The Space-Glider (February 2000, experience not real for me: Simulated in X-Plane only) Read this chapter before attempting Space Shuttle landings in X-Plane if you want to live! What do you think the first rule of flying a glider is? Think about it. The first rule of flying a glider is: "Never come up short". When you are bringing a powered plane in for landing, if you think you are not quite going to make it to the runway, it is no big deal.. just a add a bit of power to cover the extra distance! Need a little more speed maybe? Again no problem: Just add power. Gliders play by a different set of rules, though: There is no engine to provide power, so when setting up your landing, you must always have enough altitude and speed to be able to coast to the airport, because if you guess low by even one foot, you will hit the ground short of the runway, crashing. You must NEVER be low on speed or altitude, because if you EVER are, you have NO WAY of getting it back: a crash is assured. (the exception is thermals, or rising currents of air, which can give efficient gliders enough boost to get the job done, but thermals will typically provide less than 500 feet per minute of vertical speed... not enough to even keep a lightweight Cessna in the air!) Now with the Space Shuttle, it is certainly true beyond doubt that it has engines. Three liquid-fuel rockets puting out 375,000 pounds of thrust EACH, to be exact. (To put this in perspective, a fully-loaded Boeing 737 tips that scales around 130,000 pounds or so, so EACH ENGINE of the orbiter could punch the Boeing straight up at 3 G's indefinetly... and that is not even considering the solid rocket boosters attached to the Shuttle's fuel tank that provide MILLIONS of pounds of thrust!) I think this safely establishes that the Space Shuttle has engines. The problem is FUEL. The orbiter exhausts everything it's got getting up INTO orbit, and there is nothing left for the trip down: Thus the ship is a glider all the…