Slashdot Mirror
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
Or regular races - sell lots of tickets - you could call it the NASACAR races.
That is an enormous runway. Back in the day, I flew into Fargo ND's hector field as one of the way points on my solo cross-country. As I landed the C152, the thought that I could probably land on the runway sideways did cross my mind.
The runway at 9000x150 was rumored to be a 747 training ground for the airlines. With a longer and wider runway, I can see it getting use for folks learning how to fly the big jets.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
does anyone else see the world's first proffessional slip 'n slide tournament?
A few weeks ago I tried submitting the following story to slashdot, but it kept on getting rejected (same with these stories). As seems to be becoming tradition, I thought it would be relevant to the current topic, so I've pasted the text here. And no, it's not Karma-whoring if my Karma's already been maxed out for years. :)
At a recent talk, Michael Griffin outlined NASA's plans for helping to generate a robust and competitive commercial market in orbital spaceflight. The speech and Q&A transcripts from the talk are available. In a move reminiscent of the US government kickstarting the early airline industry by purchasing airmail services, NASA plans on supplementing government-derived transport by purchasing cargo delivery services to the International Space Station from commercial providers, followed by crew transportation after the systems have proven themselves. Unlike traditional government contracts, sellers wouldn't see a profit before the services are delivered and the emphasis will be on actual performance instead of process and specifications. Aviation Week has some commentary on the announcement.
I also think I remember seeing something before about NASA selling one of the launch complexes at Kennedy Space Center to SpaceX, but can't find more info. Does anybody have a link to more on that?
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!