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  STS-3 landing site (White Sands) decision

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Author Topic:   STS-3 landing site (White Sands) decision
Paul78zephyr
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Posts: 675
From: Hudson, MA
Registered: Jul 2005

posted 09-29-2016 01:50 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Paul78zephyr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Who made the decision to land STS-3 at White Sands when Edwards became unavailable? Was the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center ever considered and if so why was it rejected?

I could not find any info on the status of SLF on the day(s) STS-3 was to land.

india-mike
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Posts: 76
From: Linnich, Northrine Westfalia, Germany
Registered: Jan 2012

posted 09-29-2016 02:58 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for india-mike   Click Here to Email india-mike     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Normally the Flight Director makes such an decision.

Especially on the first flights of the Space Transportation System (STS-1 to STS-4) it wasn't even considered to land the space shuttle on a concrete runway or even at the Kennedy Space Center. Only in an fully operational mode of the STS it was planned to land a space shuttle also at the KSC SLF. When I remind correctly this should have been the case beginning with STS-7 but due to bad weather conditions the decision was made to land the shuttle again at Edwards AFB.

But in case of a transoceanic abort landing (ascent abort mode TAL) the shuttle had to land on a predesignated landing strip on an airfield across the Atlantic and that was normally a concrete runway.

In case of an Abort Once Around (AOA) I think it would have been the decision of the commander where to land. But then you choose the easiest location to land and that would be a plain and large location, let's say Edwards AFB. Okay, the system needs sufficient energy to reach the next available spot to land and rollout the shuttle at best in one piece.

Any additional comments on this topic? Thanks for further input.

OV-105
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Posts: 816
From: Ridgecrest, CA
Registered: Sep 2000

posted 09-29-2016 03:22 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for OV-105   Click Here to Email OV-105     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I believe the decision was made in February of 1982. We had a lot of rain and the lakebed flooded. All of the landing convoy trucks were shipped by train out to White Sands.

Robert Pearlman
Editor

Posts: 42988
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 09-29-2016 03:30 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
From Jack Lousma's March 2010 NASA oral history:
We were also landing on lake beds in those days. Our intent was to land on the lake bed out at Edwards [Air Force Base, California]. We would be the third landing out there. About a week before the mission, Gordo and I were in quarantine at JSC in trailers inside of that big house down there. That's where we stayed for Skylab too, over by the gym. Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft came in and he says, "Hey, fellows, it's raining in California. The lake bed is wet. Next week when you want to land there it's going to be muddy. What do you want to do?"

We talked with him about it for a while, and we decided that there was only a couple other places we could go. There was a lake bed at White Sands [Northrup Strip], New Mexico. If we couldn't land there we could be the first guys to try the runway at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida], which was 15,000 feet long and 300 feet wide. I wish they'd made it half as wide and twice as long, but so far it's worked real well. We know a lot more about what the Shuttle does when it comes down than we did at that time, so we were playing it safe. Of course out on the lake bed you can make a runway that's six or seven miles long and crisscross them so if they don't get the right one, they can try another one.

We liked that, because we weren't totally sure that the guidance system was going to get us back exactly where we wanted to be. I said, "Let's try the lake bed at White Sands, because we've done a lot of training out there, and we know the terrain. We might not have all the navigational support out there, and there's only one runway instead of several. If the weather is not too bad, we can see from a long way out."

Chris said, "Well, I can't guarantee the weather, but if you're willing to give it a shot with using the Cape as a backup, we're willing to go with that."

capoetc
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Posts: 2169
From: McKinney TX (USA)
Registered: Aug 2005

posted 09-29-2016 06:07 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for capoetc   Click Here to Email capoetc     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
From a discussion with Jack Lousma, he told me that his wife and Fullerton's wife, along with many NASA personnel, were at White Sands for the landing, but there was a huge dust storm on landing day. The decision was made to abort the landing attempt for 24 hours and maybe try the next day (resulting in something unheard of in space flight... free time on orbit!).

That afternoon, the wives were told that the weather would not improve by the next day so the landing would be the first at KSC — a NASA airplane would be leaving to take everyone to the Cape, and would they like to come?

Lousma's wife was then walking downtown and she noticed an older gentlemen who looked like a farmer or rancher. She asked him if he had lived there long, and he said "over 50 years," so she asked him if he thought the dust storm would still be a problem tomorrow? He said, "Ma'am, in all my time here a dust storm like this has never lasted past a day." So, the wives elected to chance it and remain at White Sands.

And thus it happened that the old guy knew more about local weather than did NASA's best forecasters, and the wives were in the right place for the landing even if most of the NASA support team was not.

A final note: It took a while to get Columbia mated with the 747 to transport back to Florida, so lots of gypsum sand was blown into various areas of Columbia. Apparently, on every subsequent mission there was floating gypsum sand in the flight deck once on orbit for a few minutes until the filters did their work. In addition, in the recovery process after STS-107, much gypsum sand was recovered within various parts of Columbia.

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