noe@sunc4.cs.uiuc.edu (Roger Noe) (04/24/91)
Follow-ups directed to sci.space.shuttle. In article <1648@vtserf.cc.vt.edu> jarrell@vtserf.cc.vt.edu (Ron Jarrell) writes: >Huntsville has the Pathfinder on display. My friends at Marshall tell >me that it was an orbiter body built for vibration tests prior to >the drop tests, as such it's an orbiter, but not built to fly. >(Pathfinder's existence might explain why there's a number missing in >the OV series... It's usually the one left out of lists.) Can someone confirm this? Is OV-100 Pathfinder? One of the lists Ron Jarrell refers to would look like the following: OV-099 Challenger OV-101 Enterprise OV-102 Columbia OV-103 Discovery OV-104 Atlantis OV-105 Endeavour I assume they actually started the numbering scheme at 101, with what were to be the operational OV bodies, and then backtracked when Challenger was turned into an operational OV. Does anyone know differently? -- Roger Noe roger-noe@uiuc.edu Department of Computer Science noe@cs.uiuc.edu University of Illinois 40:06:39 N. 88:13:41 W. Urbana, IL 61801 USA