Space Shuttle

by larrykeast
(mississauga)

Good morning, just a little note,. Your weather station keeps saying the Space Shuttle will be trucked back from California, if it is forced to land there. Edward Airforce Base. It will be piggy-backed on the top of a 747 Jet, as per NASA. Larry (nasa.com)

Barry's Response - Makes Sense. That is how I would transport such a large object if possible. An intensive operation like this will be dependent on the current meteorology. What is meteorology? Find out here. Thank you Larry.

Weather is what likely caused the shuttle to need to land in California rather then its usual home in the first place. If it is to launch again it has to go back to Cape Canaveral, Florida. On the back of a jet. NASA has two of the 747 jets waiting at the Edwards Air Force Base in California, about 60 miles northeast of LA.

Each piggy-back flight takes several days, including stops for fuel along the way, takes about a week in preparation and uses the services of an additional plane, a pathfinder, to check for ideal (or not) flight conditions ahead on the journey. It costs nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

They once took it to Paris. That must have been several hops. In fact, one of the stops was in Canada, (Goose Bay, Labrador) then Iceland and onward to get across the Atlantic.

Seems like quite the ordeal for show & tell. The shuttle program ended in 2011.



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