What happens to air that leaks from a spacecraft into space?
Presumably the air molecules will rapidly expand into the vacuum of space without pressure to hold them together; similar to the tiny quantity of air remaining in a Bell jar.
Can i build my own rocket ship and fly into space?
The laws would depend on where you are. A poorer country is more likely to not have laws established for this because it doesn't matter to them, but if your in a poor country then your not likely to have all the material needed. The chances of such a venture succeeding are much greater in rich countries. That being said you would need the permission of the government in a rich country. Also getting a rocket into space isn't a one man job period that means you have to higher people to help which means more money. And you want to not die right? Which means multiple test fights and redesigns, which means more money. I suppose its possible however, one could build a poor mans rocket, not test it, and not tell the government, and get it to space hopefully with out anyone shooting it down. In america the law is the FAA so if you wanted to do it legally I would go to their website but my understanding is they don't give out these licenses to just anyone. And as you say you have a prime minister I assume your not from america but still you might be interested in this http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/licenses_permits/launch_reentry/ edit; Even a poor mans rocket would be... he he... a misnomer no poor man can build a space ship of any kind, what I meant is the cheapest possible rocket imaginable and even then... what are you going to do steal hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fuel?!?!?
What happens to the Space Shuttle's external tank after it disconnects? Is it just floating around as space trash, or is it being sent back to earth, or does it fall into the ocean?
Here’s what happens to all the various parts:Shuttle assemblyThe Space Shuttle is connected to the external fuel tank, which is then connected to the two solid rocket boosters. The boosters carry the weight of the entire shuttle and external fuel tank when sitting on the launch pad and provide most of the power to get the vehicle to space.BoostersThe solid rocket boosters detach at about 45 km and keep rising to about 67 km before falling back to earth. They deploy parachutes once back in the atmosphere and drop into the ocean roughly 200 km from the launch site, where they're recovered by two NASA recovery ships. The boosters are then refurbished and reused for the next launch.External tankThe orange external tank is jettisoned 10 seconds after MECO (main engine cut off) and falls back to earth, but it's not re-used. It doesn't have any parachutes and is designed to break apart before landing in the ocean (out of the way of any ships).
Space Exploration: Why can't we just slowly rise to space? Why do you have to go so fast?
Going fast uses less fuel - a lot less. As soon as you leave the launch pad, part of the fuel you use is just counteracting 1G of gravity, it isn't doing anything but holding you up while the rest of the thrust pushes you up. So going slowly uses up a lot of propellant, and the use of fuel is an exponential formula, so the first bit of fuel is pushing a LOT of mass, which gets less and less as you go up. That's the technical and financial reason for not doing it. Also, you have to be going very fast to stay in orbit once you are up there, over 7 kilometers per second.But scientifically, you could actually do it. Let's say you had a rocket engine 100 times as powerful as what we have today, but using the same mass of propellant to reach that thrust. You could probably take a slow ride up, but when you get to low Earth orbit, you'd somehow have to accelerate to 7+ km/s sideways to stay in orbit, to counter the pull of gravity. But you could skip that part; you could just keep going higher. If you came out of the atmosphere at the equator, you'd have a sideways velocity of about 1000 miles per hour, so you could just keep slowly raising your altitude until you were at a height where the necessary orbital velocity was only 1000 miles per hour. This is a gross oversimplification, since your 1000mph vector and slow speed upward and the Earth's gravity would all interact to turn your flight path into more of a spiral than a "straight up", but you get the idea. If you had unlimited fuel at unlimited power, you could go anywhere as slow as you wanted.