
Why not UK?
Heathrow/Gatters/Stanstead? Many, many years ago before it's first operational flight I saw the Shuttle flying over Warwick apparently shagging a jumbo jet.
Space shuttle Atlantis will today return to terra firma at the end of its successful STS-125 mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Atlantis has two "landing opportunities" at 14:00 GMT and 15:39 GMT, but weather conditions could prove "problematic " for a return to the Kennedy Space Center. NASA forecasts indicate "a broken …
Wouldn't complain about the noise the Shuttle makes when gliding to a landing over West London. Would love to see a Shuttle slip into the 90 second landing slot they give planes at Heathrow, or better yet watch & listen to the silence as they clear the skies.
Lady P. as I'm sure she'd go down safely in W. London.
The Shuttle can come down in loads of places if it has to. There are options all over the planet. (Google will reveal the full list.) I remember driving past an Australian Airforce base in the Northern Territory and noting the runway seemed to go on forever. A local later told me NASA had paid to have the runway extended way out into the outback to provide another emergency facility.
Enterprise landed at Stansted on the back of NASA 905, it couldn't land there itself. (I spent several hours in the queue to park there to see it.)
They have various back-up landing places for emergencies, but won't use them unless forced because they will cost a lot more. They avoid even the Edwards landing if they can, as it means the extra cost of flying the shuttle back to Florida.
At the backup sites there's no facilities for making safe the dangerous fuels in the shuttle, or for general handling after the landing. They would have to bring one of the carrier aircraft all the way over. They would have to find or bring or build a specialised crane to put the shuttle on top of the carrier. They would have to bring over and house all the people needed.
It would cost a lot of money and a lot of time.