210506860@excalibur.UUCP (Wyle) (03/08/86)
[..] I attended an IAP (Independent Activities Period) lecture at MIT in 1978, where the NASA guy said that IF enough systems failed, and an STS launched with only 1 SRB, that the shuttle motors could gimbol enough to one side, for the shuttle to fly (in an arc trajectory) high enough to release tank and SRB's and land. Can SRB motors also gimbal? Was this guy mis-informed? !ihnp4!psuvax1!vu-vlsi!excalibur!210506860 {Wherever you go, there you are.} Mitch
gray@hound.UUCP (B.GRAY) (03/12/86)
The March 1986 issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine contains an interview with Louis J. Ullian, NASA's chief of the missile systems safety division at the Eastern Space and Missile Center (Cape Canaveral). Ullian has worked at the cape since 1959, and has been involved in launch safety for 30 years. The interview answers a lot of the questions about SRBs and aborts that have been asked on the net. For example, he says the shuttle commander *can* get rid of the boosters while they're still firing, but that this essentially turns the shuttle into a flying brick.