While airline after airline have been retiring their supplies of Boeing 747 jumbo jets over the past few years, it reminds me of the time in aviation history when a Queen of the Skies owned by NASA was used to ferry space shuttles during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Back then, shuttle takeoffs and landings happened with relative frequency. But as amazing as those space shuttle missions were, they couldn’t really fly themselves, since they were more gliders than planes. So 747s were used to bring the shuttles from wherever they landed (usually Edwards Air Force Base, in Southern California) back to Kennedy Space Center, on the east coast of Central Florida, so they could be prepared and sent back into space.
This has been the running joke in recent years about all the weight that the plane must have been carrying with a space shuttle on its back.
But the meme brings up a very good point – how DID they get an ordinary 747 able to ferry a shuttle? Welp, it turns out those were no ordinary 747s. And yep, that’s plural – there were 2 of them. A Boeing 747-123 model (called NASA 905) was used through 1990, and then a Boeing 747-100SR-46 version (called NASA 911) did the work until the program ended (Psst! Here’s how to tell the difference between a Boeing and an Airbus).
The skin of a plane is structurally made to withstand the pressure of flying at several tens of thousands of feet. However, having a space shuttle on its back was a whole other ballgame. So the two 747s were, not surprisingly, modified quite a bit, thanks to the work and calculations of aeronautical engineers.
Attachment points were built into the 747 to accommodate the weight and movement of the shuttle. Most seats in the cabin were removed (the first-class seats remained for NASA passengers), the main cabin was stripped, and the fuselage was made stronger. The shuttle riding on the plane’s back messed up the plane’s center of gravity, so they added vertical stabilizers to the plane’s tail for when the orbiters were being carried. The electrical systems and engines were also upgraded.
Once all the modifications were made, the setup was similar to any plane carrying cargo – except that the cargo was outside instead of inside, and the value of the cargo was a couple of billion dollars. 😉
Airlines have come up with all kinds of crazy ways to decrease their planes’ weight to help lower fuel costs, but you can’t do that with a plane that has a 165,000-pound space shuttle on its back. So the 747 used much more fuel than it would sans orbiter. It could only fly about 1,200 miles before needing to refuel (without the shuttle, a 747 could go 6,300 miles), and could only fly up to about 15,000 feet altitude, with a maximum cruise speed of Mach 0.6 when the shuttle was attached.
The shuttle carrier program ran from the mid-1970s until the early 2010s. Both planes are on display for the public to see. N905 is at Space Center Houston with a mockup shuttle Independence mounted on its back. N911 can be found at the Joe Davies Heritage Airpark in Palmdale, California.
Click here for some more specs and information about the shuttle carrier aircraft. And here’s a video of the N905 landing with Space Shuttle Endeavor at LAX.
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8 comments
So the 747s were used to bring the shuttles from wherever they landed (usually Edwards Air Force Base, in Southern California) back to Kennedy Space Center
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This was only true when the shuttle first started. For the last 30 missions that landed intact, all except 6 landed at the Kennedy Space Center.
“so they added vertical stabilizers to the plane’s tail for when the orbiters were being carried”. Is this true. I have seen photos of the modified 747 fly with the vertical stabilizers but not the Space Shuttle on top. Aren’t these permanently attached?
I can only tell you that this is what I discovered when I was researching the post. 🤷🏻♀️
Eglin AFB was an alternative refueling stop for this if weather was bad in Texas. Eglin has a joint use agreement with local government to operate scheduled civilian commercial air service as VPS airport and I know people who were lucky enough to see the shuttle and 747 parked in the military side there after their Northwest /Delta/American flight touched down on the runway far from the civilian terminal.
In the picture I noticed what appears to be fighter escort on what looks form the angle to be the Boeing’s 7 or 8 o’clock (which would be normal “wingman” positioning). I wonder if every flight had the escort and what branch handled it. Hard to tell from the photo if thats an F/16 (which would be USAF) or even an old Navy F/4.
It’s a T-38
Fun fact. I was working at the Civil Engineering Squadron when the first space shuttle landed there in 1981. They loaded the space shuttle on the 747 and then realized that no one had checked whether the refueling stop at Tinker AFB could handle that kind of load! Fortunately, some frantic calculations found out things would be fine.
Did the wings of the Shuttle provide any useful added lift to the combined package.