U.S. Air Force
WHAT COULD’VE BEEN... SpaceflightNow.com has posted up some neat photos of the prototype space shuttle Enterprise sitting atop a launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, back in 1985. Prior to the Challenger disaster, the Department of Defense planned to launch the shuttle from the U.S. West Coast on military flights...but that was scrapped after the 1986 tragedy. Unlike launches from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, where shuttles and other spacecraft are sent up into equatorial (or west-to-east) orbit, the ascent of the shuttle after a Vandenberg liftoff would bring it into a polar (or south-to-north) orbit...which is the orbit that all satellites launched from the California airbase are sent to. Today, the pad, technically known as Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6), serves as the launch site of the Delta IV-Heavy rocket—which will fly its very first mission from the West Coast on January 20. The Delta IV’s four previous launches were from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
U.S. Air Force
All I can say is...had the shuttle been launched from Vandenberg AFB as originally envisioned, I wouldn’t have to spend a thousand dollars to fly to Florida to see the orbiter at KSC instead. Then again, unlike at KSC—where I can take a tour (the 'Up-Close Tour' to be exact) to see the shuttle’s launch pad from as close as a mile away—there is no visitor complex at Vandenberg. Nor is there any hilly terrain (which would obscure the shuttle at liftoff) in Florida like there is in Ventura County (where Vandenberg is situated) in California. Oh well. I like traveling out-of-state anyway... When I have the money to do so, that is.
William G. Hartenstein
William G. Hartenstein
U.S. Air Force
U.S. Air Force
U.S. Air Force
U.S. Air Force
U.S. Air Force
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