[No Truce With Kings]

"Also, if you get the flight people to talk off the record about RTLS, TAL, etc., they will tell you that being able to accomplish these flight senarios is iffy at best, especially RTLS.

An ATO (Abort To Orbit)is less iffy, but normally would occur only because of early cut-off of one or more SSME's"

If you get them to talk off the record, their eyes glaze over on an RTLS, as there are singularities in the onboard flight control systems. They would almost always press to a TAL rather than do an RTLS. I don't think they could have called a TAL on this one -- because they got the info after MECO.

Even an ATO creates heating on the same order as a nominal entry. Maybe they could have survived an AOA. Don't know,

[chaosagent]

Yeah, I remember hearing Bob Crippen talking about this in the early days saying RTLS gave him nightmares. Said that neither he nor any other pilots could consistently land safely after RTLS in the sim.

Too many variables in the flight dynamics.