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From: phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: OMS thrusters on landing
Message-ID: <1843@kalliope.rice.edu>
Date: 31 Aug 88 18:54:04 GMT
References: <1001@scicom.alphacdc.com> <44700006@pyr1.cs.ucl.ac.uk> <6204@ihlpl.ATT.COM> <10142@reed.UUCP>
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Reply-To: phil@Rice.edu (William LeFebvre)
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In article <10142@reed.UUCP> douglas@reed.UUCP (P Douglas Reeder) writes:
>   An unrelated question:   Why is it not possible to use the OMS thrusters
>to make a powered landing on the shuttle, if unpowered landings are so 
>undesirable?  Extra fuel would be required, cutting into payload,
>unfortunately.

I suspect because they don't have enough "oommmph" (that's a technical
term).  They are designed to work in orbit:  microgravity and no air
resistance worth mentioning.  Why would you want powered flight?  The only
reason I can think of would be to have the ability to go around and try
the approach again.  It would require quite a bit of force to pull the
shuttle up and bank it around for another approach.  I don't think the OMS
pods can deliver that much thrust.

			William LeFebvre
			Department of Computer Science
			Rice University
			<phil@Rice.edu>