Page 35 - Orbiter News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

I didn't know what to expect when i got here. i got to my locker and saw a jersey in it number 43. i just wanted to take a picture of it just for myself. it's just amazing to see my name on the back of it it's an honor. it's an honor to be taken serious and to be given this opportunity. >> shepard: banks says is he angry orbiter in no way. he says you just have to forgive and move on. a nationwide manhunt for a doctor now whose a former soldier and a weapons expert after his ex-girlfriend turned up dead in a hospital. coming up, the chilling prediction she reportedly made to a friend about thi...

Orbiter. that is where the external tank was attached for spaceflight. you see all the systems attached to the enterprise. jenna: 60 feet? can you imagine? that is so scary. i can't even imagine that. jon: so much bigger than people imagine. you can basically, tom, if i'm right you can basically put a bus in the cargo bay of the space shuttle, right? >> that's correct. it is 60 feet long, 15 feet wide and can carry about 50,000 pounds of cargo including things like the hubble telescope. this the size of a dc of 9 airliner. people will be impressed when it is on the deck of the intrepid on the ...

Tv. i'm guessing there is not work getting done in manhattan. thanks for sticking with us. let me bring mark kelly back in. again, just to this whole idea of the dlthrill of us, for thos watching on tv, on the ground, are they feeling anything when it's flying this low? >> you'll hear the engines from the 747. i doubt that sounds any different than a normal 747. certainly a thrilling sight to see. i've only seen it a couple times with the orbiter on top of the shuttle carrier plane, once at the johnson space center, a few years back with endeavour and once when i was in college at the mercha...

That is not a normal 747. it's almost gutted on the inside, to make it much lighter, once they add the shuttle carrier or once they add the space shuttle to the orbiter to the top, that has different flying characteristics. i haven't had an opportunity to fly it but i hear it's a challenge. >> i wbet it is. people made observations what would be the future of manned space flight and are people -- obviously, a lot of what happened with the space race early on in the time of john glenn and the first moon landing. do you think this is going to be a good thing, we're putting these various shuttles...

>> so no, only in enterprise has there been a crew that have flown in the space shuttle when it was on top of the 747. there were some active test flights where it stayed connected to the airplane, i think they did three of those, this was in the late 1970s, and then five flights where space shuttle enterprise was released from the top of the 747 and those were the approach and landing tests, landed at the runway at edwards air force base. when the shuttle is ferried, there is no crew in the orbiter, only the 747 crew on board ferrying the space shuttle. >> mark, remind us why the enterprise i...