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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 didn't even know that happened. Thanks!

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.

My husband, Donovan Conrad, worked in building 5 as a tech for years and was able to fly the simulator for years on 3rd shift before the program started scheduling training 24/7. Therefore he was one of the best pilots on the shuttle. He had more flight hours than most of the astronauts. He was consulted on STS 37 and showed them that he could land at 155.

I miss the shuttle, it was so cool.

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.

One of the big ironies about this that you didn't mention is that Kennedy wound up improving in time and would've been just fine for a landing that day. Surprised Wayne didn't mention that, but in all the space news articles of the time, especially AvWeek, it was a huge deal.

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'm in the Air Force." "Oh, that's cool! What do you do?" "I measure the dryness of dry lake beds."

If you listen to the mission audio you can hear Steve Nagel was annoyed but keeping his cool when welcomed back. "Postflight Analysis showed the wind velocity profile outside of the 'Edwards Maximum Design Wind'. Early in the HAC tailwinds were 100 knots. The Final touchdown speed was 167 KEAS with a right crosswind of 10 knots and a sink rate of 2.3 feet per second -- STS-37 Flight Crew Report p. 26 From the recommendations it would seem the crew was given nothing specific about the STA observations.

Would love more of these! Thank you Scott!

love the shuttle vids scott, keep it up!

My mind is blown ones again! Thank you for telling us about this, i had no idea this happened!

Love these kinds of historical stories, Scott!

Fascinating episode here Scott. Thanks

WOW! What an adventure in flight! Thank you for bringing us this story and the archival recordings to picture it with!

"STS-37...Edwards Tower...stand-by, I have a number for you to copy..."

Very nicely done! i'll stay tuned. thanks

CGP Grey likes the little gem about the runway names.

Amazing story Scott! Roy Bridges is a relative of an exwife. We saw a launch a year or so before it blew up (challenger?). Amazing engineering technology and astronaut skills. Totally amazing. Mr Bridges an extremely humble and polite man. RB

Thank you for the great information. Learned alot about the landing fields. and never knew about the short landing. The pilots for the shuttles are amazing.

Hi Scott Thanks for telling this amazing story ❤

The space shuttle was insane in retrospect. Yeah we have Dream Chaser and X 37B but it was the size of a Starship landing like an airplane

Thank you Scott Manley

Thanks Scott!

Rally great story! Thanks for posting.

You’ll love this Scott. Long ago I was supporting test flights out of Edward’s. We had an urgent trip out there from Orlando and flew in one of the corporate jets and landed at Edward’s. There was just me and another guy as passengers and we got a call from the pilots to come up front as we approached. The pilot said “which one should I land on?” Meaning the concrete runway or the shuttle landing strip. Had to be one of the coolest experiences ever.

Fascinating story, thank you!

I was lucky enough to see the shuttle land at Edward's in the early 80s. 😊

I got to watch STS-40 land at Edwards summer '91. My dad's cousin was on the mission. Two things still stick in my mind from watching: that steep glide (drop!) slope coming in was downright scary to see, and the double sonic boom.

I know it makes no sense to have a favorite orbiter.. but Atlantis is mine. Saw Discovery a number of years ago, so awesome to see in person

Apollo to the moon and back - don’t tell them about the inconvenience of pooping in a bag for 2 weeks.

Great job Scott, very interesting history of the Shuttle. What a great way to fly, lol

Love these nuggets of history!

wow - holding a brick off the ground at 157 kts, "come on bessy, just a little bit more...." - thanks for the vid sir

I loved Wayne's post about this and was glad to see you cover it. That said, I'm really upset that you didn't break out your E6-B whiz wheel to explain crosswind components! 😉

I knew as soon as i saw the title, Wayne Hale''s blog post was the inspiration😄

I like how after the one time they landed at White Sands, _Columbia_ puffed gypsum dust into orbit the rest of her career. RIP crew of STS-107.

Wow this was a really cool story. So much goes into these little jaunts into space, makes you really think what will go into future space flights that are to other planets and beyond.

The shuttle pilots were amazing. Once committed to landing they had no go around option which is kind of nuts in a vehicle of that size. But they pinned every one. Massive respect to all the shuttle pilots.

oh hell yeah. HELL yeah. i forgot about this one! i always think the white sands landing is super interesting too - would love a video about alternate landing sites if you ever have enough to say about them!

I love these stories. Normally, I would not even think about this type of thing. Or, if I read about this, would think nothing of it and miss out on such a fantastic story.

That was fascinating

This was a great story. I love Concord and eclipses so what a great combo

I was stationed at Edwards AFB (South Base B2 OTE project) was there watching it & with our flight line truck we had ability to be close vs everyone else. Night Landing was better, I sat in drivers seat of our maintenance van with high beams shining onto runway. Wind rushing was something to hear couldn't sew much till touch down about 200 yards directly in front of me. 😊😊😊

Love these recent videos about unusual shuttle landings! Would you consider making a video about the single shuttle landing at White Sands Space Harbor?

Fantastic. I always learn something new from you.

Watched this Landing live in my office. Had the only TV on my floor in Houston. It was packed.....

"Hello this is Scott Manley" should be a ringtone. Best voice on the youtube.

Thanks!

It's so cool that there are SO many moving parts and decisions to be made for a successful space mission. The sheer number of little details guarantees that we get handfuls of these murphy's law stories where ofc the one runway they didn't train on is the only one they can land on

There are so many stories like this that will never see the light of day, but at least folks like Scott can highlight a few of them. I guess you could also jump down the Wikipedia rabbit hole but then you don’t have the Scottish accent so not really worth it then.

Great video

Your posts are always such a treat! I learn so much from them. Thank you Scott! I was a USUA BFI (United States Ultralight Association, Basic Flight Instructor) at the time. I taught in a top mount Quicksilver Sprint II. I flew within a mile of the 747 piggybacking STS-37 back (I was 250’AGL or so). What a sight! I was lucky enough to fly from Edwards because one of my students was a member and he took me up in a T-34. I think he was an F-16 driver ...but he sure loved flying that Quicksilver! What a great memory! My business was called Magnificent Flying Machines and we flew from a small field called Brian Ranch out near Crystalaire airport. I still fly a Sprint II but don’t teach anymore. Antelope Valley is a truly inspiring place to fly. ☺

Very interesting story about the STS-37 landing. The Edwards Dry Lake is an incredibly forgiving surface for landing. Some emergency backup landing sites are also dry lake beds.

I’ve spent a lot of time landing on those lakebed runways over the last decade. There are dangers associated with not landing on the marked areas, as there can be large fishers that the USAF fills in on the lakebed runways.

The first several landings were done on lake beds and not paved surfaces. I just found that out a couple months ago. I didn’t remember that as a kid.

That was Great!

Hi Scott! Land safe!

I got to see this missions return trip to the cape. The shuttle and carrier landed in Oklahoma to refuel. It was majestic seeing the combination trundle down the runway and then taking off. Aerospace nut since birth, this is one of my core memories with my mom and dad making sure I got to see it.

I remember being in an aircraft that used that overshoot once, rotated just about the end of it. Hot, altitude and a full load of fuel on board. Flew in ground effect for a while as well, till those 4 jet engines had burned off enough fuel, and gotten up the speed, so we could climb. Trees were companions for a few minutes, as well as the town we went over at a little above treetop and rooftop height.

Nice info

5:10 great bunny trail tossed it. That’s a nugget of gold.

Really interesting!

after seeing footage of inside a shuttle moments before it breaks up on reentry, seeing any footage inside a shuttle gives me the heeby jeebies. I can't imagine stressing about landing problems while ignoring the fact that you could just explode at any second just getting there

I'm pretty sure this is one of the landings my dad took me to. We used to make the 15-minute drive from Boron whenever the shuttle would land at Edwards.

Thanks Scott..... Old F-4 Shoe🇺🇸

Alright I am loving this video already, I now know the space shuttle had the same level of crosswind acceptability as a Cessna 152... That is hilarious. What's even funnier is that the upgraded one is the same as a Cessna 172...

Another memory I ran into the Hamilton Standard guys who built the Space Toilets, they called the solid waste products 1/4 Pounders 😆

Go for... "Launch the Compton Gama ray observatory", how cool is that?!

I watched most of these shuttle landings. It was a great time to be around Edwards Air Force Base.

I never realized that. I'm pretty sure that's the one I went to see while stationed at VAFB. It seemed further away than I expected, but I'd never seen a landing there so I had no reference.

The shuttle was essentially an unpowered glider at landing, so it's more amazing that this didn't happen more often.

So much words for a short Story

7:02 Ron Weasley's Dad must be proud to be able to play around with such advanced muggle technology

I miss you scott❤❤❤❤

Black rock desert! Glad the shuttle never had to bring her on the playa. Having flown around burning man, I'm just happy I never had to deal with hypergolic fuels. Scotty thanks for the footage I've never seen before and your analysis of what in the Navy when I would drop Nukes as ephemeris data. High wind speeds in the upper atmosphere would cause havoc on a free falling cylinder of mass distruction. Just saying. Also Naked Records are my favorite house to spin. You get it

That Air Force geologist was like "It's my time to shine!" lol

Wild.

Never heard about this incident! Every landing that I watched coverage of, touchdown was at the exact spot that CapCom announced just after reentry.

Whoa! Manley! 😆🤣🤣😆🚀🚀🚀😯

Amusing you should talk about _Atlantis_ and mention the toilet being a mission critical part... On the final shuttle mission, as if sensing it was no longer needed, there was a mention of the toilet door slamming open and become partly detached when it landing at KSC

I was stationed at Edwards AFB from 01 to 02 ( I cross trained to another career field so I wasnt there very long) Other then the history and seeing some cool aircraft it is by far the most depressing base I was ever stationed at. It is the pinnacle of middle of nowhere. It was a 70 mile round trip to go to walmart for anything.

A fascinating tale. What serious Space Shuttle aficionado doesn't know the name Wayne Hale? A true legend from the glory days. Scott, you refer to the HAC as "heading alignment cone", but the documentation I have refers to it as _heading alignment cylinder._ That is from a text file titled *Space Transportation System Technical Reference Manual* that I downloaded from a BBS in the '90s. Unfortunately I have never been able to find it on the internet. Fly safe.

I think there should be a video about some of the alternate shuttle landing sites around the country. For example, I believe there were two airports in Maine on the alternate list that were deemed long enough.

I second Wayne Hale's blog; should be required reading for anyone interested in STS specifically, and space exploration in general.