Dave Whiley added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

Very interesting, thank you. I never knew that we parked
B-52s in the UK. I thought they were mainly based in the
U.S., Turkey, places like that. And, I have never heard that
there is an emergency Space Shuttle landing strip anywhere in
the UK. I know there are a number of them, several in the
United States, but it never occurred to me that in a real
emergency they might not even be able to hit something as
large as the United States land mass and would have to set
down in another continent.

That was something I only found out myself a few weeks ago.
My guess would be that it's designated as a landing point for
problems during launch that prevent the Shuttle from reaching
orbit, so the only way is down and you don't get much choice
as to the where. When you compare the Fairford runway at
(AFAIR) 10,000' with, say, Edwards AFB (25,000'?), you'd have
to be desperate to try to get in there.

You know, while (apparently) neither of us knew about this nor
thought about it, it makes eminent sense to have emergency
landing strips either for an aborted take-off or - maybe - when
it is absolutely crucial to get the astronauts down, e.g.,
they're out of air which happened in the TV show "West Wing", and
NASA cannot line up the proper re-entry trajectory and retro fire
point to ensure a landing where we do have a strip, without
risking multiple orbits until the proper math can be lined up.

As to desperate, a POSSIBLE run off the end of a short runway is
certainly preferable than CERTAIN death if there's been a fire,
batteries are low, the computer died and they have to do a manual
fire, the oxygen thing, anything at all that makes the benefits
in saving 8+ lives worth taking a much smaller risk of a minor,
even a major crash landing.

Your point is also well taken that if there's an abort, you can't
"go around", you literally have to land, or try the old ditching
at sea thing, inherently highly dangerous besides losing the
shuttle.

(Answering another post)

The Thunderbirds were on a European tour in late June / early
July, starting in Ireland then going East to Turkey and the
Balkans before coming back West to the UK.

I think someone should have a word with the Blue Angels now.
They can't possibly let the Air Force steal a march on them
like that :-)

I think that international air shows and other military shows and
exhibitions are great. Besides the obvious interest in seeing the
fine aviators and other military folks from other countries, it
shows solidarity in our various alliances (I'm looking at this
from an American-centric view, but I would certainly invite our
UK friends to come here)

--
HP, aka Jerry