i actually had two burning questions, not one, but now i can only think of the one.
this is what i’ve been pondering – a couple of weeks ago, the space shuttle atlantis landed, after fixing the hubble. they were waiting around for a couple of days to touch down in florida, but the weather continued to be bad so they finally gave up and instead went to california to land.
so, how did they get there? jim thought that the shuttle would have to orbit the earth, that it couldn’t just fly over to california like a plane, which makes sense. but in the paper the general impression i got was that the shuttle was hovering somewhere over florida, and then somehow was able to shoot over to california. however they got there, i wonder how long it took.
does anybody out there know how they did all this? i suppose i could look it up online and maybe i’d find the answer, but surely SOMEBODY can tell me.
that is all for now unless i remember the second question.
ok then,
grace hughes.
Grace,
The shuttle orbits the earth about every 90 minutes, but the orbit doesn’t take it over the same path on earth each time. There are only 2 or 3 windows a day when they are in a good position for Florida. Think of it like winding string around a big ball; you keep moving where you wrap it around each time.
Also, they have to drop out of orbit a long way before Florida. The shuttle that broke up on re-entry left parts all over Texas.
If the shuttle lands in Calif., it costs an extra $1 million to put it on top of the special 747 and fly it back to Florida.
WOW, thanks for that, bev! i wonder how they put it on top of a 747? is there some kind of shuttle-carrier up there? and i wonder if anybody was concerned about that extra one million dollars…
I think they were concerned about the extra million. And they have two super duper special 747s that are outfitted to carry the shuttle.