It makes you wonder: How
can the 747 transport something that big and heavy? Well, the
shuttle-airliner combo is not as heavy as you might first think. In
fact, it's a relatively easy load to hoist.
When the shuttle missions
started in the 1980s, NASA designated several places as landing strips
for the orbiter, including Edwards AFB in California.
But all the launches were
from Florida, so NASA needed a way to transport to Kennedy Space Center
from Edwards. A shuttle can't fly itself after it leaves orbit, as it
is basically a big glider. So NASA created the designed the Shuttle
Carrier Aircraft, which is a Boeing 747 designed to fly with a shuttle
on top.
Space shuttle Discovery retires
All that's well-known, at
least to space buffs. But what may surprise many people is that a
Boeing 747 with a space shuttle strapped on its roof weighs less --
that's right, less -- than a 747 airliner full of passengers.
At first that might seem
counterintuitive, but Lisa Malone, a spokeswoman for NASA, says the 747
they use is stripped clean of anything in the main cabin. There's a
cockpit and a big empty shell.
But the 747s used by
airlines have hundreds of seats, galleys, lavatories -- even a bar in
some cases. Add 300-plus passengers, their luggage, food, water and
assorted other cargo, and the weight adds up.
The 747 that carried
Discovery weighed about 488,000 pounds. Jim Proulx, a spokesman for
Boeing, says a commercial 747 airliner can weigh more than 800,000 when
carrying passengers.
There will be another
chance to see the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft in action later this week.
That's when it will carry Space Shuttle Enterprise, which was used for
tests but never flew in space, will be flown from Dulles International
Airport in Virginia to its new home on board the USS Intrepid, a retired
aircraft carrier turned floating museum in New York City.http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/17/us/shuttle-discovery-weight/index.html?iref=allsearch