Atlantis comes to FAUP (!)

[james ozzie]

There was one of those tales doing the rounds once that the BIG runway at Upington was an option for a space shuttle abort from orbit (apparently one of 3 around the world). I assume this is a nonsense, as presumably the dead stick flying manhole lid needs a very long ILS which would need to be checked by NASA prior to every flight, as well as no doubt a host of other technical stuff. Does that runway even have an ILS? Anybody else heard this tale before? And where ARE the 3 fields?
It might make a good plot for a short story?

[whiskeyflyer]

As per NASA:

In a TAL abort, the vehicle continues on a ballistic trajectory across the Atlantic Ocean to land at a predetermined runway. Landing occurs approximately 45 minutes after launch. The landing site is selected near the nominal ascent ground track of the orbiter in order to make the most efficient use of space shuttle main engine propellant. The landing site also must have the necessary runway length, weather conditions and U.S. State Department approval. Currently, the three landing sites that have been identified for a due east launch are Moron, Spain; Banjul, The Gambia; and Ben Guerir, Morocco.


For full tech discription of Shuttle operations go to
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/events/

During the Mercury days of NASA had African tracking sites at Zanzibar and Nigeria, until comms improved
The book FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION by Gene Kranz, contains excellent stories of the days they sent young and niave americans into deepest Africa, to start the NASA outstations for their launches.

And for SA, in case the not using Upington makes you feel left out of the space race
The country’s first satellite tracking facility, located at Esselen Park (in Kempton Park, Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg), became operational in the first quarter of 1958.

This was built at the behest (and expense) of the US as part Nasa’s global satellite tracking system, and was soon moved to Hartebeeshoek, west of Pretoria and buzzed by all and sundry using the GF near Lanseria – although a US initiative, the facility was staffed by South Africans and subsequently transferred to South African control.

In 1961, also at Hartebeeshoek, Nasa built and brought into service part of its Deep Space Instrument-ation Facility, intended to track its deep-space probes – in those days, deep space meant the moon, Mars and Venus; again, it was predominantly staffed by South Africans and later transferred to South Africa. Today, it is the Hartebeeshoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO).

[james ozzie]

Thanks for the info, Whiskeyflyer.
I guess the Shuttle must use something smarter than an ILS, as it apparently also flys those huge "esses" to adjust its height/position, a bit like a forced landing in a PC, I suppose.
I will look out for the book - Kranz was the unsung hero Flight Director on many or all of the Apollo flights, si?

[Deanw]

I was under the impression that NASA would install temporary landing aids prior to each misison that may potentially required the use of the emergency landing field.

[whiskeyflyer]

NASA bring all their own kit (just like the USAF, as anybody who saw the U2 aircraft when it visited SA a while back, will testify)
New York times ran an article how the gambia's see the NASA vistors:

The foreigners who would descend on the village of Baafuloto from time to time were an odd bunch indeed.

They set up giant lights in the middle of an overgrown field and pointed them towards the sky. They stood in front of electronic screens powered by generators and talked hurriedly into radios hanging from their hips.

But for the local residents who saw them come and go over the years, the visitors always behaved most strangely just before they packed up and left. They would bustle about and then suddenly clap their hands and shout.

Sanjaney Saidy, 29, was a nightwatchman for the foreigners, or tubabou in the local Mandinka language, thrilled with the couple of dollars a night he was paid, and proud of his uniform: boots, dark trousers and a light blue shirt with a shoulder patch bearing the name of his employer - NASA.

"It's a company, but I don't know what they do," said Mr Saidy, who was 14 when he first worked for the Americans. "They told me to guard the lights but I didn't know the purpose."

The odd men tramping on the outskirts of the village were rocket scientists and support personnel. And Baafuloto was playing an important behind-the-scenes role in the complicated task of space exploration.

That role was one NASA hoped would be superfluous. After the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, in which seven crew members died on lift-off, it put in place safety measures to help astronauts escape during problematic lift-offs or landings. The lights in Baafuloto, a few kilometres from Banjul airport, would help a shuttle in an aborted ascent find its way back to Earth.

Gambia became one of NASA's emergency landing sites in 1988. When the country's military staged a coup six years later, the space agency considered moving the site. But the relationship between NASA and Gambia, one of Africa's tiniest countries, endured through 28 shuttle launchings, until 2001, when the shuttle began using a trajectory that made Gambia geographically undesirable.

Lasanna Saidy, the 75-year-old chief of Baafuloto, had a better understanding than his son Sanjaney of why the foreigners kept returning, although the fact that there seems to be no precise word in Mandinka for rocket was limiting.

"When I asked them about the lights, they pointed up in the sky," he said. "They said there was a door in the sky and that their big plane might come through the door. They said the lights would help the plane, but I never did see it."

It was good that the chief never saw the shuttle, because it would have been in distress if he had. NASA remained ready, though, just in case, flying a team of specialists to Gambia before almost every shuttle launching.

NASA built a parking area at Banjul airport to isolate the shuttle in case it came down spewing hazardous substances. Before each launch, giant nets were stretched across each end of the runway to help slow an incoming craft. Specially trained Gambian police officers, firefighters and doctors stood at the ready. The air traffic over Gambia would be stopped briefly around launch time.

.

"That place is still for NASA," the chief said, motioning toward the plot on the outskirts of the village where the foreigners used to congregate. The only evidence that NASA left of its presence is some concrete where the lights used to be attached.

The mosque in Baafuloto is also a memorial of sorts to NASA's past association with the village. It used to be made of mud but was rebuilt with concrete, largely through the couple of thousand dollars the space agency paid the village for use of the land. Villagers wanted more than that in the late 1980s, but NASA bargained hard, saying at the time that it had already reached a separate agreement with the Gambian Government.