Launch on Need Daniel Guiteras (interesting books to read .TXT) 📖

shuttle to a sustainable orbit. If this were to occur, the orbiter would circle Earth once before landing, a process that would take about 90 minutes from time of launch.

When the shuttle wasn’t flying, the WSSH was used for training astronauts using the shuttle training aircraft (STA). Since the north-south and east-west runways at the WSSH were oriented similarly to the runways at the Kennedy Space Center and Edwards Air Force Base respectively, astronauts were able to train for specific runways in an area with wide-open vistas and relatively low air traffic.

Astronaut Dana Avery busied herself in the left seat of the STA making final preparations for the simulation. The instruments in front of her looked as if they had been plucked from an actual orbiter; they replicated exactly what she would see on the flight deck of Atlantis. Her view out the windshield and the side windows of the STA had been masked off, allowing her only the views she would see through Atlantis’s windows.

In the seat next to Avery, the flight instructor used standard Gulfstream instrumentation. It was his job to fly the STA to an altitude of 35,000 feet, where the simulation would begin. Designed as a corporate Gulfstream II aircraft, the plane presented no problems for the instructor during his pre-simulation segment of the flight.

In the middle seat behind Avery and the instructor sat the flight-simulation engineer, who readied the software of the Advanced Digital Avionics System, which was at the heart of the STA. The ADAS software contained thousands of actual orbiter data points culled from previous orbiter landings—critical data such as rudder, flap and elevon orientation at various airspeeds and altitudes. The programming technique called “model following” allowed the STA to mimic the characteristics of an actual orbiter on its final approach for landing.

Avery had done all this before; she had practiced approaches and landings in the STA, and had even landed both Endeavor and Discovery on two previous shuttle missions. This practice session was designed merely to refresh her brain, so that on landing day when the time came to switch off Atlantis’s Digital Auto Pilot, her touch on the stick would be perfect.

Atlantis, like all orbiters, would come back to Earth as a glider with engines off and a dead stick. Pilots dubbed the orbiter “the flying brick.” She would get only one chance at a landing—hit the touchdown markers on the shuttle landing strip, or crash. That was it; there were no other options. There were no wave-offs, no go-arounds, and no afterburners. No option to eject and ditch.

Avery made a final check of her gauges; she was ready. This was arguably the biggest commander job in space shuttle history, and NASA had given the job to her.

“The software’s been initialized; it’s ready to go,” the engineer called through the plane’s communication system.

“Copy that,” the instructor said. “Avery, are you ready?”

“Let the pig loose,” Avery responded with a smile. The customary phrase referred to the way the STA handled during a simulation—lethargic, heavy and slow.

“All right, then,” the engineer said. “Avery, she’s all yours on my mark, in five, four, three, two, one. Mark.”

Avery took over control of the STA as it transitioned from corporate jet to orbiter. She banked the plane over to the Heading Alignment Circle (HAC), an imaginary downward corkscrew the orbiter flew for alignment with the runway below. This would be the first of 10 simulated approaches and landings. The sky was clear, and the wind was out of the west at 4 knots.

“Entering the HAC,” Avery called out. She held the plane in a right-hand bank to begin an overhead right-hand turn of 290 degrees. The STA was heading down and falling fast.

“Alignment’s good at the one-eighty,” the instructor said, letting Avery know she was on course.

“Roger that, on at the one-eighty.”

She continued on around the circle, carefully guiding the plane, preparing for her next set of maneuvers.

“On at the ninety.”

“Roger on at the ninety,” Avery confirmed. As soon as she had completed the circle and the crosshairs were aligned in her display, she called out her next set of moves. “Throttles back to idle. Okay engines at idle. Applying reverse thrusters.”

In addition to the ADAS, the STA’s modifications also included changes to its reverse thrusters. On commercial flights, pilots typically activated reverse thrusters just after touchdown to assist in slowing a plane on the runway. But engineers had modified the STA’s reverse thrusters so they would be active during flight, allowing them to produce huge amounts of drag, and giving hopeful shuttle pilots the closest possible approximation to taking an actual orbiter stick in hand.

The STA nosed over into a dramatic 18-degree glide slope, a dive that was seven times steeper than a commercial airliner approach. Avery could not hold back the instant butterflies in her stomach. No matter how many times she had done this maneuver, it always shocked her system and defied her pilot’s instincts: Nosing over this far on an ordinary approach in any other plane usually meant serious trouble. Once when asked by a reporter what the dive in the STA felt like, Avery responded with, “Imagine sitting in an airplane that’s been pushed off the top of a building. It’s just like that.”

Her view forward now held little sky and a swiftly growing Earth.

“Deploying main landing gear,” Avery called out.

“Main gear down and locked,” the instructor confirmed.

The plane slowed even more from the increased drag of the landing gear. The STA was descending at a rate of 10,000 feet per minute now, a rate about 10 to 12 times that of a normal approach by a commercial aircraft.

“I have a visual of the runway.” Avery had the STA right where she wanted it—aimed at a point 7,500 feet down the runway.

She put the heading display flight path marker on the end of the runway, bleeding off altitude and correcting with slight adjustments of the stick until the STA had dropped to an altitude of just under 1,800 feet.

“Initiating flare