Space Shuttle Retirement

"Toyota to tow space shuttle!" scream the headlines. True Americans everywhere are outraged! How dare they use a furrin truck to tow our beloved icon of American gloriousness!

Is this even possible? I mean airplanes are light for their size, and space craft need to be really light, but the shuttle is really big. See the pretty picture below. Could you really tow it with a pickup truck?
The shuttle weighs 172,000 pounds, empty. That is like two fully loaded semi-trucks. Pulling that much weight with a pickup truck is a stunt on par with Charles Atlas pulling a railroad train with his teeth. You might be able to do it, but it is not something you are going to want to do every day.

The shuttle is going to travel 12 miles by road from LAX to the California Science Center. The pickup truck is only going to be used for the last quarter mile.


Shuttle trailer. I don't think I would want to try and tow this trailer with a pickup truck any distance, even without the shuttle aboard. It probably outweighs the pickup by a factor of ten to one.