Re: NASA Announces Space Shuttle Atlantis Landing Times for June 22

On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 12:25:08 +0100, "MichaelJP" <mjp@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Exactly - that's why I was wondering about why the shuttle launch facility
is in Florida,

First answer... because the Cape was already there. Why was the Cape
in Florida? Because the early rockets outgrew the missile range at
White Sands and started falling on Mexico, which was none too pleased.
The Cape was chosen because it has a lot of open water downrange for
wayward rockets to come crashing down without endangering the public,
a lot of conveniently-spaced islands on which to build tracking
stations, is about as far south as you can get in the Continental
U.S., which gives better payload performance for a due-east launch.
NASA did consider alternatives after Apollo, but the money to start
from scratch elsewhere didn't exist.

given that on any given day you're much more likely to be
able to land in California.

Technical answer: too many limitations on launch azimuths due to
population centers downrange from likely California launch sites for
the favored due-East, geosynchronous, and interplanetary orbits which
were to be the Shuttle's bread-and-butter.

And it would be a real bear for the SRB recovery ships to get to
Nevada.... :-)

Brian
.

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