Paul Dietz points out (in comments) that if Frances hits the cape as a Cat 4 or greater, none of the major facilities are designed to take it. If the VAB, OPF and LC-39 are significantly damaged, it could mean that the Shuttle will retire even sooner than the current plan (i.e., it will never fly again). It would be a strange end to the current trajectory of our four-plus-decade manned space program, but it might be an opportunity for a clean start, since there won't be an opportunity for a rear-guard action to save the Shuttle (and it may even finally put to rest notions of Shuttle derivatives, though that's probably asking too much).

[Update a few minutes later]

As Paul mentions, he found the info at the new and improved NASA Watch, now with an infinite percent more permalinks.

( http://www.spaceflightnow.com/hurricane/status.html has status reports, incidentally)

NASA Watch may have permalinks, but it doesn't seem to have a decent RSS feed going yet...

RSS feed is on right hand side. Works just fine for me.

http://www.nasawatch.com/index.rdf

My apologies, it was my aggregator playing up.

I'd found the feed you mentioned, but the newest articles it gave were a couple of days old; if I go back and ask it to show me them again, now, it's got the most recent ones. Glitch at this end, I fear, sorry :-)

Best of luck sorting out the old stuff, BTW.

The feed is dynamic and is updated quite frequently - and automatially. More feeds at spaceref.com as well. More to follow soon.

The only suggestion I can make, if people are so obsessed with shuttle-derived boosters, is to try to sell Dan Delong's Boeing 747-launched spaceplane as a shuttle-derived vehicle. After all, it has an SSME... and wings...

Such a storm would provide a clean start for much of the US space program, not just for the Shuttle. Be careful what you wish for! ;-)

Long ago, I talked with a college professor who had worked both with the USAF and possibly the NOAA (he routinely flew into hurricanes as part of his USAF duties) and later for NASA. At one point, he had served as an advisor on a committee that was to determine how to handle a shuttle in Kennedy Space Center if a hurricane were projected to come in.

If the hurricane were far enough out, you could attempt to launch the shuttle ahead of the storm. The shuttle apparently needed up to a full day (depending whether it was on the pad or merely on the way to the pad) to withdraw into the VAB (vehicle assembly building). That building so I understand is engineered to withstand 100 MPH winds. If NASA gets hit dead on by a powerful enough hurricane (I don't know if Frances is powerful enough), I think virtually everything can be damaged or destroyed beyond use. Even the landscape can be fundamentally changed.

Having said that, KSC is located in an area that rarely sees hurricanes. That's one of the reasons it was built there.

One thing that isn't clear to me: is the wind rating of the VAB for surface winds or winds at the top of the building. According to this link, the wind in a hurricane eyewall is about 20 mph higher at the top of a 30 story building than it is at the surface.

Not a clue. I'd guess average wind speed over the entire building, but we never talked about how it was measured.

It appears to me from viewing various forecast graphics and satellite photos that Cape Canaveral avoided the worst of the storm (which hit further south). Does that match what actually happened?