Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!convex!killer!osu-cis!att!ihlpl!knudsen
From: knudsen@ihlpl.ATT.COM (Knudsen)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Vandenburg never to used?
Summary: Shuttle novel about Easter Island
Message-ID: <7166@ihlpl.ATT.COM>
Date: 12 Oct 88 18:41:14 GMT
References: <41680@pyramid.pyramid.com> <22000007@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 28

In article <22000007@m.cs.uiuc.edu>, kenny@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
> Say what?  Care to elaborate?  Downrange from Vandenberg there is
> *nothing* but lots and lots and lots of empty ocean, so empty that the
> choice of emergency landing sites is extremely limited.

> True for the retrograde sun-synchronous orbits that we use for most
> polar-orbiting satellites.  (And I don't like Isla de Pascua as a
> contingency landing site any more than you do.)  If you work out the

There is a reasonably good novel "Shuttle Down" about a shuttle
launch from Vandenberg that suffers a premature MECO (all 3)
and has to land at Easter Island.  Mostly concerns the technical
and political (Chile) headaches of getting the unharmed bird
back to the US.  Such as improving the runway enough to land the
special 747 and the cargo planes that bring in a mobile version
of the Mating Facility or whatever we call the crane that lifts
the orbiter onto that 747's back.  Of course the author threw in a
terrorist attack, possibly Soviet-inspired...

The landing was hurried but easy, since the Easter Island/I de P
tower just "happened" to be monitoring their radio (they get
one scheduled flighter per week).

Landing the orbiter at one of these abort sites (we have them in
Spain and the now-slandered (?) Gambia, Africa for Canaveral launches)
may be easier than getting the orbiter back.  And if the payload is
some sensitive DOD spystat, it can get even stickier.  This too was
touched on in the book.