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How To Steal a Space Shuttle
An anonymous reader tips a piece by Jason Torchinsky at Jalopnik, who attended the California Science Center's press conference about moving Space Shuttle Endeavour through Los Angeles to its final resting place. While he was there, he noticed that security for the event was focused less on the shuttle than on keeping the city itself safe. So, after a helpful LAPD officer suggested it would be impossible for a supervillain to make off with OV-105, Torchinsky went ahead and made a plan to do just that. All he needs is a submarine, a score of Sikorsky CH-53E heavy-lift helicopters, a salvaged and disguised Buran spaceplane, and the assistance of Switzerland.
Surely they wouldn't follow him into space, and it's kind of a supervillian thing to do!
Shouldn't this be in the "book reviews" section of Slashdot instead of "science"?
Haven't people learned? In this day and age, even joking about stealing/damaging US gov't property can be considered an act of terrorism.
Now I have to come up with a new plan.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
It becomes almost trivial to steal a spaceship once you're President of the Galaxy.
These are the types of two faced men we should watch out for.
This is obviously viral marketing for Ocean's Fourteen.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Next Season, on Breaking Bad
Jessie: Oh come on, Mr. White! We have $480,000,000! Each! I'm out!
Walt: Really Jessie? This is about money to you?
Jessie: Wasn't that the whole point? To leave your family money, and then to make an empire because you're mad you made a bad decision with Gray Matter? Why do you need a space shuttle? Bitch?!
Walt: Jessie, Hank is on to us. We need to get out of his jurisdiction. Out of everyone's jurisdiction! And that shuttle is our ride.
What makes you think that is the real shuttle?...mwuhuhahahaha [evil laughter trails off]
-badford
now the space shuttle. when will the evil stop?
Good people go to bed earlier.
Horrible plan.
First, if you already have a Buran, what would you need the shuttle for?
You're going to put a giant, top-opening cargo hold in a submarine?
And then you're going to bring it to flight-readiness? Couldn't you just buy the Buran and bring that to flight-readiness?
>> "While Bond supervillans tend to have these sorts of facilities and liquidity, they don't really exist..."
Well that exactly what Blofeld wants you to think.
Especially the part where the Swiss submarine is docking in those Swiss harbours is interesting.
But while you did this, I used all that confusion to replace the Mona Lisa with a fake one :)
Privacy is terrorism.
Moonraker
The Admin and the Engineer
1. Acquire Buran
2. Call off plan since you already have a shuttle
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Yes, but it wouldn't be as fun!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Meanwhile some feller with the ludicrously unlikely name of Elon Musk is building ICBMs right in plain sight.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It would be easier to steal the USS Missouri from Pearl Harbor.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
But then you have to worry about the cook.
Sigs are for losers
When the chaos is at its climax, a fleet of 10 Sikorsky CH-53E heavy lift helicopters wearing NASA Emergency Rescue livery will show up, and heroically inform everyone that they're here to take the Shuttle to a more secure location, away from the fire, and all that, back at LAX.
I don't think it would be possible for 10 choppers to coordinate to lift a load like that, the diameter of the rotors on the chopper is 80 feet, and the wingspan of the shuttle is 80 feet, so they would be pulling at an angle, which even if they could maintain the proper separation, would reduce their payload capacity. Worse, if one chopper loses or reduces power, the downward force would pull all of the choppers closer together, likely causing their rotors to collide. This coordination would be much harder to maintain when they fly into the smokescreen. To do this in real life, they'd need some kind of special bracket to allow the choppers to have enough horizontal separation to lift vertically.
Meanwhile, the real Endeavour is being flown a few miles West, out to the Pacific. While in flight, a crack team of Swiss military aerialists will wrap the Shuttle in camouflaged and water-tight plastic wrap, like they use for boats and other heavy equipment when shipping.
It seems highly unlikely that they'd be able to get a watertight seal around all of the tow ropes while airborne.... though they are a *crack* team, so maybe.
Once wrapped, the tethers holding the Shuttle will be released, sending the plastic-coated orbiter plunging into the icy Pacific.
This part is even harder - the picture in the article shows the shuttle sinking under the water to the special submarine, except that the shuttle wouldn't sink, it would float.
The shuttle cargo bay alone is 18m x 4.5m x 2m (estimated), or 162 m^3, which would displace 162,000 kg or water, or around 178 US tons. Add in the rest of the volume of the shuttle, and it's probably closer to 250 tons of displacement. The sub would have to come snatch it from the surface. I assume that something like an 16,000 ton Ohio Class sub would be able to submerge even with a 200 ton buoyant chamber on it, but I don't know for sure - I don't know how close to neutrally buoyant a sub is.
And of course, if the shuttle was submerged, it's unlikely that it could handle much pressure - it's designed to be under positive pressure in space, every 30 feet under water is one atmosphere of negative pressure, which the shuttle was never designed for.
And then finally there's the problem of what to do with it once they get it, the article suggests:
A country with a motive, like maybe a strange fixation on neutrality to the degree they've made their country a fortress and they may be interested in getting a spaceship for an off-world colony, fast.
If they are building a space colony, they'd probably want to get higher than the 400 mile max orbit of the shuttle. And if they just want a launch vehicle, for the $600M they are spending on the 20 CH-53E's, they may as well pay the Russians to take them to space, since they Russians can launch them cheaper than the $450M/flight it costs for the shuttle. And, of course, the shuttles are no longer spaceworthy, and it's likely that no one (not even NASA) has the ability to take a mothballed shuttle that's been on an underwater journey and make it spaceworthy again.
If I were a Mythbuster, I'd declare this myth "Busted", as I don't see any way it could work in real life.
... is actually not run by the state and is not called Swissair. The company he's looking for is "Swiss International Air Lines" (since 2002) and is a subsidiary of the German airline Lufthansa (since 2005).
Otherwise, the plan seems legit.