On one of the BA Blogs, in the coments was a link to this spoof movie clip. (Apparent bad language warning )

1) could that happen
2) The damage to the tail, if that happened could it be repaired or is this total write off

3) Is there a real emergancy landing site in South Africa

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4) How would they recover the shuttle from where it ends up?

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I can't access the clip, so can't tell you about the likelihood of the incident occurring or the damage to the tail, however, I can tell you that there is indeed an emergency landing site in South Africa. There is a list of them here:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/...ty/sts-els.htm

As for getting the shuttle back, I imagine they would do it the same way they bring it back to the cape from a landing at Edwards Air Force Base: piggy-back it on a modified 747.

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I wonder why there´s none in South America. Sweden?! It would be a very unlikely place for a landing (except, I think in high inclination military missions). There´s a clustering in the Indian Ocean with several options, but you have a void between Polynesia (!) and South Africa in the southern hemisphere. Go figure... A propos, we have a 5 km runway very near to my place, with all conveniences of civilization, case one of those NASA lurkers are reading this.

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With a range of about 1000 miles? I doubt it, and I don't think they would dare try mid-air refueling with the shuttle on board. Flight characteristics are bad enough as it is.
I would think it would go on an Atlantic cruise instead... Better food.

I wouldn't be surprised if they cut it apart and crated it. From what I understand, the stresses of high speed turns needed to land a shuttle after an aborted launch would compromise the integrity of the airframe to the point it would never be certed to fly again.

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They had at one point a landing stripe ready on Easter Island, near Rana Kao. at 5km long it's Chile's longest landing runway. I am not sure if it is still considered an active landing site however.

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They did manage to send Enterprise and 747 on a European tour in the eary 1980s, so the Atlantic can be crossed without unmanageable hops. IIRC, a version of the Mate-Demate Device (i.e. the big gantry) can be disassembled and fit into a C-5. Easter Island was the most interesting alternative site, because it's an awful long haul to the Chilean coast.

One big factor in the geographic distribution of emergency (prepared) sites is that most such landings would result from problems immediately after launch (engine out at just the wrong time, for example), which means there wouldn't be much need for sites south of the continental US. And Easter Island? That dates from the time there was still plans for poar-orbit shuttle missions launched from Vanderberg Air Force Base on the California coast, headed south over the Pacific.

I do not know why the link is no longer working, luckily I downloaded a copy of the movie before it went off line.

The spoof movie has the shuttle making an emergency landing in downtown Capetown along some very straight highway with people and trucks jumping out of the way. The tail is ripped off when the shuttle goes under the bridge. It comes to rest by a pay and display parking bay.

I did wonder if there was a highway big enough and long enough for the shuttle as portrayed in the spoof movie, and why would they land there instead of a normal air field I suppose this is just to make it look really funny.

I did notice that one of our RAF bases is rigged as an emergency landing site.

Q do astronauts carry passports with them incase they do have to land on foreign soil?

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You peaked my curiosity (Sorry to go a little off topic). I started looking this up to find details, and am having a hard time finding the following:
What kind of differences does the Enterprise have from the others? (any weight differences?)
What kind of hops were made? (I see references to Goose Bay, but there had to be other places)
It must have been some feat if Fulton recieved an Exceptional Service Medal for that flight only.

IIRC, the Enterprise was never made flight ready, the biggest difference was that it had no working engines. I would guess that would make it lighter, but I don't known.

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That sounds a little like a scene from the movie, The Core. Could that be what this is?

um, no. That's kind of a silly question.

It can be an issue however. You don't always know where you'll land indeed. Of course if a space shuttle lands somewhere most people would figure that it most probably is the original crew that's inside, but I vaguely remember a story of one of the first Russian manned flights in which the returned cosmonaut had to identify himself to a nearby (armed?) farmer.

But in general and with the current state of manned space flight, you can find out very rapidly who's standing in front of you as the names of returning astronauts are in the newspapers .

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Not really.

From the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies aka "The 1967 Outer Space Treaty":

Article V:

States Parties to the Treaty shall regard astronauts as envoys of mankind in outer space and shall render to them all possible assistance in the event of accident, distress, or emergency landing on the territory of another State Party or on the high seas. When astronauts make such a landing, they shall be safely and promptly returned to the State of registry of their space vehicle.

And in case you're wondering, South Africa is a signatory.

For the ones who've seen "finding Nemo":

I got this vision of a shuttle making an emergency landing somewhere. You see a head in the crowd turn. "mine". *crowd follows*

minemineminemimineminemimimineminemiminemiminemine

A good thing there's the outer space treaty .

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I think the shuttle requires at a minimum a very long runway with an ILS (Instrument Landing System). In fact the preferred abort sites have a Microwave Scanning Beam Landing System -- only a few runways world wide have that.

The shuttle has significant "crossrange" capability if 800 nautical miles either side of the ground track (1600 nm total). In an emergency de-orbit situation as depicted in the video, it's very likely it could reach a valid emergency landing site.

If for some reason it could not, I doubt the landing would be survivable. I'm pretty sure the mission rules in such case call for a bailout, not a stunt pilot landing.

We tend to call the MLS the "video2000 of the landing systems".

(the better system that just didn't make it)

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It looks like the link is back up, if you want to see the movie.

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dead link here

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According to the root domain spikehumour.com

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An off-course shuttle landing was also depicted in the movie "The Core". I recollect it was also on a city highway.

This is impossible, for several reasons:

- while the shuttle LOOKs like an airliner landing, in fact it has a very poor glide ratio (like a brick) and no power to adjust the flight path. It can't pull up to glide over a bridge, etc.

- Up until a few months ago, the shuttle required sophisticated ground-based navigation aids to help manage its "energy state" when landing. This was TACAN and MSBLS, the latter only available at a few military bases. Very recently the shuttles received a GPS upgrade so in theory they can make an emergency landing at any runway long enough. Note this was not available when The Core or probably the above video was made.

- The closest thing to the shuttle's landing characteristics is a high performance jet fighter with very high "wing loading", say an F-104 Starfighter. Although many such planes have had engine failures, to my knowledge no such plane has EVER made a successful landing on an inner-city street.

- The shuttle would NEVER attempt such a landing. During an emergency they'd first try for a primary emergency site. If that wasn't doable, they'd try for a secondary emergency site, including various long east coast runways. If those weren't reachable, they'd simply bail out, not try landing on a country road or inner city street.

- The scenarios in The Core and the above video were descent, not ascent. During ascent the landing sites are limited due to the energy state and limitations of powered flight. During descent the shuttle has wide lattitude on where to land. By circling they can land very short, by banking left/right they can deviate over 1,600 miles. With those options, it's hard to conceive not reaching a runway.

On this site, if you go to "Whats New" there is a section all about the procedure for being a Shuttle diversion site. (Direct Link)

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Someone asked about flying the Shuttle on top of the 747 across the Atlantic. You can do that by stopping in Newfoundland, Greenland, and Iceland and never have to fly more than about 700-800 miles on any one leg. Ferry pilots have used that route for decades while moving private planes across the Atlantic. If a Shuttle were to abort to South Africa, it would take many hops to get it back across on the 747 but it could be done (eventually).

I have a vague recollection that there was a cosmonaut who came back from Mir on the shuttle instead of returning directly to Russia as originally planned and who therefore had some issues with customs, but I can't find a reference now so I may just be imagining it.

One of my former coworkers was supporting a NASA mission by traveling to various tracking stations around the world. For some reason, he flew into the country hosting one site on a military transport directly onto the US base there and therefore didn't go through customs. But then he left for home via conventional transportation, and the customs officials were rather upset that he didn't have any indication that he'd entered the country.

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I guess that 747 would have been too large for In-Flight refuelling?

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To hijack the thread.... on the topic of aircraft landing on other than runways, there are some excellent DoD images you should be able to access that show military aircraft making "unplanned" landings in US towns.

A set I particular remember, from the USN's 'APPROACH' magazine (a Naval flight safety magazine - I've been reading them for decades. Probably the best of them all; only rivalled by 'THE MAC FLYER'), told the story of a flight of Panthers / Cougars (I can't remember which) that suffered various misfortunes. One landed in some outback US town, just outside the town limits. Helpful locals towed it to a local gas (petrol) station and refuelled it!

IIRC, it then proceeded to take off on the same highway on which it landed, and made it back to a Naval airfield!

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My memory is fuzzy on the subject, but a long time ago (1970s?) an RAF Jaguar fighter made a test emergency landing on a bit of unopened new road. The tricky bit was picking a long enough straight stretch between bridges.

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I guess that 747 would have been too large for In-Flight refuelling?


A few 747s, such as Air Force One, have been fitted for aerial refueling. I doubt the Shuttle carrier aircraft could do this because the orbiter would be directly in the tanker plane's wake. The turbulence would be terrible.

Sorry to bump a really old thread, but I have a related question. I've got my hands on a techno-thriller which climaxes with a space shuttle landing in the Kruger National Park on a flat piece of ground NASA has designated as an emergency landing strip.

In the novel, the characters mark out the 4.8km (3mile) long landing strip using marker poles placed using INS co-ordinates and then remove obstructions (anthills/bushes).

The novel dates from 1984 and I'm guessing that the author was inspired by the landing at White Sands at the end of STS-3, surely NASA never considered something so basic?

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Since 1984 shuttle navigation has been improved with GPS. This is higher precision than INS (inertial nav). It also frees the orbiter from ground-based navigation aids such as TACAN and MSBLS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacan, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSBLS, although I think these are preferred and exist at the main landing sites: Kennedy, Edwards, White Sands.

The orbiter has 1,500 mi cross-range capability, which means it can steer left/right that amount during reentry. The reentry itself is initiated by a deorbit burn, so that controls longitudinal range. When this capability is combined with the many pre-surveyed shuttle emergency landing strips around the globe: http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/...ty/sts-els.htm landing at other less-prepared sites seems unlikely.

However in theory the shuttle can land at any 10,000-ft paved runway. The brakes and drag chute (improved since 1984), coupled with GPS navigation allow this.

I doubt it would attempt landing at a non-paved strip, although technically White Sands is non-paved. The orbiter tire loading is very high and landing gear structural margins are low. It simply cannot take a hard landing like an airliner.

Also changed since 1984 is bailout capability, added after the Challenger disaster in 1986. In the unlikely event of inability to reached a paved 10,000 ft runway, they would probably just bail out rather than try landing on an unpaved strip.