phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) (09/01/88)
In article <10142@reed.UUCP> douglas@reed.UUCP (P Douglas Reeder) writes: > An unrelated question: Why is it not possible to use the OMS thrusters >to make a powered landing on the shuttle, if unpowered landings are so >undesirable? Extra fuel would be required, cutting into payload, >unfortunately. I suspect because they don't have enough "oommmph" (that's a technical term). They are designed to work in orbit: microgravity and no air resistance worth mentioning. Why would you want powered flight? The only reason I can think of would be to have the ability to go around and try the approach again. It would require quite a bit of force to pull the shuttle up and bank it around for another approach. I don't think the OMS pods can deliver that much thrust. William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University <phil@Rice.edu>