One REALLY Long Runway for Rent

DarkNemesis618 writes "NASA is looking into putting its 15,000 foot runway up for rent at the Kennedy Space Center. The runway, which is used for Space Shuttle landings, will soon be used less and less as the Shuttle fleet is set to be retired in 2010. The first private venture was seen last month when Steve Fossett took off at KSC in Virgin Atlantic's experimental plane. One promising deal in the works comes from Zero Gravity Corp. which offers customers a few seconds of weightlessness on a Boeing 727-200. The shuttle runway, built in the 1970s never got the use it was expected to, and with the next generation of space vehicles using parachutes to land, the runway is going to have even less use."

Comments

Sell it piecemeal.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should smash it and auction off the pieces. It'd probably pay for itself.

Runway Lengths

[AKAImBatman]

15,000 feet may seem like a lot, but it often helps to put things into perspective. For example, O'Hare International Airport has 6 paved runways with the following stats:

Direction Length Surface
14R/32L 13,001 Paved
14L/32R 10,301 Paved
09R/27L 10,144 Paved
04R/22L 8.071 Paved
09L/27R 7,969 Paved
04L/22R 7,500 Paved

John F. Kennedy International Airport has 4 runways with the following stats:

Direction Length Surface
4L/22R 11,351 Asphalt/Concrete
4R/22L 8,400 Asphalt
13L/31R 10,000 Asphalt
13R/31L 14,572 Asphalt/Concrete

So this runway is only about 428 feet longer than the longest runway at JFK International. (13R/31L - 14,572ft) Given that 14,000+ feet is already a huge amount of space, we can conclude that the KSC runway would be more interesting to new space ventures because of its location and lack of commercial traffic rather than its outright length.

Re:Runway Lengths

[epgandalf]

Area 51 also has a really long runway. You can check it out on Google Maps or wikipedia. If you need a long runway, I'm sure the military wouldn't mind letting you use it.

Re:Runway Lengths

[Xandu]

In fact, the higher you go in elevation, the longer runway planes need. The longest runway at Denver, for example, is 16,000 feet.

Re:Runway Lengths

[nharmon]

KSC's runway is 300ft wide. 13R/31L at KJFK is 150ft wide.

Re:Runway Lengths

[emerrill]

As somewhat pointed out, the 2 most important things about the KSC are its width (2-3 times the width of a standard, large, commercial runway), and its flatness.

The KSC runway varies no more the 1in vertically along its length. Its so flat, it was specifically designed to properly follow the curvature of the earth. Most commecial runways are very very not flat, they usually have long period (1 or 2 over the length) undulations in them.

Re:Runway Lengths

[dgatwood]

Last I heard, they ran Jeeps up and down the runway continuously for a few hours before the shuttle landing to scare the gators off.

Don't forget that the KSC runway is built to some serious specs---probably a bit more so than a typical commercial runway. The shuttle itself isn't so horrible (flying brick) when landing. Maximum landing weight is 230,000 pounds---about twice the maximum landing weight of a Boeing 767 (which, depending on model, ranges from 112,000 to 150,000)---about the same as that of a Boeing 747. But here's the catch. In a pinch, the strip at KSC had to be able to handle landings of a modified 747 WITH FUEL, with an orbiter strapped to its back---all 713,000 (total) pounds of it....

At the time, that seemed like a lot. It still does.

Oh yes!

[plopez]

Who's up for getting a '75 Chevy Nova and some RATO packs!

For the metric crew:

[b4stard]

15 000 feet = 4 572 meter

Google Maps link

[woah]

Google Maps link

I wonder...

[jon.wolf]

I wonder if the Mythbusters could afford to rent it for a month or so.

I'm sure there's something cool that Adam & Jamie could test there.

Something dangerous.

Can I rent it for a day?

[SJS]

I want to rent it for an hour or three to take my WRX out to play where there's nothing to hit. Parking lots often have light poles, or security guards who get irate. Taking my car to an SCCA event voids my warranty. An empty stretch of highway might not be so empty, and tickets obtained while "seeing how fast my car can go" tend to be REALLY expensive.

Nearly three miles of empty pavement sounds like a lot of (pretty safe) fun.

Giant Slab

[FiberOpPraise]

Despite being one really huge runway there is something else I learned while visiting the Kennedy Space Center. The entire runway complete in a single pouring Essentially it is one gigantic slab of concrete with no cracks in it.

Even sadder...

[fm6]

... than underused shuttle facilities at KSC is the Air Force shuttle facility on the west coast, which cost $6 billion, and was never used at all.

Re:Even sadder...

[Gen-GNU]

This is probably too late to be read, but here goes anyway...

Yes, SLC-6 (pronounced slick-6) was expensive and never used for a shuttle launch. After the Challenger disaster, shuttle operations went from expanding to contracting, and despite what they will tell you publicly, it never recovered. Not only was SLC-6 built, but rather extensive work was done at Vandenberg AFB to allow for moving the shuttle. Hills were flattened, and certain roads still have short road signs, so they fit under the wings when it was to be driven to/from SLC-6.

When Challenger happened, NASA needed an excuse, and found one. They claimed that the hills near SLC-6 would reflect the thrust from the shuttle back on it, shaking it apart before it ever took off. And they can't knock the hills down, because they could be seen from a public beach, so Californian law says they can't be touched. It was basically a convienent way to slim down the shuttle program.

As a side note, the runway at Vandenberg was also expanded, and is still an alternate landing site for the shuttle. I assume it is the same size as KSC. I remember a private pilot telling me the thing was so wide you could land a cessna on it sideways. It was so long, you could do 3 touch and go's in one pass