The Incredible Story of NASA's Boeing 747s: Shuttling (and making) Space History!

how much do you know about the awesome 747s were used to carry the space shuttle did you for example know that their name shuttle carrier aircraft or SCA doesn't really give a full description of what they actually did stay tuned [Music] the iconic 747 is coming to the end of its production run and I've been busy highlighting the many important and special roles that the queen of the Skies have been playing throughout the years and today I'm going to tell you about maybe one of her most famous roles the role she played in the NASA space shuttle program I am willing to bet that most of you don't realize how big of a role these Jets actually played and how important they were in making the space shuttle program possible in the first place now before we get started I have a bit of terminology to explain in order to avoid some angry comments that will definitely come my way otherwise when most people use the term space shuttle they mean this thing with a delta wing that the astronauts took a ride in to get to space the actual plane part but actually the term space shuttle describes the entire launch vehicle including the two solid rocket boosters and the Giant Orange fuel tank the vehicle that the astronauts actually sit in is called an Orbiter so technically the 747s that carried it should have been called the Orbiter carrier aircraft but of course everyone including NASA themselves calls them the shuttle carrier aircraft in this video I will most likely be using both terms so bear with me the first of a total of two of these aircraft that NASA bought was a 747-100 who originally flew for American Airlines and because of that in the first few years it basically retained the old polished aluminum Livery which I think is stunning NASA eventually painted it in its own colors and then did the same to the second aircraft they bought a 747-100sr from Japan Airlines once NASA had these aircraft they went back to Boeing for conversion into the new role and were as you might expect modified extensively the extra vertical stabilizers were perhaps the most invisible external change but Boeing also had to strengthen the internal structure substantially their passenger Interiors were completely removed in order to save as much weight as possible and Boeing also fitted appropriate attached points to this space shuttle Orbiter on top of the cabin roof the Orbiter itself was already fitted with its own attached point on its belly created to attach the giant external fuel tank so those came in very handy since it turned out that these worked perfectly to also strap the Orbiter onto the roof of the 747 but let's now talk a little bit about what the role of this aircraft actually were like we saw in the previous video that I did NASA used a fleet of specialized super goopy aircraft to move around space rocket components between its various sites so carrying the new reusable Orbiter by air made perfect sense to them except that its size meant that it was just too big for any aircraft to carry in internally so NASA had to figure out a way to have it carried externally and that's where our two aircraft comes in NASA used the 747s to pick up new orbiters from their manufacturer Rockwell International in California but that wasn't their typical mission that was actually to carry the Orbiter from Edwards Air Force Base also in California back to where they had been taking off from can the space center in Cape Canaveral Florida now operationally NASA actually wanted to land the Orbiter in Florida on the space shop Landing facility they had there there was a 15 000 feet or 4.6 kilometer long Runway they had available for this very purpose a landing there was very convenient because it put the Orbiter very close to the building where it could be serviced and prepared for its next launch but like with all aircraft the Orbiter also needed an alternate Landing option in case it would be returning during bad weather and that's where Edwards Air Force Base came in obviously if the Orbiter ended up Landing there it would be very far away from its servicing facility and since it couldn't move on its own one of these 747s would have to carry it back to Florida in the early days of the space shuttle program before the challenging disaster NASA had quite big Ambitions about how frequently it would be launching its shuttle missions and since loading and unloading an Orbiter to the back of a 747 took around a week to do NASA figured that they would eventually need two of these 747s to keep the show rolling and that's why the second one was purchased but the Orbiter Landing in California wasn't the only possibility where the shuttle might end up there was also the possibility that they might have some kind of in-flight emergency and need to land somewhere else in the world there were a number of different continuous runways available all around the world in Spain Britain Greece and even asension island in the South Atlantic I actually remember reading no terms early on in my career about how the airspace around certain airports could be shut down on very short notice in case the shuttle would come in and choose to land there and of course if that would happen the shuttle carriers would be absolutely crucial in order to return it back to Florida for its next mission but another thing that I think that you might have missed is that these 747s weren't just shuttle carriers they were also shuttle testers and developing and testing the Orbiter safely would have been next to Impossible without them and I will tell you all about this awesome role and how they did that after this short message from my sponsor if you're naturally curious like me but don't have enough time to read full books then today's sponsor blinkist is a great app for you blinkist enables you to understand the central Concepts from over 5500 non-fictional books and podcasts in Just Around 15 minutes even though I am really busy working both as an airline pilot 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specifically at some key characteristics of the Orbiter itself because NASA didn't originally plan for the Orbiter to be as big as it later became the name space shuttle was chosen because this program was originally paired with a program for a space station that the spacecraft could be shot linked to and from these plants were later canceled but NASA kept the shuttle in the hope of getting funds for the planned space station later on so in the beginning NASA was mainly interested in a vehicle that would be able to carry a small number of people as the name shuttle suggest plus maybe some smaller payloads in order to achieve this NASA started in the 1960s to experiment with many different lift body designs lift body designs are vehicles with very small wings but who could also generate a lot of the lift from the body of the aircraft itself this feature would make it possible for them to be launched on a rocket without generating a lot of drag from its wings but then still being able to Glide safely back to a landing after re-entering the atmosphere if you look at pictures of these early Vehicles they look nothing like the space shuttle Orbiter that we know today the reason it eventually grew into the aircraft shape that would no one love was that NASA eventually received some much needed military funding to make the shuttle a reality but before the military handed over the money they had one condition the Orbiter had to be big enough to carry some of their stuff basically military satellites and those were rather big at the time so this was the real reason why the Orbiter ended up looking like it did but how big was it actually well in terms of Dimensions it was about the size of an early Boeing 77 200. the payload capacity for low earth orbit was 53 590 pounds or 24 310 kilos and this larger size created a serious problem for NASA with the earlier and much smaller lift body designs NASA could test them by dropping them from a B-52 bomber or in some cases told them behind other airplanes like gliders these re-life tests were absolutely crucial because these designs all had quite unusual flight characteristics and those could not come as a surprise to the crews who would eventually fly them so the final space shuttle was not only bigger than these early designs it was also much more complicated for example in order to be able to operate both in space and at very different speeds in the atmosphere the Orbiter needed to be fly by wire and since it had no possibility of a mechanical backup this system needed quadruple redundancy with a fifth Fail-Safe system as a last resort and by the way a small nerdy side note here the programming language of the computers that controlled key avionics on the Orbiter was called the high order Assembly Language shuttle or Hal s so really Hal control the space shuttle anyway extensive testing of these flight controls plus the landing gear and other systems were absolutely necessary before the Orbiter could become operational also since the orbiter's engines had no fuel of the launch the Orbiter would always re-enter the atmosphere as a glider an exceptionally bad glider the reason it was so bad was that it needed drag to slow down from Hypersonic speeds so this was actually partly intentional most powered aircrafts have a glide ratio between 10 and 20 to 1 meaning that they move 10 or 20 meters forward for every meter they drop the space shuttle at subsonic speeds only managed four and a half to one which is almost closer to Brick than an aircraft so why is this important well it's because it explains why NASA initially didn't like the idea of testing the Orbiter by launching it from the top of a 747 the really bad glide ratio meant that if they were going to do this the carrier aircraft would need to drop away really fast so that the Orbiter wouldn't hit it from above NASA originally wanted a plane big enough to carry the Orbiter below it but obviously no such aircraft existed even the mighty B-52 couldn't drop a plane the size of a 737 so NASA's first idea was actually to build an enormous new aircraft that consisted of two B-52s fuselage plus a new wing and tail section this monster would have been called the Conroy vertus named after John Conroy who also designed NASA's pregnant goopy and the super guppy NASA really took his idea about this aircraft seriously but in the end the cost of developing basically a new aircraft to carry and drop the space shuttle proved to be just too expensive so that meant that NASA went to plan B carry the Orbiter on the back of a plane and then launch it from there the C5 Galaxy was briefly considered but the low Wing 747 proved to be a much easier choice so yes the first Boeing 747 shuttle carrier aircraft didn't just carry the Orbiter it also launched it for testing NASA made multiple test flights before the first actual shot launch happen for this testing NASA awarded an extra Orbiter to be built one that never could actually fly in space it had mock-up engines and lacked a real heat shield but it was the right size and weight and obviously had the same flight controls and other systems NASA named this mock-up the Space Shuttle Enterprise these test flights happened back in 1977 and NASA would eventually drop Enterprise from the back of the first 747 a total of five times the first lights were made with an aerodynamic rear cover which all orbiters later use for their Fair flight but the last two flights were made with the Orbiter exactly configured as it would be after returning from space now executing these tests safely was a great challenge for the involved Crews but NASA came up with a clever way to make at least the separation as safe as they possibly could for the tests NASA used a special longer nose strut to connect the Orbiter to the 747 this meant that the Orbiter got a slightly higher angle of attack than the 747 had before the separation the 747 would first climb up above the intended release altitude and then the pilots would increase thrust and start a shallow dive this of course accelerated both aircraft but because the Orbiter had a higher angle of attack it generated more lift this meant that the connection between the two vehicles now started to be tensioned as the shuttle effectively tried to take off from the 747s back and that tension was closely measured when the tension got to a certain value on the correct altitude was reached the two vehicles separated smoothly and safely despite the high drag and bad glide ratio of the Orbiter science is awesome and you know what else is awesome clicking like on this video and subscribing to this channel so you won't miss any of my future videos anyway even in more typical fairy missions with a standard lower nose strut for the Orbiter the spacecraft's high drag design meant that the fuel consumption of the 747 increased to almost comical levels the pair also had a maximum flight altitude of just 15 000 feet which certainly didn't make the fuel consumption any better ferrying the Orbiter from Edwards Air Force Base to Cape Canaveral would require multiple stops since the range of the 747 with the Orbiter on top was only around 1 000 nautical miles in the absolute best conditions NASA actually considered fitting its 747s with aerial refueling equipment something that Boeing had done for other 747s but after a single flight test of a 747 with an Orbiter on its back in the wake of an aerial refueling tanker everyone decided that that was probably a very bad idea but sadly all truly cool things must come to an end and NASA retired the last space shuttle Orbiter in 2011. after that the two 747 shuttle carrier aircraft also headed into retirement but not before one of them the first one and the only one who had made the drop test made a last public tour as it delivered the retired orbiters to different sites around the United States there were a lot of videos of this pair of extraordinary aircraft taken during these final flights and they are a truly awesome sight to behold I would have loved to see this live myself both 747s are currently preserved at different sites available for the public to Marvel at them so what is the enduring Legacy of these fantastic aircraft well probably the closest thing we had until recently as an aircraft performing a similar role was of course the Antonov 225 it was originally built to carry the Soviet Buran Orbiter but sadly this aircraft was destroyed during Russia's invasion of Ukraine elsewhere today virgin orbit for example is using a Boeing 747 to actually launch rockets containing small satellites into space but another vehicle worth mentioning here is the awesome strata launch Rock this vehicle in terms of its configuration is much closer what NASA originally wanted just a bit smaller and if you look at it closely the rock is actually using Boeing 747 engines cockpit windows and landing gear but The Rock was built primarily to launch rockets and satellites into space not to carry them around however strata launch actually plans to use it for some drop tests of various test vehicles in the coming months the size shape and sturdiness of the 747 made it ideal for these types of special roles like shuttle carrier flying telescope and of course as an outsized cargo freighter we will eventually start to see fewer of these fantastic aircraft flying around in the coming years but they're not going away completely just yet which I think is a good thing because there will never be another queen quite like this one now check out this video next or binge on this Boeing 747 playlist consider subscribing to the channel and if you want to support the work that we do consider becoming part of my awesome patreon crew or buy yourself some merch have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time bye

Channel: Mentour Now!

Views: 216,908

Keywords: 747, nasa, space shuttle, space, queen of the skies, boeing, airbus, insane, engineering

Id: TnAyEiEJ9eE

Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 04 2022