The Space Shuttle That Didn't Reach The Runway - Why Did Atlantis Land Short on STS-37?

"Make sure the lake was suffiently dry that it could handle a space vehicle" is a magnificent phrase.

Asking astronauts to risk their lives to deliver cargo is one thing, but having them poop into bags is just a bridge too far

I worked the STS-37 landing convoy on TV-2 and I remember the radio chatter when everyone realized how short Atlantis was going to be. Made for an interesting drive to the orbiter.

If this is the landing I think it is, I sustained an injury because of it. I was working in an oilfield southwest of Bakersfield when the shuttle came over. It created a sonic boom that sounded like a small explosion directly behind my head as I was bending over a valve. Not expecting this, I faceplanted into the valve, cutting my forehead and getting a concussion that led to a lost time injury of 4 days bedrest before the doctor cleared me for work. I don’t know if you have ever been part of an accident investigation, but chance event and accident are terms that are not allowed in the root cause analysis. In addition, the report must contain a method to prevent future accidents. The wording of the final report was so twisted that it was actually funny.

Hearing that the toilet was a critical piece of equipment, it begs the question about toilet redundancy. 🤔

Any landing where you can walk away is a success.

Best friend John here. Yeah. I can get an approach to runway 4 at Edwards. Outside chance you'll die, but should be able to land with just a few decades of prison time. Just wanted to let you know I'm there for you. BFF's forever. ❤ John

Love it! My mom actually designed the STS-37 patch! The video was super interesting!

Just another plug for Wayne Hale’s blog. A treasure trove written by a relentlessly decent and thoughtful guy.

To fly into edwards, get your plane into the static display during an airshow. Saw a couple of RV pilots there a little over a year ago and that's what they did. Also, great place for an airshow because it's in a supersonic corridor. Three booms at the show, and the Thunderbirds! Awesome!

Hey Scott, I’d like to offer a tiny bit of trivia. You said this wasn’t the slowest shuttle landing. Well technically it depends on if you are talking about airspeed or groundspeed. STS-37 main gear touchdown was at 168 KEAS (airspeed), but 156 KGS which is the slowest ever groundspeed for a shuttle landing. However, on STS-28, Brewster Shaw touched down at 155 KEAS - the slowest ever airspeed for a shuttle touchdown, but his groundspeed was actually 157 KGS which was 1 knot faster than Steve Nagel’s groundspeed on STS-37.

You being a pilot now made this video a whole lot better! This happens with airliners as well but we have power to compensate for all the computer errors on the descent path all the way down.

I'm a simple man. I see Scott uploads a video about the shuttles, I watch it :)

I didn't even know that happened. Thanks!

5:03 I can certainly help with this. I promise you'll be able to land there. Once. You may never get to do anything else ever again, but you'll get to land there once.

I miss the shuttle, it was so cool.

My uncle worked for NASA during this time period. His job title was Director of Safety. I asked him once is that just for the vehicle assembly building and he said , no, no , no, Im over all of NASA safety. he died about 12 years ago. I've never been able to find any reference to him on the internet. Im still not sure exactly what he did but I remember him talking about having to go out to Edwards every time a shuttle landed out there. He had a background in law enforcement and public safety. He was not an engineer and that caused some problems when he would tell the engineers they couldnt do something for safety reasons. So NASA got a college somewhere to give him an honorary degree so the engineers wouldn't complain so much that a policy wonk was telling them how to be safe.

LOL. Talk about landing short when I was a flight engineer on 130's out of Little Rock when we would land on the assault strip you would always see tire tracks/ruts about 20 feet before the beginning of the strip in the grass. Oppppps.

I think these are my favourite Scott Manley videos. "Here's a cool space story that I'm going to take 10 minutes to tell you about."

The space shuttle..... What an amazing machine.