Could the Space Shuttle land at any major airport, if it had to?

[Milossarian]

You might have noticed on the news that the Shuttle up in space currently has been or was delayed from coming home for like two days, because of less-than-optimal wind conditions.

That got me to thinking.

The Shuttle is typically landed at air bases in California or Florida. I think they can land in Houston as well.

If a situation occurred where weather absolutely prohibited landings at any of those locations, and they really had to get it out of space, what would NASA do?

I'm sure they have a contingency plan for making landings almost anywhere on the globe, in case the Shuttle had to hightail it out of space and couldn't wait.

Could it land on the longest runway of a major airport?

[Duck Duck Goose]

Google. "space shuttle contingency landing"

http://home-1.worldonline.nl/~karel/ufo/nasa/sts-37/sts37-nasapress.html
STS-37 contingency landing sites are Edwards AFB, Kennedy Space Center, White Sands, Banjul, Ben Guerir or Moron.

[c_goat]

If memory serves me correctly, the Shuttle needs a longer runway to land than is usually available. That's why they can only land at certain places. I imagine they could always land it at that place where all the car commercials are made (and where they break the land speed record).

[JeffB]

According some numbers I've seen, a fully loaded 747 needs about 9,000 - 10,000 feet of runway. If I'm reading this table (http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/archives/sts-80/green/lndecel.pdf#xml=http://spaceflight.herndon.wip.psiweb.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/webinator/search/xml.txt) right (hope that link works), the shuttle uses about the same range. I'm going on the "Total Rollout" column. I don't know how many airports can handle 747s, but I'm sure all the major ones can. I'm not sure that landing at O'hare would be a good idea, though.

Probably a lot of military bases around the world can also handle a shuttle landing.

[JeffB]

Originally posted by c_goat
I imagine they could always land it at that place where all the car commercials are made (and where they break the land speed record).

c_goat, you're talking about the Bonneville Salt Flats (http://www.utah.com/places/public_lands/bonneville_salt.htm). I wondered about that too, but according the linked site,

Stay on existing roads or areas designated for vehicles. Despite the appearance of a hard surface, much of the area is a thin salt crust over soft mud. It easily breaks under the weight of a vehicle.

The flats are actually covered in water during the winter. I think landing the shuttle here would end up with it stuck in the mud.

[Airman Doors, USAF]

I really don't see why not. The impression I've always had is that the landing places for the Space Shuttle have always depended upon security considerations. You wouldn't want to land in say, Iraq, would you? Other than that it's just a heavy glider at landing. It does have brakes, it does have a drag chute, so why not? Still, other than the Challenger debacle, there hasn't been a genuine five-alarm emergency in the Shuttle's 20-year history, so presumably a landing such as the one you describe has never been attempted. Sooner or later, though, I'm sure we'll find out the hard way.

[Milossarian]

Thanks, DDG.

Now, then.

The number of contingency sites seems surprisingly small. It wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility that weather could be very bad at all of them, at once. Or that, if time was of the essence to leave space, that all could be out of range.

Jeff: Interesting. It sounds like it could land at an airport.

[bdgr]

Supposedly, Carswell AFB(or so it used to be called) here in FT. Worth, Texas(it's actually just across the runway from Lockheed, where I work), is on the list of places it can land. At least thats what a freind of mine told me(he's a Fire Marshal at the base).

[Duck Duck Goose]

The runway at Kennedy is built like this.
http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/facilities/slf.html
Orbiter landings at the Kennedy Space Center are made on one of the largest runways in the world. The runway is located 3.2 km (2 miles) northwest of the Vehicle Assembly Building and is 4,572 meters (15,000ft) long and 91.4 meters (300ft) wide - about as wide as the length of a football field. It has 305 meters (1000ft) of paved overruns at each end and the paving thickness is 40.6cm (15 inches) at the center.

Find an airport that matches those specifications.

P.S. Eh, c.goat, I don't see Bonneville Salt Flats on the contingency list, even though it's 10 miles long.
http://www.cloudbow.com/journeys/1997vaca/trip97salt.html

However, there are other factors involved, besides just "length of runway".
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/nasafact/landing.htm
Landing the orbiter at KSC’s Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) instead of at EAFB saves at least an estimated three-quarter million dollars and about five days of processing time for its next mission. A KSC landing also eliminates the necessity of exposing the orbiter, a national resource, to the uncertainties and potential dangers of a cross-country ferry trip atop one of NASA’s two modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.

With its diverse choice of concrete and spacious dry lake bed runways, EAFB offers a reliable alternate landing site to Florida because of its more stable and predictable weather conditions. Unlike launches for which a "go" for liftoff can be given within minutes of changing weather conditions during the launch window, the landing site must be chosen more than an hour before touchdown, when the deorbit burn takes place. A switch in sites usually can be made up to 90 minutes prior to landing.

Maybe they can't land it at Bonneville because it's too hard (or expensive) to get it back to Florida.

Also, maybe the Rockies make for unstable weather patterns for Bonneville. The shuttle has to start its approach from a considerably further distance than a 747, so maybe the weather can change too fast for NASA's taste.

Banjul:
http://www.washtimes.com/internatlads/gambia/15.html
Banjul International Airport: "hub and spoke" for sub-region

When the next space shuttle takes off on May 20, 1999 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida it will be "heads up" for Banjul International Airport's 20 specially-trained security officers. The Gambia's only airport is in an elite category. It is among four locations in the world designated by NASA, as emergency landing sites for the space shuttle flights.

The runway, recently extended to more than two miles, in a $1.2 million project, which now makes BIA the third longest runway in Africa. The shoulder strip areas, maintained jointly by NASA and the GCAA, have also been improved to bring it into compliance with all International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) requirements.


Ben Guerir:
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/nasafact/talmor.htm
The primary TAL site for a low inclination launch is the Ben Guerir Air Base in Morocco. Ben Guerir has also been designated a weather alternate TAL site for high inclination launches because of its geographic location and its landing support facilities.
Ben Guerir was designated as a TAL site in September 1986. Located on a flat, rocky, desert plain about 36 miles north of Marrakech, Ben Guerir is a former Strategic Air Command Base abandoned in 1963. It has one runway, oriented in a north-south direction, which is 14,000 by 200 feet with a 720-foot overrun at the north end. The runway surface has been rejuvenated, and an operations and storage building added.
Moron: It's actually Moron de la Frontera, or Moron AFB. I can't find anything that says what size its runway is.

Trans-atlantic Abort Sites:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/space/glenn/news/shuttle.safety/
A shuttle flying to the Mir space station or, when work begins, the new International Space Station, follows what NASA calls a "high inclination" trajectory. They usually follow a path of 51.6 degrees of elevation and a northeasterly line roughly paralleling the North American coastline.

In the event of a problem, they have numerous alternative sites ranging from air bases in places like Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Cherry Point, North Carolina; Dover, Delaware, and on up the coast to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and beyond.

After crossing the Atlantic, they can also set down at "trans-Atlantic abort" sites in Banjul, Gambia; Benguerir, Morocco; and Zaragoza, Spain.

Shuttles going on missions that do not involve a rendezvous with a space station follow a more easterly route and a lower inclination trajectory -- usually 28.45 degrees. Banjul and Benguerir are the abort sites for those shuttles, along with Moron de la Frontera, Spain.

Zaragoza was a U.S. air base at one time but is now operated by the Spanish air force. The site at Moron is a small U.S. air base that is still used to stage overseas operations.

And now I'm getting tired, I'll let Milo take over.

http://www.google.com :)

[schief2]

In this earlier thread (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=43353) where I posed a similar question, I was informed that NASA has had to dig further than two deep in its list of backup sites only once: for a combination of several reasons, they once had to land at White Sands Missile Range in NM back in the early days.

I'd recommend that any interested parties check out that thread - while not directly related to what Milossarian is asking, there's a lot of good links about space shuttle contingency sites and such.

[London_Calling]

I crewed a 35’ out to The Azores a couple of summers ago (it’s somewhere between the Caribbean and southern Portugal) and the common belief out there is that the US Military base on one of the islands (there are 7 and I don’t recall which one had the base) has been specially extended to cater for this very emergency.

A mid-Atlantic site makes sense if the Shuttle has to overshoot without too much notice but I wasn’t able to confirm the locally held belief.

[CalMeacham]

In his circa 1981 novel, "Shuttle Down" , author Lee Corey (which I think was a pen name for G. Hank Stine) describes in meticulous detail the emergency landing of a shuttle (launched from Vandenberg in a polar orbit) on Easter Island. The book gives the impression of being meticulously researched. As I recall, it was short for landing (but they had no choice), but the real problems were servicing the shuttle after landing (apparently there are a LOT of things that have to be done after touchdown, none of which your typical airport is set up to do) and the subsequent lengthening of the runway so that they could fly the shuttle back out on the back of another plane.

[Milossarian]

Clearly, NASA wants some big-assed, wide-assed runways to land the Shuttle.

But is that more precautionary than necessary? Particularly on a more typical landing trajectory? It's hard to know.

[Speaker for the Dead]

Sometime ago, they catalogued all of the airports the Shuttle could land at in case of an emergency. They need a runway with at least 12,000 feet of room. I can't cite this, but I heard it from the air traffic controller at the Calgary airport during a little toury thing.

[GaryM]

Originally posted by CalMeacham
In his circa 1981 novel, "Shuttle Down" , author Lee Corey (which I think was a pen name for G. Hank Stine) describes in meticulous detail the emergency landing of a shuttle (launched from Vandenberg in a polar orbit) on Easter Island. The book gives the impression of being meticulously researched. As I recall, it was short for landing (but they had no choice), but the real problems were servicing the shuttle after landing (apparently there are a LOT of things that have to be done after touchdown, none of which your typical airport is set up to do) and the subsequent lengthening of the runway so that they could fly the shuttle back out on the back of another plane.
A great story! Lot's of complications with the authorities such as "where's your airworthyness certificate?"

[AWB]

Originally posted by bdgr
Supposedly, Carswell AFB(or so it used to be called) here in FT. Worth, Texas(it's actually just across the runway from Lockheed, where I work), is on the list of places it can land. At least thats what a freind of mine told me(he's a Fire Marshal at the base).

Hey, I work for Lockheed Martin too. Sounds like you work with neat stuff (airplanes). I'm stuck in a stuffy office in Arlington, VA.

[Johnny L.A.]

One consideration (in addition to the "shut down" procedures that have to be taken care of before the astronauts may exit) is that the Shuttle has to be taken back to Florida. To do this, they put it on top of a specially-modified Boeing 747. How do they get it up there? Well, at EAFB they have a facility to do it. I'd assume there are similar facilities at the other landing sites. But not at JFK or LAX.

Of course, the main consideration is to get the astronauts down safely. The spacecraft is expendable, whereas the crew isn't. There are a lot of places it could land if it came down to the lives of the crew.

[Whack-a-Mole]

This link ( http://www.spacedaily.com/news/japan-hopex-00c.html ) describes a shuttle runway being built on Kiribati (an island in the Pacific...on the equator almost due south of Hawaii).

As Johnny L.A. mentioned I imagine that in a pinch the Shuttle might try to land on the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago. Good choice? Obviously not but if the choice is a chance landing there or certain death in space I bet they'd take their best shot at a landing on the expressway.

Also, and I can find no cite for this, I thought I read somewhere that the landing strip at EAFB is stunningly precise. No bumpy runway here but a basically smooth runway that actually conforms to the curvature of the earth (so each end seems higher off the ground than the center creating a very flat surface). Is this necessary for a Shuttle to land? I have no idea. I did look for a cite for this but so far no luck. Anyone else here of this?

[caircair]

My parents live in Moses Lake, WA on the old Air Force Base there. The runway is currently being used to train Japan AirLines pilots, and it's also used by Boeing for testing some of their planes, etc. But there was a rumor in town that, in the event California AND Florida were socked in by bad weather, Moses Lake would be the back up landing site. After reading the other posts in this thread, I'm wondering now if this IS just a rumor, or if there is some truth to it. I'd guess it might have a grain of truth, since the landing site WAS once under control of the US military. Can anyone elucidate?

[Johnny L.A.]

I used to work at EAFB, and I don't remember hearing that about the runways there. EAFB not only has the concrete runways, but also the dry lakes. During the rainy season (generally February through April or May), the lake beds fill with water. The high winds push the water around and make a very smooth surface. It's not very deep. Once I was driving into work, and someone put a big plywood shark's fin out away from the shore. I wish I had taken a picture. There is actual sea life in the lakes: Brine shrimp hatch when the lakes are full. The eggs can lie dormant for (IIRC) 100 years. When the lakes dry, the shrimp die and the eggs await the next rains.

Rumour has it that gravel for the concrete main runway was taken from Tropico Gold Mine during WWII. Since we needed a runway, no one bothered to extract any gold that might have been in the gravel. Of course this tidbit was passed on by the tour guide at Tropico, so it could very well be apocryphal. (BTW: There are no more tours of Tropico. Insurance.)

[bizerta]

In addition to the long and thick runway, specialized navigaion equipment is needed at the landing site. The shuttle lands entirely by computer. It needs the microwave landing system in place in order to determine, to the foot (if not inch) it's location with respect to the touchdown zone. I assume the radar altimeter feeds into the landing computer, so the terrain in the area must be known in advance. In a 747, the pilot takes over once the plane crosses the threshold. This is not so on the shuttle.

[kanicbird]

IIRC (from pop science?)
One of the more interesting places the SS could land is Easter Island. THere is a paved runway but nothing else. If the SS did have to land there it would be a major project to get it back - basically building all needed facilities.

[kpm]

The air force base in Myrtle Beach, SC closed a few years ago so that no longer is an option. (it was sold and will soon be the site of an amusement park)

I think when they landed in White Sands the Florida runway was not yet ready - back then they always landed at Edwards AFB.

[bdgr]

Originally posted by AWB

Hey, I work for Lockheed Martin too. Sounds like you work with neat stuff (airplanes). I'm stuck in a stuffy office in Arlington, VA.

Nah....I get to see um, but I am NT Admin, so I just get to play with the computers in the stuffy office buildings. I work dedicated support for the JSF program, so things are pretty dead right now while we wait until they decide to buy *Our* JSF over that flying chipper vac that Boing came up with.

[Sam Stone]

There are plenty of runways around that are big enough for the shuttle to land on - here in Edmonton we have a runway that's 15,000 ft long and 300 ft wide - at one time it actually was a designated shuttle alternate.

In the 50's, a lot of runways were built around the world to accomodate fully-loaded B-52's, and all of those runways are big enough for the shuttle. In fact, they're roughly the size of the runway at Edwards. It's great PR for NASA to say it has the biggest runway in the world, and it may actually be true, but there are hundreds of runways that are only marginally smaller (like, 14,800 ft long instead of 15,000).

Anyway, the Shuttle doesn't actually need that much runway to land - they built a 15,000 ft runway to give themselves a big whopping safety margin. I'd guess that the Shuttle actually needs no more than 8-10,000 ft to touch down and stop on, which means it could land on any large commercial runway which services large jets like DC-10's and 747's. But it would sure raise the pucker factor.

The reason there are so few designated alternates is because A) they don't need any more - the shuttle can glide a long way, even from an emergency de-orbit. B) There are serious infrastructure issues with the shuttle - towing it, getting it hoisted back onto the 747, etc., and very few airports would have that equipment, and C) A lot of runways aren't on the re-entry trajectory from an equatorial orbit, and therefore wouldn't be used anyway.

[LazarusLong42]

Originally posted by bizerta
In addition to the long and thick runway, specialized navigaion equipment is needed at the landing site. The shuttle lands entirely by computer. It needs the microwave landing system in place in order to determine, to the foot (if not inch) it's location with respect to the touchdown zone. I assume the radar altimeter feeds into the landing computer, so the terrain in the area must be known in advance. In a 747, the pilot takes over once the plane crosses the threshold. This is not so on the shuttle.

The computer can land the shuttle by itself, but shuttle commanders and pilots will tell you (as would any good USAF or commercial pilot) that, unless all the available pilots are incapacitated, they'd rather trust a human than the computer. I do not believe the shuttle has ever been landed solely by computer, though the microwave landing system is used to line the shuttle up during its descent.

LL

[dtilque]

Originally posted by Sam Stone
In the 50's, a lot of runways were built around the world to accomodate fully-loaded B-52's, and all of those runways are big enough for the shuttle.
Minor nit. Those long runways were originally built to accomodate the B-47, not the B-52. The B-47E had a takeoff run of 10,400 ft without jatos. The B-52G only required 8150 ft. Other B-52 models had shorter takeoff ground runs.(Here's (http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/baugher_us/) a site with info on all US military aircraft.) The B-47 was phased out in the early 60s, so pretty much all the bases were also used for the B-52.

Grant County Airport at Moses Lake, WA (mentioned by caircair), formerly Larsen AFB, is one of those former B-47/B-52 bases and has about a 13,000 ft runway, IIRC.

[AWB]

Originally posted by bdgr
Nah....I get to see um, but I am NT Admin, so I just get to play with the computers in the stuffy office buildings. I work dedicated support for the JSF program, so things are pretty dead right now while we wait until they decide to buy *Our* JSF over that flying chipper vac that Boing came up with.

"Boing"? hahahahahahahahahhaahahahahahaha

I work on a PTO contract, so the only airplanes I see are the ones taking off from National Airport. At least I've got a view: from the State Department to the Libraries of Congress. Now if they could only get the temperature in my office to vary by less than 20o...

[hflathead]

Originally posted by bdgr

Nah....I get to see um, but I am NT Admin, so I just get to play with the computers in the stuffy office buildings. I work dedicated support for the JSF program, so things are pretty dead right now while we wait until they decide to buy *Our* JSF over that flying chipper vac that Boing came up with. [/B]
(sorry fo the hijack, no e-mail available.)
I used to do service calls out there. Do the names Brandon, Larkin, or Peterson ring any bells?

later, Tom.

[pluto]

Hey you Lock-Martians be careful! There are more than one of us "Boing" types onboard here! If you make us mad we might come over there and, um, steal your pocket protectors or something!

re: the OP -- The X-15, although much smaller, landed about like the Space Shuttle: another a high speed glider with stubby wings. The usual trajectory for their test flights was to fly a generally northern course to the release point and fly south when released. Their emergency landing sites were a series of dry lakes in the Utah/Nevada/California Great Basin region, ending at EAFB. (I think there was even one lake south of Edwards they could use in case of overshoot.) Their primary criterion was a long, flat place hard enough to land on. Several of the emergency landing sites were used. IIRC, on one occasion the X-15 was wrecked on landing when the emergency landing site wasn't altogether flat (there was an earthen berm).

Of course support for the X-15 was much simpler. It was generally transported on a flatbed truck. But, as has been mentioned, if I was a shuttle pilot and my choices were to land someplace where it would be difficult to retrieve the shuttle -OR- lose the crew and the aircraft, I'd take the former. Even if I knew the runway was going to be short I'd rather skid off the end going 80 mph than fly into unspecified terrain at 300 mph, or whatever their landing speed is.

[CalMeacham]

K2Dave:

(quote):
IIRC (from pop science?)
One of the more interesting places the SS could land is Easter Island. THere is a paved runway but nothing else. If the SS did have to land there it would be a major project to get it back - basically building all needed facilities.

(end)


see my post above.

[wolfstu]

It turns out that there are a large number of emergency landing sites. Included on the list are Halifax, Nova Scotia (or some place very close to it) and Canadian Forces Base North Bay, in Ontario.

[Kilt-wearin' man]

One big deciding factor for where they land the shuttle is the presence of a nearby ocean if they need to ditch. It's better PR to lose a shuttle on approach into the ocean than to crash it into a neighborhood. Most rumored backup landing sites are probably either just rumors or last resort sites that'll never be used unless everything that can go wrong does - especially if they are hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean.