Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!ncar!husc6!xait!pluto!jmturn
From: jmturn@pluto.UUCP (James Turner)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: QUESTION: Shuttle round trips to the moon?
Keywords: shuttle moon
Message-ID: <23@pluto.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jan 89 19:19:01 GMT
References: <14549@oberon.USC.EDU>
Reply-To: jmturn@pluto.UUCP (James Turner)
Organization: Automation Research Partners
Lines: 26

In article <14549@oberon.USC.EDU> weiss%neuro.usc.edu@oberon.usc.edu writes:
:Can the shuttle fly to the moon, land, and take off again to return
:to the earth.  Keep in mind the moon has 1/6 the gravitational pull
:of the earth.  Let's assume for the moment that there is adequate
:solid flat landing surface prepared on the moon for the landing.


The landing ain't the hard part, it's the getting there. I'm pretty sure
the Shuttle doesn't have sufficient fuel to get much above the 500km 
operational ceiling (I know it's around 500, might be off by as much as
30% one way or the other). In any event, the only way we've ever gotten
anything to the moon was by throwing away most of it along the way.

Now, assuming you could get the shuttle to a lunar orbit, you get other
interesting problems. The shuttle does an atmospheric approach on Earth,
and depends on the air to preform the S-turns it uses to slow down. A
lunar landing would take drastically different stratgeries. You'd
probably want to do a straight in dive parallel to the runway.
-- 
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