Re: Deep Rescue: Will a shuttle float?

In message <1270qc5polct0a7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Pat Flannery <flanner@xxxxxxxxxx> writes


prep@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

But that meant he put it down in
a flatish attitude, and did not try to hold off. The high deck angle
results in the tail striking HARD, followed by the nose coming down
and the back breaking.


I don't know how well a delta wing would float in ground effect no matter what you did; the inherent nose-up approach attitude would lead the the trailing edge hitting first, or air pressure under the trailing edge slamming the thing's nose down as you point out.
I haven't been able to locate it, but somewhere out there on the web is a photo of a Shuttle model undergoing ditching tests in a water tank (there's one of a Dyna-Soar being tested as well). It wasn't reassuring, to put it mildly.

I haven't yet found pictures, but there are reports at <http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19760003109_1976003
109.pdf> and ,http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19720021234_1972021
234.pdf>

For about the thousandth time, I'm trying to remember how people did things before the Web was invented!
.

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