Space Transportation System mission 114 (STS-114) will launch from pad 39B at Canaveral space centre 13 July 2005 at approximately 1531 hrs Eastern Daylight Savings Time using an inclination of 51.6%.
That means the space shuttle will transit across the Grand Banks, not too far off the track used by the NROL-16, the last Titan 4B mission in May that caused a near panic in the oil patch offshore Newfoundland and in the provincial government. Maybe google-searching is a government wide deficiency.
So how come people aren't losing their minds about an even bigger hunk of metal that has a track record of blowing up rather spectacularly?
Incidentally, as I noted earlier this year, the shuttle has flown over the Grand Banks on more than half its launches since 1981. Yet no one in the oil patch noticed.
The last shuttle mission had problems on launch such that the American space administration team might have aborted before that giant liquid tank made it to orbit; that is, had they known that on recovery the thing was going to scatter bits and pieces of people and machine from California to Mississippi.
So come this afternoon, I'll be sipping my coffee, watching CNN and enjoying the show, minus the local melodrama.
Incidentally, has anyone finished the internal review on the Hill to find out why the provincial government's emergency management system blew to bits when it first heard of the Titan missile?
Might be a good subject for an access to information request.
Incidentally, incidentally, how many provincial government employees hold valid security clearances as a result of their provincial jobs such that they could receive classified national briefings on things like, say, intelligence reports or other matters of national security? The answer explains a lot of what happened during the Titan thing.
Yet another good access to info request.