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It's about the size of a MD 80, but weighs nearly a hundred tons, give or take. Columbia was the heaviest due to test instrumentation embedded in its skin. Because of its weight, it was unable to climb the steeply inclined trajectory to the International Space Station and was restricted to equatorial orbits. But all of them were different in reality. There were a lot of potential show-stoppers in the system's development, particularly in the thermal protection system (read: tiles) and the main engines. Just getting a fuel pump that could push so much fuel so fast was a monumental issue. When Rockwell delivered the first shuttle for orbital flight, they advertised: "When a spaceship lands on Earth, it comes from Rockwell." In truth, they came from a lot of places and from the ideas of a lot of good people. A winged spaceship was -- is -- a prize. It sets a standard that is recognized all the world over. It makes us proud. Counting the Enterprise, there were six of them: Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour. I thought you'd like some portraits. Unless otherwise noted, all pictures are from my collection or courtesy of NASA. Enjoy.
These ships were not built for utter safety in flight; that's impossible. They were -- are -- research vessels dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge in fields that once seemed beyond human reach. Dangerous work. Accordingly, they were named for famous research ships that explored unknown parts of the world in the past.
Columbia was named after a Boston-based sloop captained by Robert Gray, who explored what became the Columbia river in 1792.
Challenger was named for the British Naval research vessel HMS Challenger that sailed both the Atlantic and Pacific in the 1870's.
Discovery's name came from two ships used by British explorer James Cook in the South Pacific during the 1770's.
Atlantis was named after the primary research ship for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute between 1930 and 1966.
Endeavour's name comes from the first ship commanded by James Cook -- a mission to the South Pacific to observe the transit of Venus in 1768. The name was chosen by elementary and secondary school students in a national competition.
Enterprise was to be named Constitution at first, but fans of the TV show, Star Trek, started a write-in campaign, urging President Ford to name it "Enterprise." He made it so.
 Space Shuttle Discovery, most traveled of the remaining fleet, reaches for the numbers one last time. It's March 9, 2011 and the landing on runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center wraps up both her 39th mission and an eventful career which spanned 5,750 orbits or 148 million miles, accumulating a full year in space. Discovery launched for the first time in August of 1984.  Over its twenty seven year career, Discovery proved a workhorse, carrying military satellites, communications systems and the fabled Hubble Space Telescope (above) to orbit. Discovery visited the Russian MIR space station twice and docked at the International Space Station thirteen times (below).
 Thirty years is a long time in the aerospace business..things evolve quickly. The shuttles started out with something like the old "steam gauge" instrument panels found in jet airliners of the 1970s and 80s. They evolved. That's a pretty nice "glass cockpit," with GPS and a whole lot more.
 Endeavour was created largely from spare parts to replace Challenger. A shocked nation looked to NASA to restore the four-orbiter fleet, and it did. As you can see, there was work waiting for it. Endeavour carried materiel and crew to the International Space Station many times. She flew her first mission in 1992, a trip which included rescue of a stranded communications satellite.  The ride home could be a double-thrill; first re-entry and then, if the shuttle landed in California, a comparatively slow crossing to Florida on the back of a 747.
 The fourth Orbiter, Atlantis, will be the last to fly, due to make its final launch in June. Atlantis has already completed 115.8-million miles in orbit. When it returns this time, it will be deprocessed and towed a few miles south of its hangar to a place of honor in the Visitor's Center at the Kennedy Space Center.
In all, there were six space shuttles when you count the Enterprise. A test article, Enterprise was never equipped for orbit. Rather, it tested and proved the shuttle system's aerodynamic design and capabilities, riding to about 50-thousand feet on the back of a modified Boeing 747, where it was dropped to be flown back to a landing at Edwards Air Force Base, California. It went through the exercise five times before engineers signed off the system for flight. Enterprise was named for the fictional ship that took astronauts where none "had gone before." In essence, the real Enterprise did the same thing. 
This was taken at the time of Columbia's first flight. The shuttle's fuel tank is white, my hair is black, so it's 1981.
The tank was painted white for the first two trips into orbit because engineers felt the paint would cut down on ultra-violet radiation to the tank's foam insulation. They later abandoned the idea and saved a full 600 pounds of paint in the process; saving weight is always welcome on any flying machine.
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