NASA Instituting Crowd Control on Shuttle

NASA Instituting Strict Crowd Control to Better Protect Public During Shuttle Launches, Landings

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Mar 23, 2005 — NASA said Tuesday it will institute strict crowd control for space shuttle launches and landings, and rely more on a seldom-used touchdown site in New Mexico, to better protect the public once flights resume in a few months.
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Kennedy Space Center will remain the primary landing site, but only if the shuttle has no problems that might endanger people on the ground, such as a problem with the flight-control system or damage to the ship's thermal skin.

In that case, the shuttle would be directed to White Sands, N.M., a remote, dusty missile range that has seen a shuttle landing only once, back in 1982.
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As for shuttle launches, the number of people allowed to gather at the three- to four-mile safety perimeter will be greatly reduced, as will the size of the crowd at the Kennedy runway for landing. NASA will also bar people from being beneath the final glide path.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=606743

I'm amazed that nobody on the ground was killed when Columbia rained down from the sky.

These things accelerate pretty fast. Don't be fooled by the slow and dramatic liftoffs they keep showing on TV.


And they don't fly straight up for more than a few seconds after liftoff. Once clear of the gantry, the shuttle tilts a touch and begins to follow the pre-planned flight trajectory that'll take them into the desired orbit.

You are thinking of the Challenger accident.

Since I had the mental image of a crowd of spectator watching a liftoff, I substituted the Challenger accident instead.




Good catch!

Zoom lenses are my friends.

:)

and NASA, after 40 years of rule by science, not "defense", is now militarized, thanks to Shrub.

Can't let civilians see our "space war" experiments, which will now go forward at full speed. Somebody could get hurt, if you know what I mean.

and have had no crowds watching the takeoffs. This is simply a safety measure for the spectators, as is posted by several people above.

The military uses their own fleet to put up satellites and test "stuff", independent from the preying eyes of the general public.

I've never heard of this. How could they hide an entire shuttle?
Can you provide a link.

are seperate and out of the public eyes.
Look at this list of shuttle flights and remember how many we were able to see.
http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-space-shuttle-missions

but the military has "mission crept" more and more into NASA territory, now they have a mandate from the dauphin.

It seems that they couldn't keep them completely secret, could they?

and took it to a restricted base in Utah? They wanted a really big lawn ornament? ;)

This is very interesting.

I am a huge NASA and space exploration fan! I saw the Enterprise in Huntsville, Al in the late 1970's. I even toured a mockup of the cockpit.

Have they launched this prototype?

Stop the clock and fix it!

:wtf:

I was standing in the ocean maybe 20 yards or so away from the beach and heard all the people on the beach cheering and clapping. After getting over the idea that they were admiring my physique, I looked in same direction they seemed to be looking - up. There it was a shuttle sitting on the back of a 747, tooling down the coast.

What exactly do they consider the "Final" glide path? They pretty much traverse the entire Southwest in their descent.