Comments by "Vikki McDonough" (@vikkimcdonough6153) on "" video.

  1. 9:20 - Wouldn't the shuttle's fly-by-wire have prevented the crew's manual control inputs from placing excessive structural loads on the vehicle?
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  2.  @scottmanley  FBW without at least soft flight-envelope protection seems to me like a pretty big design oversight.
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  3. 9:41 - What sorts of "miracles" would a successful RTLS abort have required? I've read through the procedures for an RTLS, and nothing really miraculous jumps out at me.
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  4. ​ @spetsnatzlegion3366  Any SSME failure between liftoff and two-engine-TAL capability (usually around T+150) would have necessitated an RTLS abort (even an SSME failure right at liftoff still wouldn't have caused the vehicle to "crash straight into the ground", due to the massive amounts of thrust from the SRBs, which would leave the vehicle in a good-for-an-RTLS energy state following SRB separation), as would certain failures in non-engine systems (generally failures that would either require getting the orbiter back on the ground intact in the absolute fastest way possible [such as a cabin leak, which would result in loss of cooling for critical equipment; or a loss of quantity/pressure in both fuel-cell freon loops, which would eventually result in a loss of fuel-cell cooling, failure of all three fuel cells due to overheating, and a loss of all electrical power], or jeapordise its ability to survive an aerodynamically-braked reentry [such as a failure of two of the orbiter's main electrical busses, which would prevent the ET umbilical doors from closing; this would require an RTLS, if possible, due to the benign thermal environment resulting from the use of engine thrust rather than aerodynamic drag to shed speed]) at any point prior to negative return (the point after which the vehicle would be too far downrange and too high-energy to return to the launch site; usually around T+230). In the context of the ascent phase of a space-shuttle mission, that is not a "very thin window of time".
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