Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!mmachlis
From: mmachlis@athena.mit.edu (Matthew A Machlis)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Kennedy Landings/W.Coast Launches/5th Shuttle
Message-ID: <1989Dec17.214834.10372@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 89 21:48:34 GMT
Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system)
Reply-To: mmachlis@athena.mit.edu (Matthew A Machlis)
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Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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There are several reasons why the shuttle does not land at Kennedy, many
of them being traceable back to the stupidity of one or more engineers.
1) The runway is grooved to reduce hydroplaning when there is standing water.
However, the grooves are so deep that they do quite a bit of damage to the
tires whenever an orbiter has landed there.
2) The runway is aligned such that there is almost always a crosswind.  I
don't know if it's true, but the story I heard is that whoever had to decide
which way to orient the runway took all of the old wind data and averaged
it.  Since the wind in the area almost always blows directly onshore or
offshore, the average was no wind and the runway was aligned parallel
to the shore.
3) The weather changes too quickly.  From the moment of the deorbit burn,
there is about 45 minutes before landing, during which the landing site
simply cannot be changed.  And anyone who has been in Florida knows that
thunderstorms can pop up out of a clear sky faster than that in that area.
4) The runway is a little short, and is surrounded by swamp-land, allowing
for no margin of error.  As everyone knows, the shuttle could probably
land anywhere within a couple miles of the runway at Edwards with not too
much of a problem (except on top of the buildings, of course).
So... would you rather pay the cost of flying the orbiters back to Florida
every mission, or greatly increase the risk of losing one with its crew?

About the launch facility at Vandenberg: when I was back in L.A. I saw
a CBS news report about what happened there.  If anyone knows differently,
please correct me, but my impression is that the Air Force spent billions
of dollars (of -taxpayers'- dollars!) to build a complete facility, and
then decided that because of the weather and other considerations -- things
which should have been considered before a cent was spent on building
anything -- the entire facility was declared unusable.  It ended up costing
the military an incredible amount of money and was a completely and utterly
worthless from the very beginning.

And, on the shuttle production line -- over the summer I read a summary
of a report (I'm afraid I don't remember who published it, sorry) that said
that if we expect to go ahead with building a space station, we need to
start building a fifth orbiter right now to replace the one which, according
to basic statistics, will be destroyed in an accident before the space
station is completed.  It said we could not afford to get halfway through
construction of the station and have the fleet reduced to 3 orbiters.  Of
course, who knows when/if a station will ever be built anyway, so this is
a rather highly conditional argument.