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→Return to launch site: added John Young's quote about RTLS
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The [[capsule communicator]] would call out the point in the ascent at which an RTLS was no longer possible as "negative return", approximately four minutes after liftoff, at which point the vehicle would be unable to safely bleed off the velocity that it had gained in the distance between its position downrange and the launch site.
The RTLS abort mode was never needed in the history of the shuttle program. It was considered the most difficult and dangerous abort, but also among the most unlikely to occur as only a very narrow range of probable failures existed that were survivable but nevertheless so time-critical as to rule out more time-consuming abort modes. Astronaut [[Mike Mullane]] referred to the RTLS abort as an "unnatural act of physics", and many pilot astronauts hoped that they would not have to perform such an abort because of its difficulty.<ref>{{cite book|last=Mullane|first=Mike|title=Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut|url=https://archive.org/details/ridingrocketsout00mull_0|url-access=registration|year=2006|publisher=Scribner|location=New York|pages=588|isbn=9780743276825
==== Transoceanic abort landing {{anchor|Transoceanic Abort Landing}} ====
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