🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9222@elsie.UUCP> ado@elsie.UUCP (Arthur David Olson) writes:
>> Could a shuttle-loaded 747 make it to Hawaii?  The closest mainland city
>> is probably San Francisco and that's about 2200? miles away.
>
>A shuttle-loaded 747 doesn't need to travel from San Francisco to Hawaii. . .
>the shuttle can be put on a low-tech, unglamorous boat for the trip.
>

If NASA built the orbiter processing facilities here (very unlikely),
they could just land the shuttle here.  Our reef runway at Honolulu
International Airport is supposedly one of the emergency landing sites
for the shuttle.  We had some NASA folks down here a few months ago
doing some preparations on the landing strip for that purpose.

As for using South Point on the Big Island (Island of Hawaii) as a lanching
point, good luck.  The people who want to make it a commercial space port
are having enough problems with the environmentalists.  There would be
lengthy court battles, with much local resistance.  

*=================================================*
*  Douglas Myhre   <doug@loihi.hig.hawaii.edu>    *
*  Hawaii Institute of Geophysics                 *
*  Research Computing Facility                    *
*  2525 Correa Rd.                                *
*  Honolulu, HI 96822                             *
*=================================================*