How can a standard looking, Toyota Tundra tow a space shuttle down the street?
I could see maybe after it got rolling, but how can it get it rolling forward?
If the wheels are well-enough inflated (so as to minimize friction from distortion of the rubber), and the bearings are good enough, you could tow a Space Shuttle with an arbitrarily low applied force. It might take a while to get up to speed, but you’ll get there eventually.
It’s sort of like those events you sometimes hear about where a noted strongman pulls a bus or a train or the like. You can calculate how much force they’re actually exerting based on the tilt of their body, and in most cases, it’s an amount of force that even a weakling like myself could match.
There was no film trickery or CGI,it was real.
And it was only 100 yards.
What I wondered about was, was that bridge engineered for the weight of the shuttle.
It could handle the wieght of the shuttle - but not the shuttle combined with the wieght of the ‘normal’ towing equipment - so it was transferred to some form of trailer, hooked to the tundra, moved accross the bridge, then moved back to the normal towing mech.
Also what they didn’t tell you in the commercial is that the transmission fluid temp would have skyrocketed during that 100 yards, and if they had continued, the transmission might not have lasted very long.
If you watch the commercial - there is noticable strain innitially - I do doubt that a single “normal” man could even budge it.
I do not doubt that other similar trucks could have done it - but none stepped up to try.
Do we know for certain that there wasn’t a Peterbilt behind the shuttle to set it rolling? Granted, the Tundra honestly hauled the Shuttle 100 yards but as the OP stated, getting it moving is the hardest part.
And I don’t care if the truck is built in San Antonio or Washington DC, Toyota is not an American automaker. I’m not a Detroit-Or-Bust guy, I was driving a Datsun back in 1971 when they were still considered austere deathtraps. But Toyota doesn’t belong at the front of that parade and it’s more unsettling that they are using it as a bragging point.
Toyota site on the preperations/testing and getting it done.
http://www.toyota.com/tundraendeavour/
Stock truck - no trickery.
They have plants here in the U.S. employing American workers. They’re far more of an American automaker than Chevy is with their built-in-Mexico products.
The article below explains just how those strongmen do that pulling a bus with their teeth trick. It boils down to the fact that (on level ground) their only fighting inertia and rolling resistance.
I agree that some Toyotas are made here and some Ford/Chevys/Dodges are built in Mexico or Canada. Until recently, Chevy & Toyota were building the same car and selling it under their own badges. But not all Chevys are built in Mexico. I don’t know the numbers for how each auto maker compares. And it’s not just building, it’s supply lines too.
That linked site states that Toyota wants us to see them as a US manufacturer and I know that directive comes directly from the company. I can’t do that. BMW builds cars in South Carolina but they still trade on the German car cachet. That shared car I spoke of earlier? Toyota sold a lot more than Chevy even though they were built side-by-side. People buy Toyotas specifically because they associate Japanese with reliability. It’s certainly not because they have better styling or more power. So clearly Toyota wants us to think of their cars as designed and engineered in Japan.
I hold no prejudice against them because the profits go overseas. I don’t blame them them beating down Detroit with Detroit’s own methodology. But Coca-Cola bottled in China is not Chinese and neither is the iphone. And Texas Toyotas aren’t American. They’re welcome to crow about providing American jobs but dammit, don’t try to photobomb the Space Shuttle.
Bentley & Rolls Royce are owned by Germans but we still consider them British. Jaguar is an Indian company now. The Germans own Lamborghini & Maserati as well. The Chinese make Volvos, and last I remember, the Dutch make Saabs. I don’t know how to categorize most auto companies today, but I’m going to stick with where the company was founded. At least until they stop swapping ownership every six months.
I’m puzzled why the place of founding of a company should have any relevance at all. But that probably belongs in a different thread: This one is about the physics of the stunt.
Yeah, even if the tires and bearings are really, really good, they’re not perfect, and so there is going to be some friction and hence some minimum amount of force needed to do anything at all. It’s not surprising that a big pickup truck can supply that minimum amount of force; nor would it be surprising that an unaided human can’t.
Bear in mind it was probably a 4WD truck in 4 low, which on some trucks is a very low gear.
I got to see the Shuttle that night depicted in the commercial and the following night. The Shuttle was moved (other than that 100 yards) by a set of remote controlled crawler vehicles beneath the shuttle, two at the nose, two at the back. For the commercial, I presume they had to put those vehicles in “neutral”… and who knows if maybe they cheated to help the pickup get the shuttle moving. 
The vehicles are designed to move houses and such.
Toyota got the chance to make the commercial in exchange for sponsoring the permanent Endeavour exhibit at the California Science Center.
Here’s an iPhone shot of the Shuttle I got as they were preparing to move down MLK, Jr Blvd towards Exposition Park.
Well, we can certainly use that Shuttle that the truck towed to shoot some guys and gals into space, where they can look back down on the earth as a pretty little marble floating in a sea of nothingness, but even that won’t get us past worrying about lines on a map.
A Ford or Chevy or GMC truck that wasn’t even built in the United States wouldn’t have been much “better” in MY opinion, but I don’t really know if it even matters. Are there Japanese components in that Shuttle, or did they ensure that it was 100% made in the USA of USA-sourced components?
According to Toyota’s video, the shuttle with the crawlers was too heavy to cross the Manchester Street bridge, so the shuttle was transferred to unpowered dollies for that segment.
Thanks for asking this!
Brian
Somewhat tangentally, every time I see that commercial and it starts off with “In space, the Shuttle Endeavour is practically weightless…” I always follow up with “Not anymore it isn’t!”
:mad:
I think you have your facts wrong.
Toyota employs 33000 in the US.
General Motors employs 77000 in the US.
https://www.gmcar.gm.com/matters_ourpeople.aspx
The Toyota truck plant in Texas employs 1850 people.
GM builds chevy trucks in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Flint, Michigan where they employ a combined force over 6000.