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From: mmachlis@athena.mit.edu (Matthew A Machlis)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Edwards landings
Message-ID: <1991May10.181129.1554@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 10 May 91 18:11:29 GMT
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Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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There are two main reasons why to land at Edwards instead of Florida:
1) Weather, as someone just mentioned.  There is about 90 minutes between
when the orbiter is committed to landing at a particular site and when it
actually touches down, and during that 90 minutes the weather in Florida
can change drastically, as opposed to the stable Edwards weather.

2) Room for error.  I just read that several flights ago, one of the shuttles
actually touched down 700' short of the runway at Edwards.  Out there in the
desert you could land several thousand feet short with no big deal.  The
Florida runway does have a 1000' overrun at either end of the runway, but this
is still less error margin than at Edwards.\

I would definitely like to see them landing at Florida regularly to save all
that money, but only when it has been determined to be totally safe (at least
not any riskier than landing at Edwards).

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Matt Machlis
MIT Space Systems Laboratory
(617)253-2272