Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Easter Island Message-ID: <1990Jul19.153241.27704@zoo.toronto.edu> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: Date: Thu, 19 Jul 90 15:32:41 GMT In article manning@arrester.caltech.edu (Evan Marshall Manning) writes: >I was watching a Nova last night about Easter Island. They >mentioned that Easter Island is an emergency landing strip >for west-coast shuttle landings. > >Do they fly out people for each landing? Stockpile emergency >gear? What they probably meant to say is that Easter Island is an emergency landing site for west-coast shuttle *launches*. Of course, there haven't been any such launches, and it's most unlikely now that there will ever be. However, NASA did make some improvements to Easter Island's airport, and set up some other facilities, before that became clear. I imagine that if Vandenberg shuttle launches were being done, they'd have equipment cached there permanently and emergency crews flown out for each flight. You definitely want people and equipment on hand, if only because the OMS/RMS fuel and oxidizer -- still aboard when the shuttle lands -- are very dangerous chemicals. (There's also some liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, but they're innocuous by comparison.) About a decade ago, Harry Stine (writing as Lee Correy) produced a novel, "Shuttle Down", which graphically described how ludicrously unprepared NASA was for an Easter Island landing. Some of the preparations were made partly as a result of the embarrassment it caused. -- NFS: all the nice semantics of MSDOS, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology and its performance and security too. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry