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Asked by to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 29 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by .
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Paige Brown answered on 29 Jun 2012:
That is a good question!! Hopefully you would keep enough fuel on board not to run out! But you know what else is plentiful in space? Sunlight!! If you kept solar panels on the space shuttle pointed at the sun, you’d have plenty of energy that wouldn’t run out, because there is no ‘night’ in space!
There are currently some solar panels being installed on space shuttles! http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2009-03-18-shuttle-docking_N.htm
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SarahJayne Boulton answered on 29 Jun 2012:
This almost actually happened on the Apollo 13 mission. There was an explosion on the spaceship that caused the ship to lose 2 of their 3 fuel cells, and 1 of their oxygen tanks, while the other oxygen tank bled out into space. The final fuel cell needed a bit of oxygen to stay on, so they had to rescue the oxygen tank to survive. The explosion was caused by the engineers changing the voltage of a tank heater without making sure the switches could cope with it.
Solar panels on a space shuttle are totaly the best idea, we just need to make them as efficient at converting solar energy to electrocal energy as possible (right now they aren’t so good – but they’re getting better!) We’d also need a way to store the energy for time when we’re not near enough to a start to harvest energy, haha, I just imagined all the starts as like little intergalactic petrol stations for spaceships. Awesome.
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Gemma Staite answered on 1 Jul 2012:
Personally if I was on a space shuttle that ran out of fuel, I think there’s a good chance I’d have a heart attack. Admittedly it might not be the best response, but not sure my body would cope with the stress of that one.
But, solar panels is a fantastic solution
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