What's the buzz, Buzz?

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...
Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:

True. On the other hand, with what, a 800 mile cross range the shuttle
has a pretty wide range of landing opportunities.

Needs a landing airfield with the proper navaids to allow it to land, and
a long enough runway.
Also, not good at holding in the pattern for other aircraft to land. ;-)

True, but that 800 mile cross range opens up a lot.

Now sure, Soyuz can land "anywhere" but honestly, do you want? South
Pacific? Might be awhile.



When was the last unscheduled landing of a spacecraft, Gemini 8?

There was the Soyuz 18A mission abort that almost put them down in China
in 1975, and the Soyuz 23 mission that came down on the semi-frozen lake
during the blizzard because of a faulty retro burn in 1976.

I was excluding 18A because that was an abort, something a bit different.

23 is a more interesting case.


Soyuz 23 used batteries for power rather than solar arrays, but after that
the solar arrays were returned to the design to give the crew more time to
plan a landing if docking failed.
Soyuz TM-6 landed a day late due to computer problems aborting the
retrofire in 1988, but details of that flight are still somewhat sketchy.

Thanks for the others.



Pat




--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.