Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!db.toronto.edu!hogg
From: hogg@db.toronto.edu (John Hogg)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: An idea
Message-ID: <1989Sep27.110807.2646@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Date: 27 Sep 89 15:08:08 GMT
References: <1401.251BA8CC@branch.FIDONET.ORG> <1989Sep26.220340.13871@ziebmef.mef.org>
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
Lines: 23

In article <1989Sep26.220340.13871@ziebmef.mef.org> mdf@ziebmef.mef.org (Matthew Francey) writes:
>  My idea is a bit more radical.... I say that NASA should launch a shuttle
>from inside the eye of a hurricane, since the very low air pressure ->
>higher engine thrust.  Of course, there are some minor problems like
>moving the shuttle around so the eye passes over it, and whether or not
>it can stay upright in 150kmh+ winds... (and a friend pointed out that SRB
>recovery would be an, er, interesting exercise.)  But hey, anything for those
>extra kilograms into orbit, right? :-)

Radical?  It's been done.  (Well, Hollywood did it, which amounts to
the same thing, doesn't it?)  In the movie ``Marooned'' (circa 1966),
the rescue launch has to be scrubbed because of high winds on the pad,
due to a tropical storm coming overhead.  By the time the storm ends,
the stranded astronauts will have run out of air.  In a daring move,
the launch is made right through the eye as it passes over head.

Movie buffs can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the rescue
craft was even a lifting-body vehicle.  I could well be wrong.  That may
have been the first non-kiddie movie I ever saw, and I haven't seen it
since.
-- 
John Hogg			hogg@csri.utoronto.ca
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto