A shuttle would represent a fair amount of drag, much as one of those roof-mount boxes on vehicles, except the drag is probably worst (even allowing for size) due to the higher speed of flight. I always wondered how many stops were required.
Similarly, the Guppies/Super Guppies and Belugas used by Airbus to transport wings from England to TLS also have short range due to the drag of the fuselage.
The range of the transporter with a shuttle mounted is stated to be 1,150 miles (so that intra-Texas hop seems to be abnormally short?), with a ceiling of just 15,000' ( vs. 35,000' or so on a normal 747), and a cruise speed of mach 0.6 (a 747 normally travels at 0.8-0.85).
Last edited by YVR Cockroach; Jun 4, 2009 at 11:50 am
Reason: If Wikipedia is to be believed.....