Space Forum / Space Flight / August 2005

Depends on what you plan to do with the vehicle after you use it the
first time.  As I understand it, the biggest issue with a ocean
recovery is the structural uncertainties that immersion (especially in
salt water) would create.  Of course, the SRBs on the shuttle have done
just that and so far as I know, nobody credible has suggested that the
reasons that they hate the things have anything to do with the fact
that the boosters spend time floating around in the Atlantic.

Like you I have often wondered why the Gulf of Mexico was not
considered for recovery once we learned half way through Gemini how to
steer through reentry to a selected splashdown point with some
reasonable precision.  I love the story how Apollo 11 was retargeted to
avoid a typhoon on the basis of military weather satellite data that
had to remain classified.  

Blue skies . . .

John

How fond of you of crashing into commercial shipping or oil rigs?

The Gulf of Mexico is *teaming* with these things.

One reason for the splashdown ranges chosen for the American space
program was the fact that there was absolutely nothing to run into out
there.  (Other than the recovery fleet itself...)

Gene P.
Slidell, LA