re hst servicing mission scheduled for days in apr lambda msfc nasa gov bday lambda msfc nasa gov brian day writes rdouglas stsci edu rob douglas writes but try to land a shuttle with that big huge telescope in the back and you could have problems the shuttle just isn t designed to land with that much weight in the payload is hst really that much heavier than a spacelab hst is about lbs kg that doesn t include the cradle that would have been in the cargo bay when it was deployed spacelab j on sts was lbs according to the press kit as someone else pointed out if they had been unable to deploy it for some reason that would have had to land with it still in the cargo bay and this was a planned for contingency this is not a problem for the shuttle though it would eliminate ksc as a landing site they still have to go to edwards when landing with something like spacelab in the cargo bay garym gary morris internet garym alsys com teleuse development uucp uunet alsys com garym alsys group telesoft phone x san diego ca usa fax
