Would anyone consider building a Discovery cockpit?

[Efe Cem Elci]

Good luck!

http://cm.ntvmsnbc.com/dl/discovery/discovery.swf

[ian@737ng.co.uk]

'ere Efe, looks a bit like what i expect the airbus a360 to look like
rgds..... ian

[No Longer Active]

Nah, this was the dreamliner in its BETA stages, before they decided they didnt actually need all them buttons!

[Ronson2k9]

I hate dead stick landings . Maybe one will show up on Ebay NASA could use the cash . I was a huge fan of the Shuttle program. I got the Shuttle Operators Manual around here somewhere.. Sad to see it end. It was a workhorse and lived an extended life. I think more then the physical model would be the computer sim for it. Don't quite know what will happen to the training equipment NASA has used for the Shuttle. It would be quite cool to crawl into the actual sim if that ever becomes possible.

Cheers
Ron

[Tom_G_2010]

The motion platform would be simple: 1. For take off lean it on its back and shake like ****; 2. For orbit, no sense of motion; 3. For re-entry lean forward and shake like ****; 4. For approach and landing . . . oh wait that's where it gets complicated

Imagine the sound system needed to emulate take off. Picture a 4000 watt sourond sound system with 1000 Watt transducers bolted to the floor and seats and a 2500 Watt servo driven 4 foot subwoofer mounted behind the back wall!

[ANDYSMITH]

I saw in the news that Seattle's museum of flight lost the bid for a shuttle but was awarded a shuttle SIMULATOR. I hope the public will be able to it operate, if they set it up. Hope they ask for volunteers to help. I will not pass that up.

Andy

[Ronson2k9]

I think they may have more then one of the sims as the cockpit has changed over time. I also hope the shuttles all find a good home. They did so much for the program and to cut them up would be a crime. They do have a pretty good footprint though. I should think one will end up in Dayton OH. One at the Smithsonian. I would like to see one come to Canada. We did build the arm and many of flights included Canadian astronauts. They could be flown via piggyback 747.

Even in zero G the shuttle would still exert forces on the astronauts during maneuvers. I would think that these forces would be even a finer feeling as earths gravity or wind resistance is not a factor. Purely based on what the shuttle is doing.

I was in a shuttle simulator kind of when I was younger. They had this amusement ride at the bottom of the CN Tower 'in the basement'. Yep it has one. The ride was called Journey to Jupiter. Now before you all role your eyes and go ya right. The ride was in a Level D 747 simulator that had been converted to look like the interior of a shuttle. It held about 10 people at a time. We didn't control the ride. No pilot, co-pilot. It simulated a shuttle trip to Jupiter. Me being a kid and into simulators, space, etc. I really couldn't resist. What struck me the most was the nuances that they could convey in this sim. The bumps in the tarmac the vibration from the engines and so on. They did rotate the sim can't tell you the angle but that happened first (long before the trip began) about 5 minutes ahead.

One thing you need to remember though is that this kind of sim simulates the forces on you not the movement of the aircraft. So acceleration is tilting back, braking is leaning forward and so on. So a 'G' loading or banking is actually a tilt backward and so on. The movement need not be a big one to get the point across. It's sometimes large and then the recovery is very subtle to return the sim to a neutral position. Like the most gentle elevator ride. Where you don't even realize you're moving till the door opens. I hate those kind of elevators.. So sneaky. Those thinking of a motion platform take note. It's not about the movement of the aircraft but the forces on your body. I don't know if FSX is capable of such calculations so you would need a separate piece of software that would convert the movement of the aircraft into forces on your body?

It was a short ride with a 'jump gate' to fill in the very long gap it would take to make the trip with 'normal engines' about 20 minutes all together. Such a real trip would take years of course. I think that is one thing that is stopping humans from going to Mars. It's not the being there it's the trip. You will be spending at the very best speed 6 months +. In the trips we have made to the red planet the injection has been a matter of great calculation and a little chance. Hoping that the probe gets captured by Mars. It's atmosphere is not like earth so you can't use that to slow the craft down by very much. This means that you will need to bring extra fuel and engine power to slow your approach. This increases the trip time to about 7-8 months as you will need time to slow down. So that's 8 months in a can with nothing much about you but black. Think of the most boring trip you took as a kid asking your folks 'are we there yet' then imagine that about 100 times longer.

Cheers
Ron