Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!elroy!jato!jbrown
From: jbrown@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Jordan Brown)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Soviet and American Shuttles
Message-ID: <367@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>
Date: 17 Oct 88 08:38:26 GMT
References: <1574@nunki.usc.edu> <3020@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> <1703@eos.UUCP> <2008@kalliope.rice.edu>
Reply-To: jbrown@jato.UUCP (Jordan Brown)
Distribution: sci.space.shuttle,sci.space
Organization: Me?  Organized?
Lines: 10

In article <2008@kalliope.rice.edu> phil@Rice.edu (William LeFebvre) writes:
>Quite right.  I watched this last landing very closely, and decided that
>the shuttle can glide very nicely when it wants to.  After the flare and
>on final approach, it looks like a regular plane coming in for a landing.

Even a brick (well...) can flatten its glide path by turning speed into
altitude (or lack of descent in this case).  Remember, the Shuttle crosses
the EDW field boundary at Mach 1 and touches down at ~200 mph; that energy
has to go *somewhere*, and I believe it's used in the last segment of
the flight to flatten the glide.