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From: scottb@iddic.UUCP (scott bigger)
Newsgroups: net.columbia
Subject: Re: Re: Chile Agrees to Provide Easter Island for Emergency Landings
Message-ID: <2132@iddic.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Aug-85 12:35:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: iddic.2132
Posted: Mon Aug 19 12:35:56 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 07:58:03 EDT
References: <4102@alice.UUCP> <383@im4u.UUCP> <249@sesame.UUCP> <358@baylor.UUCP> <1807@bmcg.UUCP>
Reply-To: scottb@iddic.UUCP (Scott Bigger)
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 34

In article <1807@bmcg.UUCP> stanley@bmcg.UUCP (Stanley S. Acton) writes:
>> > > In article <4102@alice.UUCP> alb@alice.UUCP (Adam L. Buchsbaum) writes:
>> > > >The U.S. and Chile today signed an eight year pact under which
>> > > > ......
>> Anyone read "Shuttle Down", by G. Hank Stine?
>> -- 
>
>That is suppose to be Shuttle Down by LEE CORREY.
>-- 
Of 'course you all knew already that Lee Correy is G. Harry Stine's pen name
(for fiction) so I won't bother you with that.  More importantly, the book is
not bad, not great, but not bad.  Have you folks thought seriously about the
implications of a shuttle being forced to land in possibly unfriendly
territory?  In Shuttle Down, Easter Island was not a contingency landing
sight, it just happened to be the only possible place to land without
ending up in the drink.  Correy (Stine) studied the political ramifications
(CIA and KGB everywhere); with good 'cause.  Both the US and the Soviet Union
are signatory to a treaty on the safe return of astronauts/cosmonauts as well
as taking care of what happens when things fall on other countries.  We got
pretty lucky with Skylab.  How many of you remember the Cosmos 901 (#?) that
fell on Canada; didn't hit anyone  but the nuclear power source is responsible
for the injury (or did they die?) of two Canadians.  USSR attitude followed
the lines of "Sorry, we don't want it back, no we won't clean it up, it's
too bad if someone got hurt, and besides that we deny that it's even ours, so
there."  A shuttle crew being forced to land in Warsaw Pact nations would
no doubt be treated as infiltrators in a thinly veiled imperialist attempt
to spy on the motherland.  The shuttle would be held as evidence.  Surprise,
surprise.  I wonder what the NASA contingency is for such an event,  I'm
not even sure what the official plan states.  Interesting problem.

Scott Bigger
tektronix!iddic!scottb

Forgive my lack of paragraphs.