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Fri 7 Feb, 2003 07:09 pm
I just heard the wildest story on the radio. I wanted to know if any of you had heard of it, and is there any possibllity of credibility:
As the space shuttle came through earth's atmosphere, it became apparent to the astronauts that the angle of descent was wrong. Because of this, the shuttle would not have touched down on the landing strip.
In the shuttle, there is a master computer, called "Mother". That computer is the piece of equipment that really "runs" the shuttle. It contains an abort button, where the astronauts may opt to blow up the shuttle in an emergency.
There was a fear that if the shuttle was to land in Florida, it might hit Orlando, or even Disney World, where there was a great chance of causing a lot of death and destruction due to the concentrated population. If the astronauts chose to blow up the shuttle, the west coast was also not an option, because of the population. They chose Texas to blow the shuttle up, because of the much smaller population density.
In addition, to the possible death and destruction, the astronauts were concerned that destruction of a great magnitude would scuttle the space shuttle program. So they sacrificed themselves for the sake of other people, and for the program.
Have any of you heard about this?
Hmmmm...
It seems like angle of descent is one of the few things that could be definitely figured out from outside sources (i.e. satellites), so I tend to doubt it since it hadn't come up yet (that I know of.)
I don't buy it Pho. They have some capacity to manuever. They would have first consulted with NASA. They certainly would have had enough time to chose that option after consulting with NASA.
very interesting: in doing a web search about this topic i ran into
www.g2mil.com/safety.htm which is titled "Shuttle abort" and as you can see the site has been pulled
ok so now feel completely stupid
dys - the site is gone - craven just tricked google into giving us the cached page - it's definitely a useful little thing to know how to do
ehbeth: not my first stupid episode, won't be the last
The theory is another wild hoax. The Shuttle "Abort" processes are described in detail on several sites. There is no "Self-destruct" mechanism on the Shuttle itself and never has been. IF there was a problem landing in FL they could easily control the craft enough to end up in a open water (i.e ocean) landing to avoid the Orlando crash scenario proposed. "Aborts" are only options during the first 8 minutes from shuttle launch. There is no abort option after that point.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/sts/aborts/
There IS a self-destruct mechanism in the Solid Rocket Boosters that launch the shuttle in case a booster goes wild.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/srb/safety.html
Cool. Thanks for the links, birthday boy.
The story itself doesn't surprise me, though. I think we all want the deaths to be as meaningful and necessary as possible, (as opposed to meaningless and unnecessary.)
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