sjb (06/15/82)
The landing of the Columbia on 4 July has been pushed from 0738 EDT to 0913 EDT in the hopes that there will be more crosswinds then. No delay so far has been encountered in the launch preparations, and things are on schedule or ahead of schedule in some cases.
larry (06/15/82)
The local news said that the "official" reason for landing one orbit later was listed as weather related, but (someone they named, but I forgot) had speculated that it was really to let Ronnie R. sleep an extra hour! ==Sleep tight lil' Ronnie!! Larry Marek
honey (06/15/82)
i understood the extra orbit was to give a certain cowboy his beauty rest. peter honeyman
pcmcgeer (06/16/82)
In the hopes that there will be *more* crosswinds? I don't doubt alice!sjb, but why in Heaven would heavier crosswinds be more conducive to a landing - I would have thought the reverse would be true.
sjb (06/16/82)
The reason for hoping for heavier crosswinds is that NASA still have not tested the landing performance of the shuttle in crosswinds, which prevail at the strip at KSC. Due to this, they have pushed the first landing at KSC from next November to April of next year in order to gain enough data from the strip at Edwards, where it is much safer to land, since you have a wider margin on error.
murray@sri-unix (06/19/82)
The article stating that the landing at KSC will occur 5 months later than originally planned, and other sources I have heard both suggest that there will be another landing at Edwards. Can anyone conirm or deny this (please state your sources)? murray at intelqa
sjb (06/19/82)
It is true that NASA is considering pushing back the first landing at KSC to either STS-6 (January, 1983) or STS-7 (Spring, 1983) instead of STS-5 (tentatively scheduled for 11 November, 1982). This is in order to gain more crosswinds landing data for the shuttle. At KSC, corsswinds prevail, and they would rather have the bird fly off the side of the runway at Edwards, where there is just desert, than at KSC, where there are alligators.