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It couldn't, for a funny reason. Everything on a Shuttle flight could be automated except lowering the landing gear just before touchdown, which had to be done
by idlewords 7mo ago
It couldn't, for a funny reason. Everything on a Shuttle flight could be automated except lowering the landing gear just before touchdown, which had to be done by hand from inside the cockpit.
There are rumors (that I've never been able to run down) that the astronaut corps insisted on this so the Shuttle could not be flown unmanned.
- gambiting 7mo agoAnd Buran(soviet copy of the shuttle) could and in fact did fly completely unmanned. In a way it's a shame the collapse of the soviet union killed that program, because a crew less shuttle would have been a huge asset to have.
- dabluecaboose 7mo agoI'm not surprised more people don't know about the X-37, but it's in effect the distillation of the Shuttle program to a very effective vehicle: Crewless, reusable, cheap, and effective. Bureaucratic requirements and institutional jockeying largely ballooned the Shuttle into something it was never supposed to be.
- jaggederest 7mo agoWhich is, regrettably, the same thing happening with SLS / Orion / Artemis