Andrew Gray wrote in
:

In article , Chris
Bennetts wrote:
Andrew Gray wrote:

On the other hand... if you had sufficient silly money, it's not
implausible to retrofit an LES of the form of "two damn great solid
rockets by the wing roots"... which, if memory serves, was where it
got to in the design stage before falling off the board.

Doing that would add weight to the orbiter's structure, but that
could be comphensated for if the abort SRMs were fired and jettisoned
shortly after SRB separation (at which point they would be
unnecessary, and could probably be retrieved for refurbishment).

I vaguely recall Jenkins suggested they were likely to be about
payload-neutral... but they'd add a new failure mode and Not Come
Cheap.

They also provide meaningful abort assistance during only about 30 seconds
of ascent. Plus they were going to be expensive to develop ($300 million in
1972 dollars, or over $1 billion today).

--
JRF

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