"Craig Fink" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 14:14:53 -0700, The Guy In Ireland wrote:

sorry

No mention of attempting a landing at White Sands.

What would that be and entail..

That would entail forethought. The plan looks more like an afterthought,
three years in the making. Three years, plenty of time to make an
extension cord, develop tire repressurization, actually use the OGS they
just delivered... Running out of O2 before H2O, I guess in their current
plan they won't be able to breath but will have plenty to drink, just not
the right stuff. And, no plan to do anything else if the rescue mission is
aborted, as they would have already disposed of the broken Orbiter.

If the rescue Orbiter crashes during an RTLS, does NASA actually have
enough parts to launch the third Orbiter?

NASA wouldn't likely have enough time to launch a third shuttle in rapid
succession. However, if there were a chance of success, I'm sure they'd
try.

However, given the current safety record, it's unlikely that there would be
a problem with the rescue orbiter. But the odds of a safe rescue of
stranded astronauts by shuttle are still better than the odds of a safe
ejection when a military jet pilot pulls on the ejection handle.

You do know about the many ways an ejection can go wrong and injure or kill
a pilot, don't you?

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)