Space Shuttle RTLS Abort Challenge - Without The Manual
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.ย. 2024
- Using the amazing Orbiter 2016 spaceflight simulator I decide to attempt a Return To Launch Site abort using the Space Shuttle - Without the aid of manuals or checklists. The RTLS Abort mode was never actually performed with a real launch stack, John Young famously said “RTLS requires continuous miracles interspersed with acts of God to be successful.”.
Instead I'm going to trust to thousands of hours of simulated spaceflight experience and see how close I get....
Watch video before reading on....
I turned around too early, leaving me with too much energy to hit the runway on the first pass, and turning left me without the energy to arrive at the landing strip without using the OMS to give me a little push.
However, part of RTLS that I managed to forget it that during the powered abort the OMS is supposed to be fired to deplete fuel and push the center of mass on the orbiter forward. I didn't know how to do this in Orbiter. The plan did leave some margin for OMS fuel, but It's not really clear whether it would be viable to fire the OMS in the way I did to help reach the landing strip.
So, yeah this is a sloppy terrible flight, now I should figure out how to simulate this properly with Orbiter mods and try again.
Petition to throw Scott into the genuine shuttle simulator and see how far he can get without the manual
at this point he's probably already been in it a few times anyway.
If he had we would have a video about it. *Scott*: You gotta get the sit of your pants into the real simulator somehow!
Scott Manley we need this!
Forget the simulator, just pull a real shuttle out of the museums and have him fly that!
At this point i'm fairly certain he could, but i'd miss his vids too much to suggest that, just in case anything went Kerbalite on him lol
"If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding landing.
"
~Chuck Yeager
Well said
RIP, he was a great man.
And he crashed an f-104 and walked away
@@kworkshop "Mercy is the mark of a great man." *poke* "Guess I'm just a good man." *poke* "Well, I'm all right."
so none of the shuttle landings were outstanding 😂
Last thing you want to hear the pilot say when descending “I think that’s the runway, it’s the only thing that looks like a runway”.
Reminds me of Kurt Russell in "Executive Decision".
@@davidharrison7014 don’t care what others say, I liked that movie
*breaks into a airliner cockpit* "trust me i play KSP"
that'd be me except I'd be saying, "Trust me I play Microsoft Flight Simulator" (let's just gloss over the fact I can't land in that to save my life)
R Coffee FS2004 and FSX. have yet to land with crashes on...successfully...and usually mine are a mess of bounces and just...ugh.
5 seconds into flight: How do I turn on SAS and RCS.
1 sec after that: how do I transfer fuel from the wings to the tail
0.5 seconds later: hope everyone onboard has their parachutes packed
I can see him busting through the reinforced door like the cool aid man.
@@sawyerawr5783 Trust me, I have extensive experience in simulated supersonic hot air balloons!
Scott at final approach: "I really hope that's the runway"
And at the end of the runway... "where are the breaks? I better should read the manual"... at the end of the runway... ;-) oh dear ;-)
But it was great. From beginning to the successful end it was great.
And remember: A good landing is one where you can walk away from it. A great landing is when you can re-use the plane.
It was a great landing!
Similar to Air Canada pilots.
He lands on 95 and doesn't finish stopping until he gets to Savannah.
My favorite bit about the Space Shuttle's aerodynamics was how they simulated the Shuttle in flight training: Take a standard business jet. Put it in a powered dive to build speed. Then to properly simulate the aerodynamics, put out everything that increases drag (flaps, spoilers, landing gear,) then turn on thrust reversers and go full throttle.
Yup, a business jet at full *REVERSE* throttle was considered a decent analogue for the Space Shuttle gliding home.
Business jets are designed for efficient aerodynamic flight, while Shuttle was designed to survive orbital reentry and land, though. On the other hand, reverse thrust at full throttle sounds like an overkill. What's your source for that?
Also, if there wasn't a requirement for like 1000km cross-range maneuver, they would design it with even worse L/D ratio, wouldn't they? After all, for the Shuttle, slowing down is a bit more important than gliding efficiently. I'm wondering what's the L/D ratio of modern spaceplanes - X-37 and Dream Chaser.
I was also skeptical, but apparently it's true! NASA made four Shuttle Training Aircraft from Gulfstream jets, and they really did lower the gear and use reverse thrust in flight:
"In order to match the descent rate and drag profile of the real Shuttle
at 37,000 feet (11,300 m), the main landing gear was lowered (the nose
gear stayed retracted due to wind load constraints) and engine thrust
was reversed. Its flaps could deflect upwards to decrease lift as well
as downwards to increase lift."
@@CMDKeenCZ As for glide slope if you threw a body out of the shuttle at 10,000 feet you would land before it hit.
That's a pretty neat fact. I have always used reverse thrusters with a turboprop in FSX on short runways and I have made more landings than crashes so far.
you cant activate the reversers in flight. theres a lockout.
Scott, the kind of guy to beat the Kobayashi Maru without going to Starfleet Academy
and without using Kirk's solution. :P
Tactical Officer: "Captain...our torpedo's are not penetrating their shields...."
Scott Manley: "Just let me pause this simulation here while I look up the manual on Klingon battlecruiser defenses..."
Wow......
lol! I was thinking about that too! Does that make me a geek?
"Jim Kirk, you CHEATED!' "I don't believe in the no-win scenario, Spock...."
**faith in Scotts' flying ability intensifies"*
_Watching Scott landing by the seat of his pants fills you with determination_
I watch Scott Manley land...by the seat of my pants
Scott's*
And it may look short, but the Shuttle Landing Facility runway is actually one of the longest runways in the world.
Bangor, Maine where I live used to be a facility used for an abort if necessary.
@@Ltmonte Wow, I never knew that.
4 kilometers I think
In my private pilot training, I landed on runway 17/35 at Salina Regional Airport, KS, which is 12.5k ft long, and it too was a Shuttle backup runway!
@@Ltmonte Yes, the place you lived by was probably part of the post Challenger ECAL (East Coast Abort Landing) sites. They were located from Florida all the way up through Canada. These sites really came into realistic possibilities with the higher inclination launches, such as the ISS missions.
"I'm Scott Manley, fly safe"
HOW THE HELL WAS THIS SAFE!?!??
Hey, he landed it didn't he? Safe and sound.
Isn't the adage "Any landing you can walk away from is a good one." valid here as well? :)
Nobody died!
And a great landing is one where you can use the spacecraft again without major repairs.
So great landing!
TonboIV by that logic every space shuttle mission was a failed landing
“RTLS requires continuous miracles interspersed with acts of God to be successful.”
-John Young
An often repeated quote from John Young. After Mr Young gained experience with the RTLS abort scenario, he actually began to run RTLS abort scenarios that made the instructors nervous. Astronauts are NOT the "be all, end all of" of spaceflight science.
Unbelievable !! well done !
And you need luck. Lots and lots of luck.
@@hoghogwild well, the shuttle was a flying brick after re-entry. And John Young brought it home It successfully. I know the training staff is very proud of their "malfs" , but I've never heard of any of them successfully landing a shuttle, simulated or otherwise.
You for sure didn't take that quote directly from the video description
Congratulations! You just knocked down every runway approach light on that end of the runway! We'll take that out of the budget for repairing the heat shield.
I see what u did there
I can just imagine the "binkbinkbinkbinkbink" sound as they get mowed down 😆
𝙊𝙝 𝙣𝙤
TAS is true airspeed, as opposed to IAS indicated airspeed. Finally I knew something Scott Manley didn't!
RTLS Any% TAS
I heard one shuttle astronaut describe a successful abort manouver as "an act of god followed by two miracles"
this comment needs more likes!!
Its almost as if yall dont know how to read. The quote lis literally in the video description.
"Striker......you're coming in too hot!" "I know, I know!" "He knows, he knows!"
I just wanted to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you.
Mike Mullane's comment on RTLS in his book, Riding Rockets, was along the same lines of what John Young said. Everyone trained for it but no one EVER wanted to do it. Cool video.
Shuttle touchdown speed is 100m/s
Scott: *crosses threshold at 182 without knowing where the brakes are*
This is one of the best videos you've made. I really like how you talked about the history of shuttle aborts while flying like a true kerbal! Thanks!
Jesus. If this had ever happened in real life, the pilot successfully pulling it off as well as you did, not only saved the whole crew, but also hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment. He or she would get a medal for this, and you just made it look easy.
Hey Scott, the Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched on STS-93. The fuel problem occurred during main engine ignition. A gold pin fell out from an oxidizer post and hit the inside of the engine nozzle at high speed. This broke open a few of those little cooling tubes where cold LqH flows through to keep the nozzle cool. The flight computer responded to what it perceived as low thrust by increasing the oxidizer flow. This caused it to burn more fuel than expected. Inside the ET there is a sensor that, when uncovered by the fuel level dropping below it, triggers an emergency MECO to prevent the tank from running dry which it does to prevent the turbo pumps from exploding when there is suddenly no fuel or oxidizer running through them at all. The power and controller glitches were unrelated to the engine issue.
Edit: The launch audio is worth listening to. Especially when they released the cause of the premature shutdown.
Yup I've read all about that one too. I was making this reference because Scott mentioned the incident but wasn't sure of the details. basically saving him and anyone else a google search and a wikipedia read :).
anybody got a link to the audio from STS-93? I've read up on 51-F (sorta scary that this was Challenger as well...almost makes me think she had some kind of curse on her). I mean they were within what, a couple seconds of a 2nd SSME shutdown and basically pitching the thing into the drink with total LOCV?
@Gideon Nebelsick I know you made your comment over two years ago. Sorry fir the delay. After Challenger, did they install some sort of ejection system for the Astronauts, as your previous comment suggests, or am I reading that the wrong way?
There is a maneuver that is learned by all ship's captains called a "Man Overboard Maneuver" The idea is to turn the ship around and end up coming back on a reverse course that traces the original course. This brings the ship back exactly to where the man fell overboard. The maneuver is simply to turn the ship either port or starboard, make note of rudder angle, until the ship is veered 60° off course. Then turn the rudder the same amount as previously noted (same rate of turn) in the opposite direction. When the ship finishes the turn and is 180° from the original course it should be exactly in line with the original course.
This could be used for your downwind turn to the runway: Fly directly over the runway and at a (well judged - considering altitude and vert speed) position past the runway, begin this maneuver. Baring any cross winds you should end the turn exactly lined up with the runway.
I'm a 100 ton master and use this in man overboard drills all the time - it works.
P.S. Scott: you did pretty darn good by the seat of your pants!
That works great until you realise your speed is changing during the maneuver.
Ah .... but .... aaah ... you're right! The shuttle is relying on kinetic energy and it is bleeding off as you turn (plus increasing wind resistance) where the ship, during it's turn, holds a (fairly) constant velocity. A helpful thing to know, probably covered in the manual, would be the shuttle's turn radius with a given degree of bank, in atmosphere. Like I said, you do pretty well with seat-of-the-pants flying. I wonder how often the pilots of the shuttle actually revert to gut feeling flying.
3DPDK Yes, as a student pilot that sounds like a questionable way to turn around. I'm sure it works great in a ship, but in an aircraft you have to consider crosswinds, insttument reliability and all kinds of other concerns.
It can take a while just to work out what your ground track is for a given heading.
Generally, we fly circuits to line up with the runway.
For many approaches you would do a midfield entry, descend to circuit height after checking wind and traffic conditions, then continue the circuit, which involves flying reverse course parallel to the runway, then making two 45 degree turns to align to the runway.
You know when to do the first turn by aligning the end of the runway about 45 degrees behind you (the wing can halp you identify the alignment).
The benefit of this, aside from traffic safety is you have time to slow down, drop the flaps, and so on in a controlled way, but also you can see the runway for the entire approach.
Of course, the shuttle is a glider, and in a glider your goal is pretty much always to get it right the first time, because you don't typically have the luxury of doing a go-around.
Gliders are more likely to use straight-in approaches, but even if you chose not to, if you have the energy to do a 180 degree turn onto the runway, you almost certainly have the energy to do a standard approach circuit.
If you can do one, but not the other, given approach and stall speed limits, plus the kind of turn radius an aircraft would have, then your approach was likely so badly screwed up that landing safely at all is probably a miracle if you can manage it.
And then you run right over the the guy you were trying to rescue...
@@KuraIthys Course the difference here between the ship and the plane is also the fact that the plane is attempting to manoeuvre in moving air relative to a fixed target located on the ground. In the case of the ship trying to retrieve a person who is also in the water relatively close by and thus is probably experiencing similar current drift to that the ship itself is experiencing, at least if you are out in the ocean. In littoral waters I imagine that it would be more complicated (Kinda like comparing trying to navigate a plane towards a balloon at 37,000 ft over the ocean or at 10,000 ft right over a 9,000 ft high mountain range fluids behave way more turbulently and less predictably near solid obstructions.
If you can keep the -20° HUD marker close to the RWY end, you should be OK for energy. A small amount of slip can get rid of excess energy real quick. (This is what we used in Orbiter before STS had aerobrakes)
"I think I'm actually a little high." - Scott Manley, 2017
Like a simulator instructor once told me: "Well, you landed it in only a few big chunks."
If it's any consolation, turning on the OMS for a gliding shuttle is basically equivalent to firing off a bottle rocket taped to the back.
a toxic bottle rocket..
hypergolic fuels are nasty.
why they use them out of atmo only.
Scott Lott Well they do use hydrazine for the emergency power unit on the f-16 and yes, it is nasty
On the shuttle, the OMS thrusters are only used in space, because that's the only place they should ever be needed. During launch, the main engines usually provide enough propulsion, though for unusually heavy payloads, the OMS cam be burned slightly to provide some extra thrust to get into orbit. They can't burn all the OMS fuel to achieve orbit though, since a minimum amount must always be reserved for de-orbiting the shuttle - without that, re-entry would be impossible.
However, the idea that hypergolic rockets can only be fired in space due to the toxicity of the propellants is completely untrue. The Titan rocket series used hypergolic fuels for both stages, usually nitrogen tetroxide (NTO) and unsymmetric dimethylhydrazine (UDMH). These weren't just used as nuclear missiles - NASA used Titan rocket boosters as launch vehicles for the Gemini program. Look at Gemini launch footage and see the long transparent flame with shock diamonds - rockets burning LOX and RP-1 look rather different.
Also, remember that the propellants don't come out of the rocket nozzle unchanged: When hydrazine is burned with NTO, the nitrogen component (from both fuel and oxidizer) comes out as nitrogen gas, the same as makes up 79% of the atmosphere. What is left over is mainly oxygen and hydrogen, which burn to water vapour. Of course UDMH contains carbon, so when this is used, the carbon content is burned as well, ending up as mostly carbon monoxide and some carbon dioxide.
So can I take from all of this that it actually wasn't 'that' cheaty of him to use them? As in, the real shuttle could have used the OMS in the same way if it found itself a touch short of the runway?
It could, yes - provided it actually had any fuel remaining in the OMS system. A lot of it is used to de-orbit the shuttle for initiating re-entry, and I'm fairly sure they dump whatever is left after the de-orbit burn but before the shuttle descends through the lower atmosphere. This is to prevent ground crews having to deal with the residual toxic hydrazine and NTO until the time comes to refuel the shuttle for another launch.
But in theory, if they didn't have to use any OMS fuel during launch or during the mission itself (other than de-orbiting of course), there would be some left over. So if they didn't dump it, the OMS engines could be fired during the glide portion of the flight. How much delta-V they would give the shuttle in atmospheric flight is another question though, since they aren't designed for that, and the drag experienced by the shuttle is rather large compared with most conventional aircraft.
Not many humans can eyeball a shuttle abort. slow claps from a genuine engineer.
19:18, i thought he was gonna say "I'm not really wearing pants".
Same. lol
7:29 i thought he said he was doing it without reading the manual...
He said he was doing it without having the manual with him.
"I'm not actually flying by the seat of my pants, cuz I have't got pants on."
So did i!
I have some bad news for you Scott. After you thought you had stopped on the grass I noticed the speed did not actually reach absolute zero. Then, if you watch carefully, as you panned out the speed was actually increasing again. This indicates the orbiter was starting to roll into the canal ditch. In your euphoria you forgot to apply the parking brake kind sir! Hehehe... interesting video none the less. Cheers.
I know this is from ancient times but deploying the drogue chute might have helped a bit. :)
in your case Scott it was more of an RTFM abort.
lol! What that be a "Friendly" manual? :)
That was the most intensely ironic "fly safe" I've yet seen at the end of a Scott Manley video
watch his "crashing stuff into stuff at orbital velocities in KSP" video
You know what they say: "Every landing is a controlled crash" and "Any landing you can walk away from is a successful one" ;-)
And every rocket launch is a controlled explosion.
Also, "At least we're still flying half a ship" and "Another happy landing"
:-O Holy shit that was amazing.
Yeah, you'd bang up the nose gear on the runway lights after the overrun. But the vehicle would totally have survived that, and the crew too.
Good job! I'm totally blown away.
Commander: "I sure hope that's a runway"
Misson control: *WHAT?!*
RTLS
Return The Lander Scott.
I used to play so much Orbiter many years ago. All the Orbital mechanics I learnt from it really came in handy when I picked up KSP. Damn good game.
24:00 "Some poo has come out" -Jeremy Clarkson
James May wouldve use a tampon to clean it up
@@charliemorris9029 comment of the day
I'm genuinely upset this is not the top comment on this video.
I can clearly see jeremy with a deathgrip on the stick seeing the runway come up, start going "AHHHHHHHH" and then it zooms out to a shot of the shuttle landing a few feet over the runway
*Post flight press conference*
Clarkson: MANY POOS SHOT OUT OF MY ANII
Any landing you walk away from is a good landing. Especially in that beast
Scott: We payed for the runway we use the whole runway!
IAS = indicated airspeed (the pressure the plane feels at a certain altitude and TAS
TAS = true airspeed (the speed the plane is moving through the air, irrespective of the altitude and pressure)
GS = ground speed (the speed over the ground) (it will be different from the TAS if there is wind) (not to be confused with G/S (glideslope))
"It's often said that the Space Shuttle's aerodynamic characteristics were so poor it would be better flying the box it came in"
Wasn't it assembled in the VAB? Mind, I could see that having superior aerodynamic characteristics to the space shuttle in some respects (hollow boxes are often surprisingly good at staying aloft with sufficient headwind), but I'm not sure its landing gear is up to the task...
@@timothymclean The wings were so flat it honestly didnt glide conventionally with loads of lift, imagine if you bolted Cessna 172 wings onto a plane sized rock and tried to land it on a runway from space. She wasnt exactly enjoyable to fly in atmosphere
Shuttle commanders and pilots say that the Orbiter Vehicles were in fact very responsive to inputs. The Orbiter Vehicles flew exactly how they were designed to fly. the max G loading was officially 3 g, but engineers figured that the wings would stay on through 4 g of aero loading.
This was briliant art. I admire how you handled it and sucseded. This is exactly like pilot just eat a poisoned fish and died and flight attendant comes asking "is here anyone who can land this think?"
19:17 "I'm not really flying by the seat of my pants because I haven't got..." Man, I am SO glad that sentence didn't end "... any pants on."
My wife was listening to me play this video while she was reading a book, and was initially skeptical of the premise, but was cheering Scott on during the landing, and was highly entertained by almost putting the shuttle into the canal off the runway.
Dear Scott,
I just wanted to say "Thank you" for all the efford you're putting into your videos. I am an aspiring Science Fiction author, and thanks to your videos I learned so much about rocket engineering, orbital mechanics, and safety protocols, that I actually feel confident about all the fancy stuff I'm writing about.
Thank you a lot and please keep educating, entertaining, and inspiring both me and your other viewers. You rock!
Sincerely
Alice
alameachan You're an aspiring author? here's a tip 'efford' isn't a word.
Thank you. Luckily, I am not writing in english but my native tongue. ^^
alameachan im curious, what is it about?
In a nutshell, how difficult it is to change a political system that seemingly only offers benefits for its citizens but has a lot of dark sides. And about coming to terms with your past, crooked as it might be.
sounds like an interesting premise
TAS = true airspeed (your speed relative to air)
CAS = calibrated airspeed ("speed" deduced from the static air pressure in the pitot tube, which is basically the function of air pressure)
GS = ground speed (speed relative to ground)
Instruments usually display CAS.
When landing using HUD, you usually should point the vector indicator to the point where you want to start flare, and when flaring you should 'move' vector to the end of the runway, by gradually pulling up.
Shuttle Abort without the manual: panik
It’s Scott manly: calm
It’s Scott manly!: panik
Little hint: The drag chute switch is located right next to the HUD(right hand side). When using the chute you probably would
have stopped by the end of the runway.
TAS-True air speed
IAS-Indicated air speed
GS-ground speed
OS-orbital speed
:)
22:15 "you are cleared to land".. that is so kind of them, considering at that point there are not too many other options left, anyway.
"I'll be quite happy if I just don't crash it terribly" said as a true KSP pilot :D
apparently the space shuttle challenger had its death because of the SRB's decoupler. An O ring froze from the cold before launch at the launch site and the SRB broke off its decoupler, pitched over and hit the oxidizer tank at the top of the external tank. Which (as we know) blew up the shuttle. Their were some reports that when the shuttle blew up, 3 out of the 7 EVA mask oxygen tanks were turned on, which could mean 3 crew members on board survived the explosion but died on the impact when the cockpit hit the ground.
Well done Scott Manley, "thinks , never actually fly in real shuttle with Scott Manley," Bravo !!
Those Islands are The Bahamas its a beautiful place visit Abaco if you I ever get a chance you will love it. BTW love your shows i have learned so much its incredible thank you!!!
Now, don't get eaten by an alligator when you step out of the Shuttle! :-)
lol scott a real astronaut wouldnt have just "read the manual" they would be able to recite it back to you backwards in german, japanese, and russian along with english :P
True
Any landing you get up from your desk and walk away from is a good one!
I was just brushing up on RTLS last night. Great Timing!
Haha me too! I was thinking the same thing. I also watched the simulation NASA did of a RTLS that you can find on TH-cam.
Loved it... Jezzz.. the Astronauts had to have nuts of steel after all of those simulations... Major pucker factor.. Good Job Scott...
One thing that may help, which I learned from my uncle, who was a pilot:
When the near and far ends of the runway line up, you're on the extended centerline. If you start the turn just before that (depending on how much you need to turn), you can roll out of the turn on the centerline and aligned with the runway.
TAS is True Airspeed. It's Indicated airspeed adjusted for density altitude and Ram Rise (heat as a result of air friction). Mach number is simply your current TAS divided by the local speed of sound.
I didn't read comments until the end to avoid spoilers...awesome video!
I imagine our very own Scott Manley hopping out onto the abort slide and popping his helmet off an saying "might as well go for a swim" and does a cannonball from slide to canal.
That was an epic landing. I would have been banking left and right as much as possible on approach to bleed off energy but you were with range of a successful landing had you known where the brakes were on TD.
I always enjoy a solid UK exclamation of "Brilliant"
"I'm hoping that's the runway. I mean it's the only thing that looks like a runway here." 😂
"I don't actually know what (button) the brakes are. … … I don't know how to fire the drogue chute. Oh dear!" 🤣🤣🤣
Fly safe, Scott! 😁
Leslie Nielsen says
: "Just want to tell you good luck, we are all counting on you!"
All the while, Ted Striker is pouring with sweat. lol
"I'm Scott Manley... I didn't fly safe..."
He flew as safe as the flying brick would allow a flight to go
K1productions Ive always always heard the shuttle had a poor glide ratio but seeing it in simulation really drives home how shockingly bad it was. The words flying brick are truly apt.
One of the funniest true things I've heard. The modified jet astronauts use to train Shuttle landings in - in order to simulate how un-aerodynamic the Shuttle truly is, flies with its landing gear down and the engines in REVERSE.
You should at least have known Orbiter well enough to manage the stop. "The superior airman uses his superior judgement to avoid having to exercise his superior airmanship." You're in the approach lights, as others have stated. However, looking at Google Maps, they all appear to be pretty much at ground level. So assuming the landing gear didn't collapse from running over the ten above-ground lighting control boxes, you get the Saved The Cargo bonus, minus major landing gear repairs. If the gear did collapse, you might still get the STC bonus, minus tiles, or even possibly total loss of the airframe. Plus likely salvage of engines, avionics, etc. Unless there was a fire, in which case _you're busted!_
At least you did stop short (barely) of the fence and gate that cross the ALS (gotta keep those cows off the runway, after all!). Hmmm, well, vertical view shows the nose cone is past it -- but likely above the fence, OK. Running through that fence would have been a likely total loss, unless no fire. However, I'll concede you have a great "seat of the pants." Unfortunately, it's not enough to make a superior airman!
Question: were you using the split-rudder drag brake? Seem to recall that it was used pretty well continuously, and approaches planned by it, so that if they had a potetial undershoot, they could close it and make up. I didn't think the OMS was any kind of viable undershoot protection.
I have to wonder, too, about the negative G pushover to point back toward Canaveral. I'd have thought a roll maneuver first to make the Gs positive. That would have required two roll maneuvers, but it's not like there wasn't plenty of time to do them...
Points for being very entertaining, and a _great_ promo vid for Orbiter. Wish I had time to play with it.
Things i allways wanted to hear my pilot saying: "I hope that is the runway."
Hey Scott, TAS is True Airspeed, it's the speed relative to the air mass. IAS is your Indicated Airspeed and GS of course is Ground Speed. There are also a bunch more speeds, BAS, CAS, EAS, but not worth the explanation. Think about it like this: climbing at constant Indicated AirSpeed, your TAS will increase, because the air is thinner and you will need more "molecules" of air going into the instrument, and thus your GS and Mach Nr will increase too. Great video, as always.
"TAS" = "True Air Speed". It's your Indicated Air Speed (IAS) adjusted for air density (pressure and humidity). Indicated Air Speed is the difference between static pressure and dynamic pressure (ram-air) at your current altitude. It's a more useful measure of speed when flying an aircraft, because the indicated air speed that your instruments "see" is the same as what your wings "see", and your wings will perform the same at the same indicated air speed at any air density.
When i worked at JSC, I got a chance to actually fly an RTLS in the motion-based sim in building 5. Pretty intense stuff.
One of fav Scott Manley videos!
Any landing you can walk away from is a good one...
TAS is true airspeed and is defined as "indicated airspeed corrected for temperature and pressure". It represents how fast a wing is actually moving through a body of air.
This was really exciting to watch, thank you very much Mr Manley!
This is possibly my favorite YT video ever.
That was one of the most entertaining videos I've seen you make Scott, fantastic!
Fly Safe - yeah, read the manual BEFORE you try this stuff LOL.
Great vid as always Scott - Keep up the great content mate!
Scott, the OMS engines could indeed be fired at 20 km altitude--Dan DeLong's 747-launched spaceplane (which he designed at Teledyne Brown Engineering--it had a 21' long Shuttle-compatible payload bay and used 4 RL-10s and 1 SSME for power) would have lit its rocket engines at 30,000 feet. He found that the standard vacuum-optimized RL10 engines (and the SSME) had no plume under-expansion problems at that altitude, which is considerably lower than 20 km.
There was also the ECAL abort (for ISS flights), which was like that of the TAL abort, but utilized the airports and Air Force bases along the East Coast of the U.S. Dover A.F.B. in Delaware and Atlantic City International Airport in New Jersey were ECAL landing sites near Philadelphia.
Hey man any landing you walk away from is a good one:)
"I'm hoping that's the runway." I said that in x-plane 11 and landed in a random field.
I literally had nail marks in my arm watching this, and it made me realize it is time to cut my fingernails and/or battle a bear.
There is one other abort mode, but only if the Shuttle was launched from Vandenberg AFB. From that launch site, the Shuttle would go into a polar orbit, so the only place it could abort to would have been Easter Island.
Duuuuuude that stop was amazing!! Now pile out of it and sit by the canal and relax :)
I’ve always wanted to know how this works. Brilliant.
Thanks to orbiter I found and play KSP...and no long play orbiter.
I always love a Scott Manley spaceplane flight video. Thanks
Such serene music in the exterior shots.
I can see my house from here! I thought I heard the sonic booms as you came in, but it was just the neighbor's motorcycle. I kinda always wanted to see an RTLS, but SpaceX has the next best thing.
That was fantastic! Would love to see more crazy stunts in similar simulations like this.
I believe RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire was a designated backup runway for the shuttle. It has an absolutely massive runway, both for the shuttle and the 747 shuttle carrier.
Joe Barton just Googled it. It's an enormous run way! Quite what a shuttle crew would make of Gloucestershire is another thing.
Not the man who can but the man who did! well done.
Thanks for the Ride mate!!! Thanks but I think I'll just catch an Uber back to my hotel!
95% of what you say i cant comprehend, but i stil like to watch :)
The Bahamas: "Some Sort of Islands There"
You can use them as a map scale. 65 miles from Miami to bimini or 80ish from grand bahama to the mainland. Good visual guide when lining up with KSC.
Just thought I should point this out: In the bottom left panel is your critical telemetry. Specifically, the top section under the camera, is ATM DATA. this contains the M or Mach number. This will be the calculated data, not real time flight sensor data. Meaning, the calculated true speed in atmosphere.
HOLY.. Scott.. way to give your fans a collective heart attack