Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Vandenberg Launch Pad
Message-ID: <1990Oct14.230451.12331@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <471@news.nd.edu> <13248@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: Sun, 14 Oct 90 23:04:51 GMT

In article <13248@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> ee251fas@sdcc15.ucsd.edu (Gumby dammit!!) writes:
>What ever happened to the launch pad at Vandenberg?  I seem to
>remember that one launch was made, then the pad was closed due to
>design flaws.  Is this correct?  If so, has the pad been closed
>permanently, or are there some plans to correct the problem?

There has never been a shuttle launch from the Vandenberg pad, although
they were a few months from one at the time of the Challenger disaster.
The pad has one known technical problem, a long exhaust duct in which
there might be a dangerous hydrogen buildup in the event of a pad abort.
Solutions to that were being thought about.  Plans for the pad were put
on hold after Challenger.  Then the USAF lost interest in the shuttle,
and NASA didn't have enough polar-orbit launches to justify the costs
of activating it immediately, and the pad was mothballed.  The prospects
of using it for shuttle launches got progressively more remote, and the
idea was de facto abandoned some time ago.  Recently it has become more
official. The more useful shuttle support equipment from it has been moved
to KSC, and there is talk (don't remember the current status) of converting
the pad for Titan (reconverting it, actually, since it was originally
built for the abortive Titan IIIM).
-- 
"...the i860 is a wonderful source     | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
of thesis topics."    --Preston Briggs |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry