Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Dumb question #652 Message-ID: <1990Jun2.040204.21505@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <376.26477BB6@ofa123.FIDONET.ORG> <24785@netnews.upenn.edu> <3286@rodan.acs.syr.edu> Date: Sat, 2 Jun 90 04:02:04 GMT In article shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) writes: >The reason that we don't fly the Shuttle (atop the 747 SCA) in bad >weather is the fragility of the tiles... Interestingly, the Soviets don't seem concerned about *their* tiles. When the Mriya flew Buran to the Paris Air Show, it casually came in for a landing in weather that NASA wouldn't have let the SCA go near. (And speaking of things the SCA wouldn't do, after they landed, they took a short cut taxiing to their parking place: *across the grass* at a gross weight of over a million pounds...) Mind you, apparently their tiles have a shorter life -- ten missions or so -- so it sounds like they've made a different set of tradeoffs. -- As a user I'll take speed over| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology features any day. -A.Tanenbaum| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu