Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!husc6!rice!titan!phil From: phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle Subject: Re: Soviet and American Shuttles Message-ID: <2007@kalliope.rice.edu> Date: 15 Oct 88 22:20:55 GMT References: <1574@nunki.usc.edu> <3020@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> Sender: usenet@rice.edu Reply-To: phil@Rice.edu (William LeFebvre) Distribution: sci.space.shuttle,sci.space Organization: Rice University, Houston Lines: 39 In article <3020@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> david@beowulf.JPL.NASA.GOV (David Smyth) writes: >3) The Shuttle is such a bizarre handling aircraft that pilots tend to >put it into PIO (Pilot Induced Oscillation). The center of pitch is >several airframe lengths in front of the vehicle: when you pull back on >the stick, the craft "feels" like it begins to sink quicker, when you >push forward on the stick, it "feels" like it starts to go up! This is >why it is NOT landed by pilots, but by the auto-land system. I watched >the pilots try to land it on the Rockwell simulator, and I NEVER saw >anybody do it: they ALWAYS crashed. The first landing on the runway >at Edwards by the Enterprise, in front of all the political luminaries, >was almost a disaster: they started that approach with the pilots >on the sticks, and the gound controllers had to shut them off because >they were approaching to structural limits of the airframe! The autoland >system greased it on that time, and has hit the numbers every time since. >The pilots DO NOT land the shuttle! Then why did NASA go to the bother of having an extra set of controls added to a standard jet aircraft in such a way that the controls made the plane feel more or less like the shuttle during landing? Why do the pilots use this aircraft to practice approaches and landings? My wife watched one of her co-workers in the simulator in building 5 at the Johnson Space Center perform a successful landing. And this guy is NOT an astronaut and has never had any official training as an astronaut. He has a pilot's license, yes, and he knows quite a bit about the shuttle, yes (being a flight controller), but he is not an astronaut. I think you are seriously confused. The computers *assist* the pilots in landing, but the pilots still control the craft. The computers enhance the controls for the pilots, but the pilots *still* control the craft. How can the on-board computers "hit the numbers" exactly when they can't even be all that accurate about the vehicle's exact position? And if you wonder what I am talking about, watch for an upcoming posting of mine about the mysterious "vector to BFS" call. I have learned quite a bit more about that, and it is very enlightening. William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University