(photo trivia) Guess the airport

So would this be our 2nd MCO picture then?

nope not mco

The clue is good. I found a list of emergency landing sites and it only has a limited number of commercial airports with departures/arrivals on different levels. Wild guess: JFK.

FSB? MLB?

MYR?

This is a very tricky question, and trickier clue. PSM it is.

Nope none of these. I will post another clue later this morning when I find the right picture.

I thought we had exhausted all the oficial civil use facilites for Space Shuttle alternates. It is very difficult, hopefully not impossible but fun to deal with your challenge. This is the best one yet IMO.

Two clues. First it's not in FL. The second clue to help you with the location:

Pittsburgh?

PSP?

LNK?

Nope. It's none of these.

ABE?

Support:

Abe is correct.

Nice picture. That is a fairy old picture, it's missing the new concourse.

It's your turn.

The second picture, the peeps, are made by Just Born Candies which is in the Lehigh Valley.

BTS?

ABE in any form was nowhere in space shuttle alternates, at least where I found them. Can you explain that one, please?

Looks like Prague to me.

Nice! We flew there from AMS for $30 each compared to $260 each to fly to VIE. There is a high-speed catamaran that goes up the Danube (about 75km). Bratislava and Vienna are the two closest country capitals in the world. The things you learn during trip planning.

Also, noticed I left the 130Sk in there. I don't know if that would have slowed you down though.

Let's see how this one goes over. Not much airport structure, but let's see how well people can narrow down the field based on interior shape and aircraft type!

There are several different abort modes of the space shuttle.

The following is the order of the abort modes in order of preference. The first is Abort to Orbit (ATO). In this case, the shuttle can successfully make it to orbit and it is likely they will return to Earth ASAP. An ATO abort would probably have them landing back at KSC or Edwards.

If they can't make it into orbit, and they have sufficent velocity, there is Abort Once Around (AOA). With AOA, the shuttle has enough velocity to circle the globe once and land about 90 minutes later. The window of opportunity between the next abort option and ATO is extremely small so it is unlikely it would ever be used.

The next option is the Transatlantic Abort Landing (TAL). With TAL, the shuttle would land at a designated site in Western Europe or Africa about 25-30 minutes after launch. This is why a number of years ago, clouds in Morocco caused a hold to a shuttle launch even though it was a perfect day to launch in FL.

Following the Challenger disaster, East Coast Abort Landing (ECAL) were created. In some high inclination launches, the space shuttle can now reach an emergency runway on the East Coast of the US under certain conditions. There are designated ECAL sites at different location from South Carolina up through Newfoundland. This contingency is not as desirable as the other abort modes since there is very little time to choose a landing site and prepare for the shuttle's arrival.

The final (and most risky) abort mode is a return to launch site abort (RTLS). In an ideal situtaion an RTLS would return the shuttle to KSC. These last two abort modes would be used until TAL is available at about 2 minutes 30 seconds into the flight.

Over the last 30 years the space shuttle has been flying this list has changed over time. For example, in the early 80s when they planned on launching from Vandenburg Air Force Base to put the shuttle in to a polar orbit, Easter Island was an emergency landing site.

The list I have dates to the mid 1990s and at the time: ABE, ACY, BGR, GGG, HNL, JFK, ILM LNK, MCO, MWH, & RME were designated as emergency airfields in the US for the space shuttle depending on the abort mode selected. (The other options were military bases.) (I did Google first to see if I could find the answer to my clue anywhere online since it was older information and did find it on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_shuttle_abort_modes). I believe this list changed again following the Columbia disaster since all of the remaining missions (except one) were going to the ISS.

The current list of civillian airports in the US for ECAL is much smaller and is made up of ILM & MYR and the full list of civillian emergency landing sites is not much bigger.

Try #1 ORD

Thanks for all that. I knew I was somehow missing the point, but I did not know the list had been so extensive nor that it had changed so much over time. Your teaching is quite fun. Thanks again.