But that's the entire point. Even assuming a "normal" landing or an abort landing, there is no reason the orbiter could not proceed past the airport at altitude and make a wide turn burning off energy to land at a runway.
"Proceed past" what a bunch of deceptive bullshit. They don't overshoot the runway, they make a downward spiral, but that can only help to a certain extent, an extent used on a nominal entry, let alone an abort with extra energy and extra inertia. Add to that how a heavy payload will increase their stall speed and demand a faster landing speed with a longer rollout for a given speed and pretty soon you have a receipe for disaster.
Because that is what it does.
No, it doesn't, their turn is actually fairly tight considering how fast they're going and how massive they are. You can't make the orbiter turn much harder than that without violating the loading limits, especially with a full payload bay.
If you had to lose more energy (ie you're too high above the site), you proceed farther than "normal" and make a wider, longer turn.
Guess what happens when you do that. A flare is simply increasing aoa to bleed of airspeed and/or slow one's decent before landing.
I've had it with this dipshit. They're not flaring, they're turning. A flare is to arrest one's descent rate.
Doing this slightly earlier than "normal" would bleed off more speed.
Or it would put too much stress on the spacecraft which would still be supersonic.
I don't even have to argue that they secretly modify the shuttle to enable this.
Oh yes, you do.
That they may is certain, but it would not be necessary.
For what you're suggesting, yes, it would be.
I already said that I'm sure NASA is smart enough to ensure safe conditions at the landing site(s), wherever and whatever they may be. My beef is that his argument is laughable even assuming RE and NASA are correct. There is nothing super difficult about slowing an a/c in flight.
What's laughable is the notion that it's easy to slow a fully loaded shuttle down from mach 25 in less time than normal and still hit a short runway without going over.