Detailed tour through the Boeing 747 that carries the Space Shuttle Orbiter.

hello and behind me is the sca the shuttle carrier aircraft which is very much an engineer's name for an aircraft that carried the shuttle orbiter and in this video i'm going to take you on a detail to robert i make videos about planes and a few rockets these include trip reports on board flights across the world and detailed tours through aircraft in museums i'm also on instagram and facebook this aircraft was the first of two 747s used in the shuttle carrier aircraft role and was initially built for american airlines but was sold to nasa due to waning air travel at the time here's a photo of both aircraft together and we're going to explore the lower one what's interesting was that nasa also considered the lockhead c5 galaxy for this role and here's a drawing of it in a piggyback and next to that is a twin fuselage configuration but because of its military designation it would still remain owned by the usaf so nasa went with the jumbo option the 747's low wing design was also advantageous as the shuttle's wing was further away and wouldn't negatively affect the airflow over the 747s wing you will see mounting struts on top of the 747 that connect with the orbiter via the very same attachments that were connected to the external fuel tank for launch and you'll see that closer up on my shuttle tour video and of course it's a boeing 747-100 so there's two engines on the port side wing and we're going to have a closer look at them these were upgraded pratt whitney jt 9d7j turbofans producing around 50 000 pounds of thrust each what i always find interesting about these turbo fans and i suspect a lot of people don't realize this but a lot of the thrust comes from the air that actually bypasses the hot core and is simply blown backwards by these big fans at the front they're moving in this example because of the wind sneaking behind and sticking my head in just behind the fans and you'll see how much space and air will be blown through this section it would also have the added effect of cooling the engine core itself and then there's a landing gear which is absolutely massive and very strong while there were four separate gears of the rear they are strong enough to land on only two of them as a last resort now they didn't need to boost the landing gear on this aircraft as they would save weight other ways including stripping the interior and flying with less fuel on board and we'll look at that once we're inside and the reality is that the original landing gear is so over engineered that it could handle more weight anyway now the footage really doesn't do it justice but the landing gear wheel well really is massive and some of those pipes are the heated and pressurized bleed air from the engines that provides pressurization for the interior moving towards the rear and you'll see that the orbiter would somewhat obstruct the air moving backwards towards the main vertical stabilizer so two additional vertical stabilizers were added on the outer edges of the horizontal stabilizers somewhat like the lockheed constellation and its tri-tail design i suppose it's been removed from this display and they would have been in this location on this very same aircraft as you can see in these photos fitted just behind the engines were infrared countermeasure equipment that was used when this aircraft took the orbiter on an international tour to europe there were concerns about surface-to-air missiles at the time and these were designed to release large amounts of infrared energy towards the threat that would blind and confuse any incoming heat seeking missiles and let's head inside the sca via door to right now this little room as we enter first was added at the museum and is vital as the interior needs to be kept cool and dry and houston can have pretty horrendous heat and humidity because it was potentially carrying quite a lot of extra weight they stripped out the interior leaving only the bare necessities now they had to keep the plastic around the windows to hold the things in place but above that you can see the original boeing insulation to help protect from this minus zero degrees celsius outside the thin plastic that would usually cover this on a commercial aircraft was removed to save a few kilograms moving forward and up in the nose cone i'm trying to keep the camera angled above as to avoid filming as many faces as possible immediately above you is where the captain would be sitting and you can see the flight control linkages that would directly connect their yoke to the hydraulic actuators on the wing and tail when the orbiter was on board the whole aircraft center of gravity moved backwards especially with the heavy rocket engines so to counter this they put these 1710 pound lumps of pig iron at the front and around seven thousand pounds of gravel in the forward cargo hold most seats were removed to save weight although a few first-class hits remained for passengers and maintenance crews and program staff now here's the spiral staircase and unfortunately the upper deck was closed off but here's footage from the qantas founders museum in longreach of their 747 200 which has a very similar upper deck and cockpit here's a photo of the sca's upper deck and you'll notice that there's a few seats and the additional green bulkhead to provide extra strength with the orbiter attached directly above it now it was removed after the shuttle approached and landing testing was complete but there was actually an escape slide from the upper deck just behind the cockpit down through the lower levels and out the underside of the aircraft you can see it here and these nasa drawings the crew would wear parachutes and activate an explosive charge to blow out the end of the tunnel so that they could escape downwards moving into the flight deck is like any other 747 classic with the two pilots and the flight engineer behind them when there was an orbiter on board they would actually have an extra engineer on board to help out and here we are back down on the main level here's a scale model of the 747 and orbiter and behind that are drawings of what the c5 might have looked like if it was approved for this program the twin fuselage option looks fascinating although i suspect that it wouldn't have had a lot of runways wide enough to use it this cabinet here on the right house the power distribution systems which provide electricity for the test equipment during the approach and landing tests while this was used to move the orbiter between landing and launch sites it was also used before it even went into space to test the aerodynamics in fact the first orbiter enterprise wasn't fitted with rocket engines or the heat shield and was released from this aircraft a few times to test how it would glide and land above you there are air conditioning and cabin pressurization pipes which in a normal 747 would be hidden from view but to save weight they're on full display here on the left you've got the flight control cables which are a direct and physical connection from the pilot's controls and the flight surfaces in new aircraft they use a fly-by-wire system so instead of having these solid and heavy cables they have much thinner wires that send electronic messages to each other as you'd imagine the 747 was never designed to carry a 172 000 pounds space shuttle on top so the fuselage had to be reinforced with three additional bulkheads one of which you can see here the fuselage's exterior skin was made up of 0.2 inch aluminium alloy which also was reinforced with extra layers in specific locations another important and obvious question is how they put the orbiter on top of the sca here's a scale model of the massive crane called a mate and d mate device or mdd that they built in multiple locations they'd simply lift the orbiter and drive the sca underneath and connect it with all of the extra weight and drag the sca's performance was significantly reduced the cruising speed with the sca attached was 290 miles an hour compared to 563 miles an hour on a normal 747 100. the range was also reduced dramatically to 1 320 miles down from around 5 300 miles and the service ceiling was only 15 000 feet instead of the usual 40-ish thousand feet and moving right to the end of the aircraft you've got the flight data recorder also known as the black box up here on the right and the rear pressure bulkhead with the insulation covering it then we're back out into houston's hot and humid summer's weather we'll spin around and get another view of the additional vertical stabilizers now it's not on this example but they would install a towel cone over the engines during these very flights these reduced aerodynamic drag and they also protected the engine nozzles from any damage in fact the three rs-25 engines actually were angled inwards so that the cone could fit over them if you enjoyed the video please give it a thumbs up and check out my channel for many more similar videos i've created a tour through the space shuttle orbiter combining footage of a real orbiter discovery at the smithsonian in dallas airport and this orbiter replica here in houston and i'll link to that video in the description below thanks for watching

Channel: Paul Stewart

Views: 138,298

Keywords: shuttle carrier aircraft, sca, shuttle, space shuttle, space shuttle orbiter, houston space centre, space centre houston, nasa 747, boeing, boeing 747, airplane, space ship, aircraft, plane, planes, vehicle, paul stewart, space tour

Id: pkwt594wn5U

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2022