Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!linus!mbunix!wgm
From: wgm@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Gregory M. Woodhouse)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: shuttle landing sites
Message-ID: <41847@linus.UUCP>
Date: 16 Nov 88 15:20:06 GMT
References: <1988Oct10.224026.12802@utzoo.uucp> <3330011@hpindda.HP.COM>
Sender: news@linus.UUCP
Reply-To: wgm@mbunix (Woodhouse)
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, Mass.
Lines: 21

In article <3330011@hpindda.HP.COM> mears@hpindda.HP.COM (David B. Mears) writes:
>
>I would hazard a guess that dumping the fuel has nothing to do with the
>weight of the aircraft, but is done for fire safety reasons.  I think
>this is pretty standard in commercial aviation (though I could be
>mistaken).
>
>David B. Mears

Fuel Dumping is done for weight reasons.  I have had to dump fuel in fighers
several times, since fighters routinely take off at a gross weight greater
than their maximum landing weight.  Heavy aircraft (both fighters and
airliners fall into this category) increase their landing speeds based on
their landing gross weights.  A fully loaded fighter would have to land at a
speed that would exceed the limitations on the tires (200kts on an F-105G for
instance) so that fuel would have to be dumped (or in the case of the F-105G,
burned using "burners and boards") to reduce the landing speed below
acceptable limits.

Greg Woodhouse
wgm@mitre-bedford.arpa