Suppose something went wrong with the Space Shuttle — nothing permanently damaging, but urgent enough to abort the mission and they were forced to make a landing somewhere other than the Americas. For example, a main-engine failure on takeoff might force the shuttle to divert to Shannon, Ireland (this was a tidbit I learned from William Langewiesche’s excellent article in the Atlantic Monthly on the Columbia accident.) But pilot141’s comments in the above thread and the links therein seem to imply that NASA’s 747 couldn’t cross the North Atlantic (or any other ocean) with the Shuttle strapped to its back.
Am I reading this wrong? And if I’m not, then what would NASA do in such a situation?
Curious fact – Easter Island has a long and perfectly maintained runway, courtesy of NASA, because it’s an emergency landing spot for the Shuttle. Long ago, G. Harry Stine wrote a novel called Shuttle Down, detailing the engineering issues involved in getting the shuttle home after such a forced landing. Might be worth reading if you’re interested in the various problems.
Aside from Shannon and Easter Island, there are quite a few landing sites around the globe that NASA has designated as possible. The most important are the ones for a TransOceanic Abort Landing, like Moron and Zaragosa in Spain, since one of them would become the destination after an abort during the ascent and so they usually have to be on standby during a launch. That’s the most likely scenario for an Orbiter to wind up overseas.
According to this NASA factsheet (a pdf) about the TAL sites, it’d be flown back as normal, though they might have to remove the payload and other equipment in order to do so.
Less authoritively, this page about how such an emergency landing at RAF Fairford would work suggests that they’d partially dismantle the Oribiter before flying it back on the 747.
I saw the Shuttle and 747 combination here in Ottawa a number of years ago as it was being flown back from IIRC an airshow display in Europe (complete with the anti-SAM fittings), so it’s certainly possible. The flight might have to refuel at one or more points enroute rather than flying non-stop, but that’s not a problem, as there are all sorts of airports dating back to WW2 that did this for the early prop and jet flights.
There was an article in the paper this morning. Apparently, the range of a shuttle laden 747 is only 1200 miles. This means: to get the shuttle back from Spain, it would probably have to go up and around Europe and Canada.
To get it back from Easter Island would take some creative engineering like that mentioned above.
From the article, the shuttle (strapped to the back of a 747) went through Goose Bay in Canada, to Keflavik in Iceland, then to England, West Germany, and finally Paris. I have no idea what it went from England to West Germany then to Paris instead of directly from England to Paris. Maybe it had something to do with security?
Hey MikeS - as you’ve figured out, you’re not reading it wrong.
From what I can figure out the 747+shuttle’s max range is about 1100 miles. When I flew the “pathfinder” missions we stopped more often, mainly because we could. In the US there is no reason to test the max range of the whole setup.
Getting the Shuttle home from Europe would be nothing but fuel stop logistics; and as many people said: we’d go through London, Keflavik, Gander, etc to get to North America.
But you are right about some random location like Easter Island: Crap!
The NASA 747s do not have inflight=refueling capability, which would allow them to fly pretty much anywhere.
However I must say that flying a large airplane in close formation (ie refueling) is very difficult…I’m not surprised that the NASA folks decided that the 747 with the shuttle on board is just too unstable to refuel.
So for “short” legs (<1000 miles) the answer is yes. For longer legs… just wait!
The Space Shuttle Pathfinder (full-size mockup of the orbiter) was transported to Japan and back. I’m guessing it was partially disassembled and transported by sea, but does anyone know for sure?
(I actually saw the thing when it was displayed in Japan, almost 20 years ago. I didn’t realize until now that it’s the same one I see from the freeway almost every day.)
I could be wrong, but I didn’t think the shuttle could land anywhere in Ireland. The shuttle can’t achieve an orbital inclination greater than the latitude of its launch site at Cape Canaveral (which I think is 23 degrees), because it takes too much energy. Wouldn’t that rule Ireland out?
It’s the lower limit of inclination that’s limited by the latitude of the launch site. The Shuttle can and does go into a higher inclination orbit - in theory it’s capable of achieving polar orbit (90 degrees inclination), albeit with a reduced payload. The military insisted on this capability. It routinely goes into a 51 degree inclination orbit, which is where the ISS is. (The reason ISS is in such a highly inclined orbit is that the Russian launch site is at a higher latitude.)
It would be a lot easier and probably cheaper to remove the control surfaces and engines, and fly it home in a couple of those huge Air Force cargo planes (C-117? the one that make the C-5 look like a Cessna…)
The shuttle’s wingspan is 78 feet, a C-5’s cargo area is 19 feet wide. Are you suggesting cutting the wings off? The shuttle is intended to be reusable.