How to fly a spaceship. AKA the shuttles

i was wondering if someone could explain the basics of flying a Space Shuttle. I'm 14 so please don't make it to complicated. thank you.

In space you have small rocket engines pointing in different directions. These are called "thrusters". If you fire a thruster pointing left your shuttle will move to the right. It will keep moving until you fire a thruster pointing right to stop. The same goes for any other direction. You do not need to be pointing in the direction you want to go. You can move up and down, right or left, back and forth... all by firing different thrusters.

You stay in orbit by moving really fast. When you're near the space station it doesn't look like you're moving because the station is moving really fast in the same direction. When you want to return to earth all you need to do is slow down. You do this by turning the shuttle (using thrusters) so your tail end is pointing forward. There are larger rocket engines in the tail. When you fire these it will slow you down so gravity can pull you back to Earth. You then turn the shuttle once more so your nose points forward and glide back to the ground like an airplane.

Learn how to fly a glider. The Shuttles WERE NOT space ships, or airplanes.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/transpo…

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplan…