– could the space shuttle just fly into space like a plane, rather than being propelled vertically by rockets?
In: 48
Just to be clear, [this is the space shuttle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/STS120LaunchHiRes-edit1.jpg). The whole thing comined, including the plane-looking piece, the big orange tank, and the white side rockets. The plane-looking part is called the *orbiter*, because it’s the only part that actually makes it to orbit.
The orbiter looks like a plane. But it is not a plane. It cannot fly like one.
It might look like it should be able to, since it has wings and three huge rocket engines on the back. Those engines, however, are hooked up to that big orange fuel tank. The whole shuttle assembly uses those engines and that tank to get up to space, but once the orange tank is empty, they throw it away, leaving those big engines out of fuel for the rest of the mission. That is their only purpose.
When the orbiter is ready to land, it is basically out of fuel. It has two tiny little rockets on the back just above the three big ones that you’ve probably never noticed before. They have some fuel, but not enough to fly with. These engines are primarily used to make small orbital corrections once the orbiter has already made it up there. This includes nudging the orbiter out of orbit to make it fall back to Earth so it can land.
The falling part is where the wings come in. I said earlier the orbiter is not a plane. It isn’t. It is, in fact, *a glider!* *A really bad one!* [Here’s a video of a talk given by Bret Copeland](https://youtu.be/Jb4prVsXkZU) describing the landing process. In it, he mentions that the orbiter is lovingly referred to as “a flying brick” and that to prepare the crew to drive this thing they must practice on a modified plane “with its landing gear down and its engines in reverse”. Yeah. The only thing the wings do is steer the near-freefall.
Latest Answers