Where do space shuttles land when they return to Earth?
351590
Most of the time, they land at Edwards Air Force Base, a desert ancient lake bed, in California.  It is ideal because it is flat and the weather conditions are the same every day of the year -- clear skies and dry.  It is then flown by piggy-back on a specially fitted 747 to Kennedy Space Center in Florida (which is one of the worse and most flickle places to launch or land) where it is launched.  Sometimes it can land in Kennedy Space Center but this is rare.\n\nSo why this arrangement? Not considering politics and legislative "horse trading", this arrangement is practical because more scientists and NASA employees rather live in Florida than the middle of a desert. It launches in Florida instead of California, presumably because in an emergency, you can land in the ocean instead of on land. Why this is an advantage, no one knows. Early U.S. space pioneers landed on water while Soviet/Russian pioneers landed on land.  No one has ever been spared one way or the other. If there is a mishap on takeoff or landing, the pioneers die before they hit land or water.\n\nI'd rather see THE space center to be the same place -- in Nevada or New Mexico, away from the coast.
433083
You be sure and call us when the shuttle lands K?
594787
The speed depends on what you want to accomplish.  If a rocket pushes a craft slower than 5 miles per second (mps), the craft will fall back to Earth.  If the rocket gets the craft to 5 mps, the craft can orbit Earth in more or less a circle.  If a rocket gets a craft to 7 mps or more, the craft will leave Earth all together.
460310
The Space Shuttle can’t fly to the Moon—it only makes it about one five-hundredth of the way there, to low Earth orbit—because it doesn’t have the sheer thruster-power required to do so.\n\nIf you were to design a mission to the Moon, though, you’d need to use a carefully-calculated trajectory that takes into account the gravitational effects (and the mutual motions) of both Earth and the Moon.  The first step is to escape Earth’s gravity enough to head toward the Moon (and not just into a different orbit around Earth), so you fire your thrusters to change your velocity.  Then you need to aim for where the Moon will be (’cuz it’s constantly in motion around Earth, remember).  And then you have to enter orbit around the Moon, firing your thrusters again to position yourself properly in orbit.\n\nThat’s one way.\n\nESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft took a somewhat different approach.  It’s a lightweight ship that was launched with several other satellites into a geostationary orbit—about 50 times higher than the Shuttle flies.  Except that SMART-1 didn’t “circularize” its orbit like the other satellites; instead, it pushed itself into an orbit that took it very close to Earth then very far away.  Engineers timed the spacecraft’s most distant passes to take advantage of the Moon’s gravitational attraction, and eventually, SMART-1 nudged itself into orbit around the Moon.  In this case, very little thrust was used on the part of the spacecraft, so it could allow gravity to do most of the work.\n\nIn short, engineers tend to plan spacecraft trajectories very carefully, using a combination of thrust and gravity to get a ship exactly where they want it.\n\n\nRyan Wyatt\nRose Center for Earth & Space\nNew York, New York
313555
"At 11:38 a.m., the Space Shuttle Challenger launched from Pad 39-B at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.\n\n\nAt first, everything seemed to go well. However, 73 seconds after lift-off, Mission....."
1004332
When Christ returns to the earth
78721
NO it doesn't - if you're referring only to space - at zero gravity that is! \n\nThe initial launching rocket boosters are abandoned once you enter space, and the fuel is filled only to the suffice the requirement of the rocket launch - enough to push it into space for the rocket to thereon move autonomously.
503562
fire is just hot air.  The space shuttle has to travel through fire on its reentry into the atmosphere.
253145
At the Space Center, in the VAB (vehicle assembly building) the shuttle is hoisted by crane from horizontal to vertical then attached to the boosters. This crane is sensitive enough to place the shuttle so that it touches an egg without breaking the egg.
1010543
Suppose you are taking a space walk near the space shuttle, and your safety line breaks. How would you get back to the shuttle? The thing to do would be to take one of the tools from your tool belt and throw it is hard as you can directly away from the shuttle. Then, with the help of Newton's second and third laws, you will accelerate back towards the shuttle. As you throw the tool, you push against it, causing it to accelerate. At the same time, by Newton's third law, the tool is pushing back against you in the opposite direction, which causes you to accelerate back towards the shuttle, as desired. This is the principle behind jet propulsion: a jet rocket expels fuel rapidly by ``pushing against it''. By the third law the fuel exerts an equal and opposite force against the rocket so the rocket accelerates in the opposite direction that the expelled fuel goes. Another example of the 3rd law is a book lying on a table. If the table were not there the book would fall under the force of gravity between the book and the earth. Why then doesn't the book move off the table, in accordance with the 2nd law? The table is exerting a force on the book that is just enough to cancel the gravitational force on the book. By Newton's third law, the book is also exerting an equal and opposite force on the table, and this is why the table feels the weight of the book. If the book were very heavy, its weight would cause the table to bend, or even break. This is illustrated in the following figure. \n\nThe answer to this question comes from the third law. Imagine the skateboard again. On the ground, the only part air plays in the motions of the rider and the skateboard is to slow them down. Moving through the air causes friction, or as scientists call it, drag. The surrounding air impedes the action-reaction. \n\nAs a result rockets actually work better in space than they do in air. As the exhaust gas leaves the rocket engine it must push away the surrounding air; this uses up some of the energy of the rocket. In space, the exhaust gases can escape freely.
423647
landing and taking off of airplanes
469801
When an airplane lands, the thrust from the engines is diverted forward to slow the plane down.  Then when the plane has slowed to a certain speed, brakes are applied.
927237
It appears that the range is classified, but it can refuel in air anyway, so no, it doesn't need to land to go around the world.  It could, theoretically circumvent the world several times, as long as they had supplies and enough pilots to rotate shifts.
1139189
The earth is surrounded by air approximately up to 200 km.\n\nThe space is surrounding the earth in all direction.\n\n Any object thrown or moving with a speed of 11.2km/s (25053.7 miles /hour) will escape from the gravitational pull of earth and will not return to earth.\n\nIf the speed is less than this value, the object will move in a circular path around the earth.\n\nOur planes are moving very slowly compared to that speed. Therefore, they cannot escape into space. If they have a constant speed they will be circulating the earth with a particular radius around the earth. \n\nIf a plane is flying (with a constant speed) at a height h from the ground of a city, after certain hour it may fly over the ground of another city. For the people in that city the plane will be flying at the same height h.  Since the earth is a globe, through out the globe, the plane will be flying at the same height. The height from the ground increases if the speed of the plane increases.
275035
There is more friction on re-entry. Friction is geometrically proportional to speed. The shuttle takes a long time to accelerate into orbit, but it comes back full speed. Also the flight angle is diferent on re-entry, exposing more surface.
1018278
that would depend on the velocity of the craft, the velocity the at you were pushed out with respect to the velocity of the craft, and what near by celestial or terrestrial bodies were near, to influence your movement with their gravitational pull...  if you wre set outside a ship, with zero velocity, and left, out in deep space... you would remain essentially motionless... if the same were done to you near the earth, you wold fall to the earth.. if you were pushed out the side door of the space shuttle while it orbited... you would most likely orbit several time before your orbit decayed and you would have a incredibly painful reentry... as short as the pain might be...
1017843
Do you mean layers of the atmosphere that must be passed through on the way to space?\n\nFrom the ground up:\ntroposphere\nstratosphere\nmesosphere\nionosphere