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Nasa space shuttle flight simulator6/3/2023 ![]() ![]() Mark Kelly, who will command Endeavor's final mission, says sometimes mistakes happen. The run-through lasts for almost two hours and ends with a successful landing, despite the onslaught of problems.īut not every practice is perfect. The simulation is an exact mock-up of the flight deck that never leaves the ground - but shakes, rattles and rolls with some of the sensations of space flight. That's not good," one crew member groans, before the team coolly proceeds into a sequence of actions to conserve power and bring the simulation home safely. In this simulation, they kill one fuel cell and then another. He says the team's role is to come up with a script of possible malfunctions and deliver those malfunctions to the crew in the simulator with the tap of a button on a touch-screen computer. ![]() "We go in the office, and we'll say, 'OK, what do we want to do today?'" says Steven Messersmith, who directs the flight simulation team. Before then, members will go through hundreds of practice runs in a flight simulator at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The command crew of Endeavor STS-134 is scheduled for lift-off in February 2011. What's next in human space flight for America is unclear. After 30 years, two tragedies and 130 successful missions that seemed to make space flight almost routine, the shuttle program is coming to a close. Hickey would run the whole simulation and, partnering with Nickel, the two would throw in problems that could happen in real life for the practicing shuttle commander to solve.Houston, we have a problem: The U.S. During training, Hickey would sit behind and between the astronaut on the left and the instructor on the right. This is just the real thing.”ĭuring training, Nickel would ensure the aircraft’s safety, and Hickey monitored the computer and played the role of a shuttle pilot informing the astronauts onboard. There’s just no comparison to being out in the real air, seeing the real landing aids. You get the real dynamics of real air going over the aircraft (and) you just can’t model that with a computer. With the engines in reverse thrust, you’re hanging in your harness. All you see out the window is dirt, there is absolutely no sky. ![]() In a plane like this, a corporate jet, there is no sky visible out of the front cockpit. “The shuttle has the flying characteristics of brick, basically, with wings. This is because there are no chances for a go-around as the spacecraft doesn’t have the atmospheric engines to gain extra thrust, so performing a perfect landing was crucial. The article said that the training aircraft was significant because, in the actual orbiter, commanders only got one chance to land the 110-ton spacecraft. In 2007, NASA published an article about what it was like to fly the STA, with the input of Jack “Trip” Nickel, a research pilot, and Alyson Hickey, a flight simulations engineer. Nearing the runway, if the pilots got the speed correct, a green light on the instrument panel would simulate a landing when the pilot’s eyes were 32 feet above the runway, mimicking the exact position a pilot’s head would be in a real landing. The right side of the cockpit had conventional controls and displays. The space agency said covers were retrofitted onto the left hand of the cockpit windows to mimic the view astronauts would have from the shuttle cockpit. In what was considered like “diving head first at a concrete strip six miles up,” according to NASA, the “landing pattern” of the spacecraft meant that the Gulfstream would fly at 300 mph during a dive, which is “several times steeper than that of an airliner.” Plus, flaps would be deflected upwards to decrease lift. NASA said that to match the shuttle’s descent rate and drag profile at 37,000 feet, the main landing gear was lowered, and the engine thrust was reversed. The STA was built to reverse its engines in flight and operated with two sets of main landing wheels. ![]()
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