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Forum:	Space Places
Topic:	Intrepid Sea, Air & Space: shuttle Enterprise

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Your Reply: HTML is ON UBB Code is ON Smilies Legend	[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jay Chladek: [B]<BLOCKQUOTE>[i]Upon landing at Edwards Air Force Base or White Sands Missile Range after a completed mission, a space shuttle's OMS pods would be removed to clean out toxic fuel remnants and ALTA pods would be installed for the ferry flight back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. As a result, the Enterprise's ALTA pods have flown on every single U.S. space shuttle at least once.[/i]</BLOCKQUOTE> I believe there is a slight inaccuracy in the ALTA pod usage. To my knowledge, the operational orbiters kept their OMS pods for the ferry flights from Edwards to Kennedy Space Center after a mission because I don't believe Edwards has the proper storage facility for hypergolic systems (White Sands does, but all images I've seen of Columbia getting readied for ferry post STS-3 showed it with operational pods for the flight). Reason being is KSC had the ability to service and store the pods properly at their hypergolic maintenance facility. Same thing with the FRCS module. So it made sense to send these modules back with the orbiter as opposed to pulling them off and sending them back separately. I have not seen any images of orbiters having their operational OMS pods removed after a mission and replaced with the ALTA pods prior to post mission ferry back from Edwards. When an orbiter would get sent to Palmdale for orbiter modification down period (OMDP) refits, then it would be delivered both to and from Palmdale without the operational pods or the FRCS modules (a dummy module was fitted to the nose) and the ALTA pods would be fitted for flight both to Palmdale and back. I also believe that the ALTA pods were used for the initial transport of all orbiters from Palmdale (or from Edwards after overland trucking in the case of Columbia and Challenger) to KSC. So in that sense, yes the ALTA pods have been used on all the orbiters. [URL=http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l31/JMChladek/Atlantis%20Offutt%202007/JMCatlantis4.jpg]Here[/URL] is an image I shot of Atlantis being ferried back after the STS-117 mission on its visit to Offutt, AFB in Bellevue, NE. As you can see, it has its regular OMS pods, not the ALTA ones.[/B][/QUOTE]
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