Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!umich!dgsi!gregc
From: gregc@cimage.com (Greg Cronau)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Atlantis and the DoD
Message-ID: <1990Nov11.204720.16330@cimage.com>
Date: 11 Nov 90 20:47:20 GMT
References: <16716@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Reply-To: gregc@dgsi.UUCP (Greg Cronau/10000)
Organization: Cimage Corp, Ann Arbor, MI
Lines: 20

In article <16716@hydra.gatech.EDU> ccoprmd@prism.gatech.EDU (Matthew DeLuca) writes:
>
>     A quick question...why is it that the vast majority (all but one, 
>if my memory serves) of Department of Defense shuttle missions are aboard
>Atlantis?  I suppose it could be attributed to coincidence; the shuttles
>are supposed to be pretty much identical, after all.  Still, I have to 
>wonder.
>

If memory serves me right, back when the Air Force was going to have their own
pads at Vandenberg, they were going to get 2 of the shuttles, all their own,
all of the time. Atlantis was one of those, and I seem to remember that
Discovery was the other one, but it may have been an unbuilt 5th. shuttle that
would have been the Air Force's second one. I remember being peeved at the time
about the fact that a shuttle named "Discovery" was going to be used for
secret military operations and not scientific missions. But anyway, I believe
that Atlantis is always used for the DOD missions because that is what it was
built for.

gregc@cimage.com