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Commercial Use of Shuttle Landing Facilities Planned
VeganBob writes "There may be future non-NASA uses of the Shuttle Landing Facilities. At 15,000 feet long and 300 feet wide, the landing strip is larger than those at most commercial airports. From the article: 'NASA today issued a formal request for expressions of interest by non-NASA organizations, including commercial space companies, for use of the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Fla. The announcement is the first step in considering how and when NASA can expand access to available capacity at the SLF by government, commercial, and academic organizations.' SPACE.com also covers this announcement."
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Kennedy+Space+Center +Florida&ll=28.617153,-80.677242&spn=0.096542,0.16 2100&t=k&hl=en
I think NASA would appreciate its use by people who won't crash jets onto the runway more. That, or whoever did the landing is responsible for replacing the divots.
By the time any pilot ever gets to fly and land their first big jet, they're already a well-seasoned expert who has logged thousands of hours of flight time and tens of thousands of landings in progressively larger and larger, and more sophisticated aircraft on their way up their flying careers. There is no such thing as "primary" training ever done in a jetliner. In fact jetliner pilots have to successfully pass a rigorous training regimen in simulators on the ground before they ever get to the co-pilot's seat of the big iron, and several years of flying right-seat before they get to the left seat.
The runway was specialized in that it's a lot higher quality than typical airport runways (as well as pretty big), but any aircraft can land on it.
The shuttle main tires are replaced every flight because they take a much higher beating than normal aircraft tires. The orbiter lands at 220 miles/hour at a vertical sink rate of 9 feet/second. That's a crash landing for other aircraft that size (which is about that of a DC-9). It's also cheaper to buy a new set than certify the tires for reuse (and theres some weight savings since multiple use tires would need to be thicker).
By the way, you'll notice the shuttle landing gear and that of the B-1 bomber look very similar, they were both developed by Rockwell in the late 70's.
The shuttle never lands (nor was at ever designed to) land in anything but clear weather. Rain would sandblast the very fragle tiles, which would degrade the aerodynamics of the orbiter on the way down and cause handling problems (not to mention tile replacement). Diversion to alternate air bases are what is used to handle weather, primarily Edwards and White Sands in the US as well as a few dozen secondary sites scattered around the world. In a pinch, it can be dropped onto about any 10,000 foot runway and is never more than a couple of hours from ground. Some failures would cause such a lickity split landing, such as a cabin leak or cooling failure.
The T-38s astronauts use to go between Johnson and Kennedy routinely land there on the shuttle strip, as well as the Shuttle Training Aircraft (STA) - a modified Gulfstream business jet that is used to simulate the landing qualities of the orbiter. NASA also has a small number of business aircraft that land there from time to time. There's nothing in the runway that's shredding tires.
Worst...sig...ever!