To optimize and improve the nose landing gear shock absorber of a fixed-wing carrier-based aircraft, the cross-sectional area of the oil needle in the main oil orifice and the cross-sectional area of the oil return orifice shall be reconfigured. Firstly, a dynamic analysis of a single landing shock absorber system is conducted, with a focus on explaining the calculation methods for air spring force and oil damping force. Secondly, the shock absorber is modeled and its typical working processes are simulated, including calculations of shipboard landing buffering results under different sinking speeds and catapult extension results under different terminal drag speeds. Phenomena such as wheel transition oscillation and shock absorber hysteresis compression are interpreted. Finally, an orifice area configuration optimization scheme based on the work-energy diagram of the shock absorber system is proposed, with principles and necessary explanations for key steps in the scheme provided. The optimized scheme, which comprehensively considers buffering and extension performance, is applied to a single shock absorber system model for verification. The results show that the main orifice area should exhibit a slight increase near the critical stroke of the high and low pressure chambers. After optimizing the orifice area, under the ultimate sinking speed, the peak load of the shock absorber is reduced by 12.92%, the compression stroke is decreased by 2.91%, and the energy absorption efficiency is increased by 19.90%; the peak load of the tire is reduced by 12.17%, the compression stroke is decreased by 5.92%, and the energy absorption efficiency is increased by 12.28%.