transcription, транскрипция: [ ˈʃʌtl ]
noun (Science and Technology) More fully, space shuttle: a rocket-launched space vehicle with wings, enabling it to land like an aircraft and be used repeatedly. Etymology: A specialized use of shuttle in the sense of 'transport which plies backwards and forwards between two points'; the spacecraft is designed to be able to shuttle between the Earth and a space station or other destination in space. History and Usage: The first mention of a shuttle to take people to and from space was a fictional one: in a story in New Worlds in 1960, John Wyndham wrote: The acceleration in that shuttle would spread you all over the floor. It was at the end of the sixties that the US space agency NASA first started to plan a real space shuttle, a re-usable and relatively inexpensive spacecraft that could be used to ferry people and materials to and from a space station. The idea was that the shuttle would be fired vertically, but would shed its fuel tanks in space and would then re-enter the atmosphere and glide to a horizontal landing on a runway like that used by an aircraft. The shuttle which resulted from NASA's programme (officially known as the Space Transportation System or STS) made its maiden flight in 1981, and looked very much as had been envisaged at the beginning of the project: an aircraft-like winged orbiter, protected by heat-resistant materials so that it did not burn up on re-entering the atmosphere, and riding 'piggyback' on the fuel tank and booster rockets. During the eighties four US shuttles (Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis) were put into service--principally to launch and repair orbiting satellites and to carry out experiments in the Spacelab--and news reports of shuttle flights became commonplace. When, in 1986, Challenger exploded shortly after take-off, killing the seven astronauts on board, the US shuttle programme was temporarily halted, but it was resumed towards the end of the decade. A number of other countries developed shuttle programmes during the eighties. The NASA concept for an advanced shuttle...could bridge the gap between the present fleet and the horizontally-launched National Aerospace Plane single stage to orbit (SSTO) vehicle planned for the next century. Physics Bulletin Mar. 1987, p. 91 Mac...argued...against NASA's space monopoly and its 40 percent subsidy to users of the space shuttle. Robert & Elizabeth Dole Unlimited Partners (1988), p. 261