Can a space shuttle take off from a run-way like conventional airplanes?
The shuttle only carries enough on-board fuel for the OMS thrusters (the smaller pair of engines at the top corners of the rear of the fuselage). These engines might be able to get the shuttle up in the air for a bit, but are nowhere near powerful enough to make it to space. The shuttle uses its main engines to insert itself into orbit. These engines do not use on-board fuel. They draw their fuel from the big orange external tank, which obviously could not be underneath the shuttle in a horizontal takeoff. The external pair of boosters helps lift the weight of all of this fuel through the first stage of takeoff, most of which is a vertical climb through the thick part of the atmosphere. Once the solid boosters are spent, and jettisoned, the shuttle continues to burn its 3 main engines to gain the horizontal (tangential) velocity required to keep it in orbit. Once orbit is achieved, the external tank is jettisoned, and falls back into the atmosphere. After this, the shuttle can only use
