Carrying a space shuttle in beoing 747?

Question

hi

i have a question about space shuttle landing....just curios to know..

after a space shuttle lands at a particular base,why do they always use a boeing 747 to carry the space shuttle to its actual base...

why cant the space shuttle fly by itself

Answer 1

A space shuttle can't fly, really it just glides.  

Answer 2

There are many technical reasons. One of the biggest is the fact that the shuttle does not have any standard engines to provide thrust.  The shuttle main engines use rocket fuel that is stored in the large tank you see at liftoff.  It cannot use those engines in normal flight mode.

Second, the wings on the shuttle are not designed to provide sufficient lift to get the orbiter off the ground.  They provide just enough lift for the shuttle to glide back to earth in a controlled manner.  

Answer 3

When the shuttle come in for a landing, it is unpowered, and

basically a big glider.

If the weather is bad in Florida, it has to land either in

California or New Mexico, and then is ferried back to

Kennedy Space Center on top of the 747.

For the shuttle to fly by itself, it has to be strapped onto the

big fuel tank and solid boosters that you see when it

takes off from Kennedy.

Answer 4

That's because if it lands in California, it's not at a launch site.  And, it's a quarter of a billion dollars per launch.  The 747 flight is much, much cheaper.

Answer 5

As many have said, the space shuttle orbiter is only a glider, for the most part.  Its rocket engines require a lot of rocket fuel, and its wings are not suitable for general-purpose atmospheric flight.

The only scenario under which the shuttle would fly under power in a manner remotely resembling an airplane is in an emergency launch abort scenario called RTLS, for "return to launch site."  If a problem developed very early after SRB staging, the shuttle would pitch over from its heads-down to a heads-up orientation (a sort of diving vertical turn), reversing its course to head back to Florida, then adjusting its attitude to accomplish the glide to the Kennedy Space Center runway, then jettisoning the external fuel tank.  And even this maneuver does not use the shuttle's wings so much as its rocket engines for steering and lift.

There are two Boeing 747s modified to carry the space shuttle.  At the hard points on the top, for mounting the shuttle, is actually stenciled the words, "ATTACH ORBITER HERE, BLACK SIDE DOWN."

Answer 6

The space shuttle can't fly.  It can glide, but not fly.

Answer 7

The shuttles are not capable of powered flight. Their aerodynamic characteristics have been compared to those of a brick. They can glide down from atmospheric reentry, thanks to a great deal of computing power, but to get them back up again, you need either a modified 747, or a fuel tank and a couple of SRB's.

Answer 8

In the world of aviation and space flight, one of the basic tenets is to never attempt to do things that the vehicle was not designed to do. The Shuttle was never designed to be an aircraft. It was designed to be a spacecraft with a gliding recovery. It simply cannot do what you are proposing.  

Answer 9

The shuttle gets it's fuel for it's main engines from the large orange tank you see at launch.  Except for a relatively small amount of fuel for orbital changes, and reentry the shuttle has no power when landing. There are two specially modified 747s that NASA bought used from American Airlines.  This is the only mode of transportation that is used to take the shuttle from California back to the cape if it happens to land there.  

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Answer 10

The shuttle needs fuel to fly, and that's why it's connected to the huge fuel tank at lift-off.  

Generally, the hope is the Shuttle will land back in Florida, but if they can't (due to weather conditions), then they need to land at an alternate base - like Edwards in California, or the one in New Mexico. If it lands at either of those bases (or, if there's an aborted lift-off, and it has to land at one of the emergency landing sites around the world), then the shuttle has to be ferried back to Florida.  The craft to do this is the modified 747.  (I think there's two... but I could be wrong.)