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   Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda (cmdrtaco@federated.press)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 21:51:59 JST Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda

   I took this photo apparently today in April 2012. It was a wonderful afternoon outside the udvar hazy Smithsonian with a rag tag group of think geekers who let me hang out with them for the spectacle despite the fact that I no longer worked for the same corporation as them.

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     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 21:51:58 JST SuperDicq

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     @CmdrTaco@federated.press To me it's absolutely insane that instead of just transporting the space shuttles in any other like on a boat or something like that they actually instead just decided to strap it on top of a Boeing 747 instead.
     
     It's just madness.

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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 22:12:00 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • SuperDicq
     @SuperDicq @CmdrTaco It's not insane at all - it was the fastest and cheapest way.
     
     If they used a boat, they would have to transport it to a dock, work out how to load it onto a boat (they'd need some impressive crane that works with a dock that is large enough and also doesn't fall over) and then the boat would take days transporting the shuttle to the destination (which exposes the shuttle to salt water spray and there is also the possibility of encountering a storm on the way too) and then they would need to unload it from the boat and transport it from the dock to the launch center.
     
     Instead they just flew a 747 directly to the landing airport, put the landed shuttle on it and flew it directly to the Kennedy Space Center within a few hours (which had a very slim chance of encountering storms and planes are also capable of flying around storms) and landed on Kennedy's runway, ready to be moved a short distance to be prepped for another launch.
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     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 22:14:45 JST SuperDicq

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     • 翠星石

     @Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com @CmdrTaco@federated.press Interesting. Buying a modifying a 747 doesn't sound like the most efficient way of transporting a large object but I guess there's also a lot of logistics involved boats.
     
     I wonder how they managed to get the shuttle on top of the plane tho. Probably also using a crane?

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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 22:20:41 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • SuperDicq
     @SuperDicq @CmdrTaco The logistics involving boats is so bad that many businesses transporting large generators and wind turbine blades were know to commonly hire heavy-lift aircraft like the; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-225_Mriya?useskin=monobook despite the expense, as being able to transport something from and to anywhere on the Earth (with a long enough runway) within 24 hours is hard to beat.
     
     I assume it was a crane and on a large airport, there's plenty of space to fit an excessively large crane, unlike on a dock.
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     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 22:27:59 JST SuperDicq

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     • 翠星石

     @Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com @CmdrTaco@federated.press Don't remind of me of what they did to poor Anton 😢