Simulation of Space Shuttle – STS 62 A Polar Express high altitude journey
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Simulation of Space Shuttle – STS 62 A Polar Express high altitude journey
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Re: Simulation of Space Shuttle – STS 62 A Polar Express high altitude journey
#2Flightgear has so much potential... I really would like to see its development advancing faster and become more popular among flight-simmers.
Re: Simulation of Space Shuttle – STS 62 A Polar Express high altitude journey
#3Brining Comic Book Guy level of pedanticism, the thing that stood out the most for me was that the space shuttle in the sim had a glass cockpit with full colour displays.
The shuttle cockpit upgrades didn’t take place until late-1990s/early-2000s, and before then, it was just green text on CRTs.
Regardless, it’s amazing to see what people can achieve with enough interest and time.
Re: Simulation of Space Shuttle – STS 62 A Polar Express high altitude journey
#4I haven't seriously looked into it, but won't Orbiter be better than FlightGear for trying this?
Re: Simulation of Space Shuttle – STS 62 A Polar Express high altitude journey
#5I haven't seriously looked into it, but won't Orbiter be better than FlightGear for trying this?
Looks fun, but sadly windows with MSI installer. Maybe Wine is up to the job? Also needs some love, not touched since '17.
Re: Simulation of Space Shuttle – STS 62 A Polar Express high altitude journey
#6I still can't comprehend how the scientists and engineers managed to launch STS 1 (test flight) with two astronauts in 1981 - without doing a prior test launch with no astronauts inside (like SpaceX).. Absolutely incredible. I don't know what it is about the Shuttle, but the aesthetics are just really nice. The safety, of course, is a different question, but it still has a special place in my heart.
Re: Simulation of Space Shuttle – STS 62 A Polar Express high altitude journey
#7Brining Comic Book Guy level of pedanticism, the thing that stood out the most for me was that the space shuttle in the sim had a glass cockpit with full colour displays. The shuttle cockpit upgrades didn’t take place until late-1990s/early-2000s, and before then, it was just green text on CRTs. Regardless, it’s amazing to see what people can achieve with enough interest and time.
This FlightGear's shuttle is the most accurate version. I think the choice of shuttle mission was because of the unusual transpolar trajectory.
Re: Simulation of Space Shuttle – STS 62 A Polar Express high altitude journey
#8I haven't seriously looked into it, but won't Orbiter be better than FlightGear for trying this?
I don't know about orbiter but FlightGear uses JSBsim for flight dynamics modeling which can be very accurate and was even used at NASA.
You are correct that as space is not the primary use case for FG the shuttle developers had to start from scratch on many things.
Re: Simulation of Space Shuttle – STS 62 A Polar Express high altitude journey
#9I still can't comprehend how the scientists and engineers managed to launch STS 1 (test flight) with two astronauts in 1981 - without doing a prior test launch with no astronauts inside (like SpaceX).. Absolutely incredible. I don't know what it is about the Shuttle, but the aesthetics are just really nice. The safety, of course, is a different question, but it still has a special place in my heart.
They did a lot of static testing of both the SRBs, external tank, and main engines before the first flight. This NASA slide deck gives a pretty good overview:
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/552577main_Shuttle_Propulsion_Mitig...
After all of that they were probably confident enough in the individual pieces working well individually that they were also decently confident that they'd all work well together during the STS-1. Although STS-1 through STS4 had ejection seats installed for both crew members, just in case. Perhaps the thinking was that if anything was going to go wrong, it would happen below 80k feet where the ejection seats would still be usable.
Re: Simulation of Space Shuttle – STS 62 A Polar Express high altitude journey
#10I still can't comprehend how the scientists and engineers managed to launch STS 1 (test flight) with two astronauts in 1981 - without doing a prior test launch with no astronauts inside (like SpaceX).. Absolutely incredible. I don't know what it is about the Shuttle, but the aesthetics are just really nice. The safety, of course, is a different question, but it still has a special place in my heart.
They did a lot of static testing of both the SRBs, external tank, and main engines before the first flight. This NASA slide deck gives a pretty good overview: https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/552577main_Shuttle_Propulsion_Mitig... After all of that they were probably confident enough in the individual pieces working well individually that they were also decently confident that they'd all work well together during the STS-1.…
"–Up to 20 tons of payload capacity on re-entry
•1,693,500 lbs returned to earth*"
I always find myself laughing when propaganda material like this mixes units for the benefit of sounding more impressive. Capacity of 20 tons, yet they switch to pounds to get a larger number. 1,693,500lbs is only 846.75 tons, which just doesn't sound nearly as impressive.