[Paul Ross]

That is my hunch, in view of how they treated the Challenger data. However, while the aero forces may have been far less than at sealevel, they were not insignificant at 40 miles up...at those speeds (12,000+ mph). There has to be a lot of frictional 'pressure' for the atmosphere to superheat to a plasma far above the surface temperature of the sun.

The loss of the stabilizer of course would have been all she wrote. Even as it was, if the fuselage's overall control system integrity had been maintained, with the drag forces encountered, I wonder if they were looking at a real possibility of landing far, far short of Kennedy Space Center...

[cinFLA]

The loss of the stabilizer of course would have been all she wrote. Even as it was, if the fuselage's overall control system integrity had been maintained, with the drag forces encountered, I wonder if they were looking at a real possibility of landing far, far short of Kennedy Space Center...

One of the early lessons in our X- supersonic testing was the need for a large vertical stabilizer; larger than initially thought.