OC.TREI@CU20B.ARPA (06/26/85)
From: Peter G. Trei <OC.TREI@CU20B.ARPA>
I am posting the following for an off-net friend of mine:
Remember 'Shuttle Down' ?
***START OF QUOTE***
1 06-25-85 10:08 aed
adv weekend june 29-30 or thereafter
UPI SCIENCE
(775-map)
NASA plans emergency landing site
for space shuttle on Pacific isle
By ANTHONY BOADLE
SANTIAGO, Chile (UPI) _ When the space shuttle blasts off from
California early next year, it will have the world's loneliest inhabited
island as an emergency landing site if anything goes wrong on takeoff.
The military government has approved U.S. National Aeronautics and
Space Administration plans to extend the runway on Easter Island, a tiny
volcanic island in the South Pacific, and President Augusto Pinochet is
expected to give his approval soon.
Military officials say the plan will bring Chile closer to the
United States. But the project has come under fire from Chileans who
fear it will damage the island's unique archaeological heritage.
Critics claim the United States will turn the remote island into a
strategically placed military base that could drag Chile into the
forefront of superpower conflicts and make the country a sitting duck in
a nuclear war.
Easter Island, Chile's only Polynesian possession, located some
2,000 miles off the South American coast, is one of the world's most
fantastic open-air museums.
Massive stone heads carved out of volcanic stone by unknown
sculptors many centuries ago dot the barely inhabited island. The
mysterious 30-foot figures with long faces stand all around the
windswept island, looking out to sea.
"The NASA plan is absurd. It's like building a dance floor in the
Natural History Museum," said Chilean historian Oscar Pinochet de la
Barra, one of the critics of the space shuttle landing project.
Opposition leaders, complaining that the country has not been fully
informed about a project, which, they claim, will damage national
sovereignty, have demanded a referendum to put the issue to the country.
The United States plans to start launching space shuttles from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California next March. Shuttles
flying from Vandenberg will be able to fly in orbits that cross the
poles. Shuttles launched from Cape Canaveral can only go into equatorial
orbits.
Polar orbits are required for weather and Earth resources
satellites and for certain kinds of military reconnaissance spacecraft
because a satellite flying over the poles overflies the entire globe
periodically.
The Vandenberg launches, planned at four a year, require an
emergency landing site in the South Pacific in case of an engine
failure, and Easter Island is ideally positioned.
U.S. Embassy officials in Santiago said the NASA project involves
lengthening the runway at Mataveri, the island's airport, by 1,420 feet
to the 11,055 feet required for a shuttle landing and its eventual
piggy-back retrieval by a Boeing 747.
In addition, the latest microwave landing aid system must be
installed, plus strong xenon landing lights, effectively upgrading the
airport's facilities and increasing its security.
The nearest alternative airport is located 1,000 miles away in
Tahiti, officials said.
NASA will foot the bill and has budgeted $11 million for the island
project. The funds have already been requested from Congress.
At no cost to Chile, embassy officials say, Easter Island will be
decked out with the best equipment that any modern airport in the world
has. The airstrip extension will allow wide-bodied planes to land there,
thus boosting the tourist trade, they add.
The embassy's science attache, Joel Cassman, dismissed charges of
possible ecological damage and said earth movements will not extend
beyond the airport's present perimeter. None of the mysterious stone
figures will be affected.
"It might never be used. There hasn't been a single emergency
abort yet in the 18 space shuttle missions to date," Cassman said.
"But the program requires having a landing site that can be used at a
pinch."
For shuttle launches over the Atlantic from Florida's Kennedy Space
Center, NASA has permission to use Dakar International Airport in
Senegal as an emergency landing site, with no inconvenience to
commercial air traffic there.
NASA also has emergency landing options in Spain, on Okinawa in the
Pacific and in Hawaii.
Fears voiced by Chilean critics that the mass influx of NASA
technicians might hurt the Polynesian cultural traditions of Easter
Island's 1,700 native inhabitants also appear to be unfounded.
Cassman said the project will not involve any personnel stationed
permanently on the island and only half a dozen technicians would be
flown there for each shuttle launching.
The unlikely event of an emergency landing would involve sending
some 500 technicians to recover the shuttle and fly it home.
adv weekend june 29-30 or thereafter
****END OF QUOTE****
posted for Danny Burstein
by:
Peter Trei
oc.trei@cu20b
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