Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
People often point to the difference between wings and parachutes. Yet
there the record is about the same. One failure of a parachute system and
one of a winged system.


Two failures of a parachute system if you count the Apollo 15 landing on
two chutes as well as the fatal Soyuz 1 failure.
Still, with the Shuttle if the wings fail you don't have the possibilty
of carrying a reserve pair like the Soyuz reserve chute.

In addition though, we've had what, 3 now ballastic entries of the most
recent Soyuz design. One of them looks like it was damn close to a fatal
landing. All of them landing hundreds of miles off course.


I'd like to see the Shuttle try a landing hundreds of miles off course
sometime... say in the Los Angeles drainage channels. :-)




The fact is, all manned launch vehicles are very low down on the
learning due to low launch rates. That means we're only making
guesses (granted, some of them more educated than others), but they
are still guesses.

That's all you can do at the end of it.


Wrong. The Boeing 787 design has already had more flights than the space
shuttle.

It hasn't flown yet:
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/gener...787-110408.xml

Pat