 heat shielding tiles. Each tile is custom made and labeled to fit like a jigsaw puzzle. They have a specific position and will work nowhere else and none others will work where it is. Each of these tiles is capable of being heated in a 2000 degree oven until red hot and they are so good at disapating heat that you can pick it up bare handed while it is still glowed red right out of the oven!	And this is the board that is located outside the room where all Orbiter processing takes place, hence the name OPF, Orbiter Processing Facility.	When we talk of the Space Shuttle we think of the glider portion that docks with the Space Station and glides back to Earth when the mission is over. In actuality that is just the Orbiter. Technically the Space Shuttle means the Orbiter, the External Tank, and the Solid Rocket boosters.

Other tidbits of nifty information.

The huge orange tank that the Orbiter is attached to at liftoff contains only two things, Hydrogen and Oxygen. These are combined together inside the Orbiter's three main engines to provide additional thrust during take off.

Each of the Orbiter's three main engines generates 500,000 pounds of thrust.

The combustion chamber of each of the Orbiter's main engines is only 10 inches in diameter!

There is a gridwork of tubes around each nozzle of the three main engines which liquid Hydrogen is pumped through to keep the nozzles cool enough during launches so as not to melt.

Each of the Orbiter's main engines has its own fuel pump to get oxygen and hydrogen from the external tank to the engine. These pumps are so powerful that each one could drain an olympic sized swimming pool in 20 seconds!

The external tank used to be painted white. They determined that they could save weight by just leaving it unpainted. It saved them 3000 pounds!

It costs an average of $10,000 per pound to launch items in the Space Shuttle.

The Space Shuttle stack, when sitting on the lauch pad, weighs over six million pounds!

When going from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad on the back of the Crawler the stack travels at a blazing 1 mile per hour.

The Shuttle stack and the Mobile Launch Paltform and the crawler that carries them to the launch pad weighs over ten million pounds.

The crawler is driven by electric motors powered by four giant diesel generators.

Each tread of the four tracks on on the Crawler weighs 1 ton.

The track that the Crawler uses to get to the Launch pad is two parallel pits of gravel that are 15 feet wide and 7 feet deep to disperse the weight enough so that it won't sink into the ground.