Quote:
Originally Posted by cllew
There was a false rumor floating around when the NASA space shuttles first launched that Churchill was going to be an emergency landing strip if they had to abort a test flight.
Unfortunately there was never any NASA space shuttle recovery teams or equipment ever sent there when a test flight happened to make that story. true
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Even if Churchill was a designated emergency landing strip, no equipment would be there anyway unless dispatched under emergency situations, because NASA would have assigned designated landing sites for Shuttles, and would ideally want them to land on US soil, preferably an air base, preferably at the same place where it launched.
Churchill would be "very low" on the list of emergency landing sites, because assuming they actually launched polar orbit missions from Vandenberg AFB in California, the launch trajectory for shuttle launches at Vandenberg was in the southerly direction, anywhere between southwest, south, and southeast. Any abort landing sites would have been along the coast of Mexico, Central America, or even as far further south to South America as Trans-Pacific Landing sites for emergencies (KSC launches from Florida would have Trans-Atlantic Landing sites in Europe or Africa on standby). For re-entry, NASA has primary landing sites they can choose. From what I understand, if they launch at Vandenberg, they land in Vandenberg. Same with standard launches from KSC in Florida, where ideally they would want to land where they launched from. Churchill had a better, but still remote chance of being listed as an emergency landing site than say missions launched from KSC in Florida, where the launch trajectory can go anywhere from due east to northeast.
Of course, there were backup landing sites, and Edwards AFB in California is one of them, while the other is White Sands Space Harbor. Both were designated backup landing sites for KSC launches and Vandenberg launches.
They also had potential backup and emergency landing sites in Alaska, should they choose to have them there.
NASA and the USAF were actually several months away from launching the first mission, which was STS-62A, until the Challenger Disaster happened. Consequently, the USAF and NASA cancelled polar orbit Shuttle flights from Vandenberg, and we would never see anything launch from Vandenberg until they started launching Athena and Delta IV rockets there in the mid-to-late 90s.
This
wiki article has a section of emergency landing sites for launches from the Kennedy Space Center. They were never used, but there are a few Canadian airports as designated emergency landing sites in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Obviously, Churchill is not listed, because it's too far west from KSC launch trajectories anyway.
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