The Nation - News from April 8, 1987

Seven astronauts practiced make-believe emergency escapes from a space shuttle mock-up in key tests to make sure a crew can safely escape after a runway crash. The astronauts used a full-scale wooden mockup of the nose of a shuttle that in the past has been used primarily by rescue teams to practice techniques that would be needed in the event of a water landing. For the escape exercise, the mockup was mounted on a flatbed truck at the Kennedy Space Center’s three-mile-long shuttle landing strip to simulate an off-runway crash. “It’s positioned in a nose-down, right-wing-down simulated crash position,” NASA spokesman James Ball said.