Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ulysses!smb
From: smb@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Two Shuttles at Once???
Message-ID: <12154@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Date: 9 Sep 89 14:49:24 GMT
References: <3330022@hpindda.HP.COM>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 17

In article <3330022@hpindda.HP.COM>, mears@hpindda.HP.COM (David B. Mears) writes:
> This is the first time I've ever heard any hint at the possibility of
> getting two shuttles ready for launch on separate pads.  Since I haven't
> heard anything in this forum about this, I assume that the NYT got their
> story mixed up, but I thought I'd post and get people's reactions.

No, the story was accurate.  There are two launch pads; the second
was completed (or rather, converted for the shuttle) around the time
of the Challenger explosion.  Having two launch pads lets them prepare
two launches more or less in parallel, though there are some activities,
such as preparing the SRBs, that they don't want to do like that for
safety reasons.  (This was mentioned in the original NY Times article;
dunno if your paper picked up the whole story.)

There are not sufficient facilities, I believe, to actually launch two
within a few days of each other, as was done once during Gemini days,
but a lot of the preparation can be overlapped.