Is a shuttle still flyable with a hole in the leading edge like the test piece?

All heating factors aside, would a hole the size of
the the nearly 2' hole in the test RCC panel make a
shuttle unflyable once it was down into atmosphere?
Could a shuttle be controlled well enough to land
with that kind of damage?

JazzMan
--
***************************************
Please reply to jsavage"at"airmail.net.
Curse those darned bulk e-mailers!
***************************************

Well it wasn't a problem for the Buran to land with an RCC panel missing so
I don't see why not

--
I bet that old crackpot Copernicus started one hell of a flame war when he
questioned the geo-centric model of the solar system.
"JazzMan" wrote in message
...
All heating factors aside, would a hole the size of
the the nearly 2' hole in the test RCC panel make a
shuttle unflyable once it was down into atmosphere?
Could a shuttle be controlled well enough to land
with that kind of damage?

JazzMan
--
***************************************
Please reply to jsavage"at"airmail.net.
Curse those darned bulk e-mailers!
***************************************

"JazzMan" wrote in message
...
All heating factors aside, would a hole the size of
the the nearly 2' hole in the test RCC panel make a
shuttle unflyable once it was down into atmosphere?
Could a shuttle be controlled well enough to land
with that kind of damage?

They'd have a bit of a trim problem, and there would have to be some fancy
flying to land it in the right spot, but they could have made it. A nasty,
jagged, draggy hole in the front of the wing would be a major problem but
not aerodynamically crippling. Think of aircraft in WW2 making it home with
large pieces missing.

Jazzman wrote:
-
All heating factors aside, would a hole the size of the the nearly 2' hole in
the test RCC panel make a shuttle unflyable once it was down into atmosphere?
Could a shuttle be controlled well enough to land with that kind of damage?
-

Terrence Daniels replied:

They'd have a bit of a trim problem, and there would have to be some fancy
flying to land it in the right spot, but they could have made it. A nasty,
jagged, draggy hole in the front of the wing would be a major problem but not
aerodynamically crippling. Think of aircraft in WW2 making it home with large
pieces missing.


Well, those WW2 aircraft were not gliding bricks to begin with. And unless it
was a multi engine plane with one or more engines out, they could do a
go-around on a bad approach or at least stretch out the approach if they were
coming in short.

I think overall that it would be flyable. As far as level flight. And as far as
being controllable, yes, to a point. But the handling would have been
different.

If they were lucky, the handling would not have been too bad, so that the main
problem would have been the extra drag causing the orbiter to land short of the
runway. In that case, they simply could have closed the speed brake as far as
needed, down to zero if need be, since IIRC the speed brake is typically set at
about 50% so as to modulate the glide slope (or energy management) as needed.

BTW I am also ignoring here that the drag effect would have made the whole
re-entry path come up short. Unless the onboard software was able to compensate
for this well enough along the way such as by reducing the amount of the “S”
turns. Also IIRC there is a direct approach option if the orbiter is coming in
on too little energy, as opposed to the normal approach that comes in high
above the runway then does a partial circle/spiral.

If it did make it nearly to the runway, then the last hurdle would be how the
orbiter responded when it went from a low angle of attack shallow dive for the
landing approach, to flare to a high angle of attack for landing. The hole
would act a bit like a spoiler on the left wing, so it not only would pull left
from the drag but also try to roll left due to loss of lift. Perhaps the elevon
trim could compensate for that, and keep it close enough to the runway
centerline.

Then again, the handling would be of a type that the commander would have never
felt before, with such a severe yaw and roll to the left. Something never
practiced. And probably not anything he would have ever experienced in his
entire flying career. So unless the flight computers were able to stay on top
of the handling to the point that it was hardly even noticeable, this might be
too much of a nasty surprise in the last few seconds to be able to control (if
possible to control). I do note that on STS-107 control was maintained so
smoothly up until going out of limits that it wasn’t noticeable real-time. But
then that was during a different kind of flight regime and not attempting to
maintain the flight path with the accuracy needed for a runway landing.

Of course if somehow in this scenario one could choose where to come down, then
do it on the lakebed at Edwards rather than KSC or anywhere else. And if the
damage was known to exist, and somehow magically survived re-entry (the
premise of this sub-thread), it might be prudent to have the crew bail out. It
would at least be stable enough to fly on autopilot for bailout. Making a safe
landing anywhere except on Edwards dry lakebed would be questionable, and even
the lakebed would not help a lot if it dug a wingtip or collapsed a main gear
by tilting to one side during the flare for landing.

Would be something very interesting if it was be accurately modeled well enough
to be attempted in a flight simulator. And by flight simulator I mean something
closer to a JSC simulator than a Microsoft simulator.

- George Gassaway

Sorry...that post landing picture of Buran with the missing RCC panel on the
right wing must have just really thrown me...

--
I bet that old crackpot Copernicus started one hell of a flame war when he
questioned the geo-centric model of the solar system.
"Skorpious" wrote in message
...
Well it wasn't a problem for the Buran to land with an RCC panel missing
so
I don't see why not

--
I bet that old crackpot Copernicus started one hell of a flame war when he
questioned the geo-centric model of the solar system.
"JazzMan" wrote in message
...
All heating factors aside, would a hole the size of
the the nearly 2' hole in the test RCC panel make a
shuttle unflyable once it was down into atmosphere?
Could a shuttle be controlled well enough to land
with that kind of damage?

JazzMan
--
***************************************
Please reply to jsavage"at"airmail.net.
Curse those darned bulk e-mailers!
***************************************