"The Ruzicka Family" wrote in
:

I do believe that the Shuttle has multiple landing sites. For one,
there's
the alternate site in California. Then there's a number of abort
landing
sites.

I understood that the one in california was no longer available and
the literature mentions no other landing sites. Can you give the
names of these sites so I can do some research.

Who knows? Maybe with all of the budget cutbacks due to Bush's
"vision" thing for the Moon and Mars, they may have mothballed the
California site.

Was the political cheap shot really necessary? I do not believe it added
anything productive to the discourse here. Furthermore, it is a false
statement. For the record, Bush has *increased* NASA's budget each year of
his administration. *If* his proposed 5.6% increase for this year is
approved, he will have succeeded in restoring most of what Clinton *cut*
from NASA's budget, once inflation is factored in.

Sources:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...s/hist04z1.xls
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/55385main_01...ummary%20Ta b
le.pdf
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...s/hist10z1.xls

And in the end, you never really answered the original question either. For
the record, STS-107 had twenty-five entries in its landing site table.
Seven of them are doubled-up, for a total of 32, and Houston can uplink
others if the need arises. More landing sites are available for higher-
inclination flights, including ECAL sites along the US east coast, such as
Myrtle Beach, Cherry Point, and Dover.

Source:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/2237main_ENT_107_F_1_E1.pdf (p. 12 of the PDF)

And in an emergency, the shuttle can land on just about any old 7500-ft
long, 130-ft wide runway with an operational TACAN or DME within 50 n.mi.

Source:
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/news/columbia/fr_generic.pdf (rule A2-264,
EMERGENCY LANDING FACILITY CRITERIA, p. 123 of the PDF)

Are solid motors still allowed to fly in the shuttle??.
Additionally, their is no such limitation with the soyuz launcher.

Unless they're only planning from now on to use the Shuttle for
on-orbit maintenance, research, ISS supply, etc, then I would think
solid motors might still be allowed. But you could be correct.

Nope, he's wrong, solids are still allowed on the shuttle. It's just that
there are no missions on the manifest requiring them.

The shuttle operates for weeks in space while soyuz can operate
for months if not more.

Not with people aboard continuously.

Argh I missed the significance of that, research shows than many of
the long term soyuz missions are related to salyut spacestation
operations.

"Many"? Try "all". The longest Soyuz free-flight (Soyuz 9) was less than 18
days, barely an hour longer than the longest shuttle flight (STS-80). And
that's a Soyuz variant that doesn't exist any more; the current version
(TMA) is limited to 4.2 days of free-flight.

Although doesnt it make soyuz more flexible than the
shuttle, in that you can dock soyuz in space for long periods in
some cases almost a year it seems.

"Almost" a year? The Soyuz is rated for 200 days in space, when docked to a
space station.



--
JRF

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