Can the space shuttle land on the moon?

Question

besides it's lack of fule to take off from the moon, can it at least land on the moon?

Answer 1

Yeah, ONCE, and it would never leave. It's still a space plane, which means it's designed to land like a normal airplane (well, a really heavy glider, really). So it requires 1) a smooth runway, and 2) atmosphere to resist against as it approaches the planet. The only way it could even survive a landing on the moon is if it headed straight at it, turned around and used its maneuvering rockets to slow it down as it crashed vertically with the nose facing toward space. Don't even know if it has the thrust to do this -- the moon still has 0.6G of gravity (or roughly 6 m/s/s acceleration, still appreciable even if weaker than on earth). Add to that the fact that you still need to achieve escape velocity to get away from the moon, and since you have nothing to push against except your own exhaust once you're more than a few meters away from the surface of the moon, I think you'd still need a booster rocket to get you heading back to earth. That's why the Apollo landers were on such a tight fuel schedule -- they only had so much fuel to slow them down for a landing, and they still had to reserve enough to get them back off the surface to rendezvous with the orbiter.

Answer 2

No. The terrain is too rough for the space shuttle to land. It would be like trying to land an airplane in the Grand Canyon. The best bet would be to use something similar to the Apollo moon landings; a craft the hovers and slowly lowers itself down to the surface.

Answer 3

The space shuttle is only capable of reaching earth orbit, which requires a velocity of about 17,500 mph. To escape earth's gravity and travel to the moon would require a velocity of about 25,000 mph, well beyond the shuttle's capability. Then you would need additional fuel to brake into lunar orbit. Even if you could do this, the moon has no atmosphere for the shuttle to glide through, so it could only crash land. Hard.

Answer 4

No, sorry. It needs an atmosphere to glide into a landing. To land on the moon, you need a ship with thrusters pointed straight down, in the same direction as the landing gear. Go to nasa.gov to look at a picture of the old lunar modules (of the designs for the new ones) to see what I'm talking about.

Answer 5

the space shuttle lands like an airplane in that it uses landing gears and wings to glide in. It can't land on the moon unless you want it to crash and burn.

I still think its interesting how we supposedly go the moon and land on the moon multiple times with technology no more powerful then a calculator, yet now we can barely get into Earth orbit with all the powerful technology we have.

Answer 6

No. Not without some modifications. The shuttle needs the atmosphere to slow down to land. The moon has no atmosphere.

Answer 7

Space Shuttle Landing On Moon

Answer 8

i probaly could land on the moon. but it would be their forever. as it has no engine for power to take off again. the shuttle is actually a glider

Answer 9

I see no reason why it couldn't.

All you'd need to do would be to add a few small forward facing and downward facing thrusters. It doesn't need a long runway when there is no gravity, it could land like a helicopter or a Harrier jump jet.

Answer 10

if it had a very long, hard runway. it lands just like a commercial jet, so imagine landing one of them on the moon.