What does a launch feel like?
It is a very exciting, noisy, shaking ride for the first two minutes. Then the solid rocket boosters drop off and it gets a lot smoother, but there still is a strong push on the back of the astronauts’ seats from all the power in the three main engines. Those three main engines burn fuel at an incredible rate — approximately 1,000 gallons every second. The shuttle goes from zero miles per hour (mph) on the launch pad to over 17,000 mph in just over eight minutes. That means we go 2,000 mph faster every minute (information from space shuttle astronauts Kathy Sullivan and Pierre Thuot).
