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Is landing a day early possible ?
Say weather forecasters were predicting rain on monday and a category 5
hurricane on tuesday. (reducing the chances of landing on wednesday to almost nil). Could NASA land a day early if they pushed through all the procedures at a faster pace ? Or would they had had to undock a day early in order to perform all the pre-landing stuff ? I realise Edwards is there. But if reducing by one day the delay between undocking and landing were possible, would NASA choose this over landing at Edwards when you consider the added costs and more importantly, the added delays of landing at Edwards in this race to complete the station before the 2010 deadline ? |
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Is landing a day early possible ?
Neon Knight wrote in news:Xns9801A048D175919knightofneon20@
216.196.97.136: John Doe wrote in : Could NASA land a day early if they pushed through all the procedures at a faster pace ? Why does it take 2 days to come back down anyhow? What exactly are they doing during that time? Today, late inspections. Tomorrow, FCS checkout and cabin stow. Monday, deorbit prep and entry. -- JRF Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail, check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and think one step ahead of IBM. |
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Is landing a day early possible ?
On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 15:49:58 -0500, Jorge R. Frank wrote:
Neon Knight wrote in news:Xns9801A048D175919knightofneon20@ 216.196.97.136: John Doe wrote in : Could NASA land a day early if they pushed through all the procedures at a faster pace ? Why does it take 2 days to come back down anyhow? What exactly are they doing during that time? Today, late inspections. Tomorrow, FCS checkout and cabin stow. Monday, deorbit prep and entry. Tuesday, Pilot and Commander walk around, kick tires, remove debris... I guess it's, "Better Late than .....?????" During the MMT briefing, the Flight Director seemed to thing he was getting some sort of bonus test wrt the gap fillers. Using the word "free", he must have never read "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe." TANSTAAFL, the cost of his "free", "bonus" test was quite possibly all the structural heat load margin. Hopefully, he has the right sensors on board to see what's going on. If not, wouldn't it have been better to remove the debris on this mission, then do a proper DTO on some future mission. With test debris, and an array of sensors on the tiles to see what happening? -- Craig Fink Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @ |
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Is landing a day early possible ?
John Doe wrote: Say weather forecasters were predicting rain on monday and a category 5 hurricane on tuesday. (reducing the chances of landing on wednesday to almost nil). Could NASA land a day early if they pushed through all the procedures at a faster pace ? Or would they had had to undock a day early in order to perform all the pre-landing stuff ? It was tried on the STS-76 mission. The weather forecast for the EOM day at KSC was bad and the day before was good. So they tried to compress all fo the EOM-1 checks into the same day as the undocking from Mir. As it turned out the weather at KSC continued to be bad and they ended up landing the shuttle at Edwards anyway. There's a theory that the _REAL_ reason they landed the shuttle at Edwards was it was the first time a shuttle landed with one less person than when it launched and they didn't want any confusing questions from the press about why one of the crewmembers was missing (cue X-files music ....) Hmm, isn't there going to be one less person on this shuttle too? ;-) I realise Edwards is there. But if reducing by one day the delay between undocking and landing were possible, would NASA choose this over landing at Edwards when you consider the added costs and more importantly, the added delays of landing at Edwards in this race to complete the station before the 2010 deadline ? They can, as the STS-76 example shows. But the alternative is to keep Discovery up additional days if the weather in Florida shows any possibility it will improve. This requires several factors - Decent weather at Edwards each day and the forecast so you always have that available - just in case Good systems on the shuttle without any hardware concerns Some optimisim that the weather in Florida will improve Enough supplies to stretch out the mission. The STS-113 mission had a record three waveoffs to try to land in Florida and it succeeded on the day where they had to pick a landing site - if the weather hadn't cooperated it would have gone to Edwards instead that day. Rob Stevens |
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