Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ncar!husc6!rice!titan!phil From: phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle Subject: Re: shuttle landing sites Message-ID: <1990@kalliope.rice.edu> Date: 12 Oct 88 15:08:24 GMT References: <15991@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <6400010@cpe> <1988Oct10.224026.12802@utzoo.uucp> Sender: usenet@rice.edu Reply-To: phil@Rice.edu (William LeFebvre) Organization: Rice University, Houston Lines: 20 In article <1988Oct10.224026.12802@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >...The trouble is that the east coast >of Florida is, in some ways, a lousy place for a spaceport. The weather >there is too volatile. It can change significantly between shuttle >retrofire and landing time. Sudden thunderstorms, in particular, are >common.... Other differences that matter: KSC is a paved strip, Edwards is a (softer) dry lake bed. KSC is much much shorter than Edwards. KSC has nothing but swamp to either side of the strip, Edwards has more lake bed (important if you miss). Basically, there is much more room for error when you land at Edwards. Also, the KSC strip is parallel to the Atlantic coast, so whether it's a land breeze or a sea breeze you almost always have cross winds. And they just don't like the idea of landing in a cross wind (it's tough enough with a powered plane). William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University