On Aug 22, 4:03 am, "MichaelJP" wrote:
wrote in message

ups.com...



On Aug 21, 9:59 am, djarvinen wrote:
I was watching the live pics of STS-118 landing today and noticed that
the landing gear doesn't come down until what appears to be just
seconds (10-15?) before landing.

So what's the procedure if the gear doesn't come down? I'm pretty
sure a go-around isn't an option.

It's gonna be a Bad Day if the gear doesn't come down. That's
why the design is such that they're extremely confident it
WILL come down.

I'm not sure if there's an official procedure, but I'm sure the
pilot would do the best they could to fly it like any other belly
landing. It's just that the orbiter is likely to fare much worse
on a gear-up landing than any ordinary airplane would fare.

ISTR the problem with the belly landing is the angle of attack the shuttle
needs to kill the sink rate. Either the shuttle lands flat at very high
speed and sinkrate, or the "slapdown" of the nose is going to be pretty
extreme - not sure if its survivable for the crew or not, hope they never
have to find out!

I think i would prefer RTLS to that . . . and I truly hope they never
have to find out

take care . . .

John