Shuttle...

[mountainman]

The rockets used during the Apollo missions, Saturn V's I believe, were darned impressive too.

363 feet tall, with attachments, generating 7 & 1/2 million pounds of thrust, to help propel a space craft and lunar lander at over 3200 miles an hour, while trying to hit a target 240,000 statute mile away. BIG WOW.

[Spence]

Yeah, they strapped those guys into a huge bomb and blasted it off. It took some guts to be the first to enter that thing.

[colorado_loves_football]

There have been 95 delays up through flight #93.

The launch did not take place on the first attempt 54 out of those 93 flights. So, it's more like 56% than 2% =]

Good thought, though. I had never even bothered to look that up before. Surprising numbers, really.

STS-73 was delayed 7 times. First attempt was 09/28/95 and it finally launched on 10/20/95. It's the most delayed flight (in number of attempts) in the Shuttle programs' history.

STS-33 (Challenger on it's last flight) was delayed 6 times before finally launching. First attempt was on 01/23/86. An attempt was made every day until it finally launched on 01/28/86.

Sorry guys, I missed this thread, earlier. The Challenger launch was scrubbed, several times, I recall. There was going to be a Halley's comet probe, which coincidentally was done through University of Colorado engineers.
There was also a satellite on board, which was destroyed, in the explosion.
One of the astonauts, coincidentally was a Colorado alumnus, Ellison Onizuka. When I attended the University of Colorado, Boulder, they had dedicated part of the Air Force ROTC wing in his honor. Time sure flies!
Thats' been over 20 years ago, now. The flight was the 25th launch of the shuttle. It was the 9th launch of Challenger. It exploded 76 seconds after liftoff, and was partly due to the weather, but not entirely.
Basically it was a design flaw in the solid rocket booster, and even now, if there's a problem there's nothing they can do, until separation.
(I leanred most of this from National Geograpic).
Bascially, the astonauts are riding a 'missile' which carries them into space. The shuttle itself is made of aluminum, primarily, but the thermal protection is primarily carbon fiber (relatively light, yet heat resistant).
The reason Columbia was destroyed is because there was a breach in the thermal protection of the shuttle, caused by impact of foam, released from the external tank. The collision created a 'hole' through which super-heated gas was able to penetrate.
Basically, the shuttle really isn't designed to withstand collisions with foreign debris. Even now, if there were to be a similar 'collision' there would likely be the same result. It's one reason I'm guessing the entire shuttle fleet is scheduled to be mothballed in 2010.