"Ron Wanttaja" wrote in message
...
Peter Dohm wrote:

The story reads like an account of a VIP Simulator ride, except that
someone probably edited out the usual disclaimer about the simulation.

Hmmmmm.... (quoting from the article):

The tires were so hot you could smell them in the cockpit.

That's one heck of a simulator...... :-)

Ron Wanttaja

There were at least four major issues that led me to presume the story as
fictional.

My personal experience with tires does not coincide well with this account,
although I will admit that you can sometimes get a whiff of tire smoke/dust
in the cabin of a Piper Aztec if you retract the undercarriage immediately
after takeoff and while the wheels are still spinning. The ventilation
systems of the B747 would seem to make such a thing improbable.

Generally speaking, NASA would seem to be a pretty thorough organization and
a lot of the story makes no sense at all in that light.

Peter