8-Ball Lock

I remember reading on this group awhile ago that during a simulation
run, the pilot's 8-ball on the shuttle became locked, and this caused a
serious problem with the guidance system. Engineers later determined
this could happen on the actual shuttles.

This can't happen now due to the glass cockpit design.

Any truth to this, or is my memory faulty?

Any references would be appreciated also.

-A.L.

"Skylon" wrote in message
ups.com...
I remember reading on this group awhile ago that during a simulation
run, the pilot's 8-ball on the shuttle became locked, and this caused a
serious problem with the guidance system. Engineers later determined
this could happen on the actual shuttles.

This can't happen now due to the glass cockpit design.

Any truth to this, or is my memory faulty?

Any references would be appreciated also.

-A.L.


You are correct. The pitch error needle on the ADI froze to the center
position. The pilot (called the commander) did not notice the problem and
thought guidance was telling him he was flying perfectly. He was not. He
got very, very low. The copilot (called the pilot) noticed the problem, but
did take corrective action. They ended up too low to bailout and landed
short of the runway. This would certainly have destroyed the orbiter and
killed the crew if it had happened in the real shuttle.

In defense of the old shuttle cockpit, if the needle has a power failure, it
fails to being out of view. In the simulator, it failed to the center
position. The likelihood of fail to center in the old shuttle would be MUCH
less than in the simulator. In the glass cockpit, it can't happen.

There was also "pilot error" involved" to follow the bad indication until he
died. There are MANY cues in the cockpit other than the needle that all is
not well. He ignored all of them. Also with good needles, they are moving
a little bit all of the time and you have to constantly correct small
errors. The pilot should have noticed this IMO.

The person that did this has never flown again and I don't think is going
to. I will not post his name in this group.

Danny Deger

Danny Deger wrote:
"Skylon" wrote in message
ups.com...
I remember reading on this group awhile ago that during a simulation
run, the pilot's 8-ball on the shuttle became locked, and this caused a
serious problem with the guidance system. Engineers later determined
this could happen on the actual shuttles.

This can't happen now due to the glass cockpit design.

Any truth to this, or is my memory faulty?

Any references would be appreciated also.

-A.L.


You are correct. The pitch error needle on the ADI froze to the center
position. The pilot (called the commander) did not notice the problem and
thought guidance was telling him he was flying perfectly. He was not. He
got very, very low. The copilot (called the pilot) noticed the problem, but
did take corrective action. They ended up too low to bailout and landed
short of the runway. This would certainly have destroyed the orbiter and
killed the crew if it had happened in the real shuttle.

In defense of the old shuttle cockpit, if the needle has a power failure, it
fails to being out of view. In the simulator, it failed to the center
position. The likelihood of fail to center in the old shuttle would be MUCH
less than in the simulator. In the glass cockpit, it can't happen.

There was also "pilot error" involved" to follow the bad indication until he
died. There are MANY cues in the cockpit other than the needle that all is
not well. He ignored all of them. Also with good needles, they are moving
a little bit all of the time and you have to constantly correct small
errors. The pilot should have noticed this IMO.

The person that did this has never flown again and I don't think is going
to. I will not post his name in this group.

Danny Deger

Danny,

Was there a connection between this and/or other events and the fact
that this person has not flown again? Without knowing more about where
this person was in terms of learning to fly the orbiter, it seems you
are saying that any human piloting error in the simulator is
unforgivable.

As many comments as have been made about pulling off a successful RTLS,
it seems that there would have to be some instances of good crews
having a bad day go even worse in the sim. It seems that is one of the
points of the sim is that have a place to make mistakes, and learn from
them without hurting anyone or exposing a national asset like the
orbiter to additional risk.

Given the comments regarding the orbiter's flying characteristics
(drops like a rock, flies like a brick), it seems hard to believe that
no one active commanders or pilots haven't bent a virtual orbiter,
especially when the sim team tosses in a failed APU or two, a failed
GPC, loss of cabin pressure, and just for the fun of it, snakes on the
mid-deck.

Blue skies to all

John

On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 11:49:23 -0600, John wrote
(in article . com):

and just for the fun of it, snakes on the mid-deck.

Snakes on a motherf*cking orbiter! :-O

We need to ask Jorge if they've gone ahead and made that mod to drop a
couple dozen rubber snakes into the crew's laps . . .

--
Herb Schaltegger
"You can run on for a long time . . . sooner or later, God'll cut you
down." - Johnny Cash
http://www.angryherb.net

There was also "pilot error" involved" to follow the bad indication until he
died. There are MANY cues in the cockpit other than the needle that all is
not well. He ignored all of them. Also with good needles, they are moving
a little bit all of the time and you have to constantly correct small
errors. The pilot should have noticed this IMO.

The person that did this has never flown again and I don't think is going
to. I will not post his name in this group.


Was this his final exam? I could see this, if the next step for this
pilot was to fly in a real shuttle. Otherwise, I had heard that people
who get this far in astronaut training get trained however long it takes
for him to become proficient.

"robert casey" wrote in message
ink.net...


There was also "pilot error" involved" to follow the bad indication until
he died. There are MANY cues in the cockpit other than the needle that
all is not well. He ignored all of them. Also with good needles, they
are moving a little bit all of the time and you have to constantly
correct small errors. The pilot should have noticed this IMO.

The person that did this has never flown again and I don't think is going
to. I will not post his name in this group.


Was this his final exam? I could see this, if the next step for this
pilot was to fly in a real shuttle. Otherwise, I had heard that people
who get this far in astronaut training get trained however long it takes
for him to become proficient.

I have no direct knowledge that this error is the reason he never flew
again. But at the time I was in charge of training this phase of flight,
and I took a lot of heat and modified the way we trained this phase. Before
I took over this phase, we were training to not trust the needles and fly
manually using other displays. This created some problems on two flights
that got low during this phase. I switched to training to trust the
needles and follow them. Obviously this pilot took the phrase "Fly the
Needles" to an extreme in the other direction. He failed to notice NUMEROUS
cues that he was really very low.

I can tell you he was a flown commander doing "routine" training between
flights when he made this mistake. Loosing the orbiter and the crew in a
realistic training case for such a simple failure made us look long and hard
on how we were training.

Danny Deger

Before I took over this phase, we were training to not trust the
needles and fly
manually using other displays. This created some problems on two flights
that got low during this phase.

Danny,

Is that to say that the sim was getting low and ya'll made changes, or
were there actual flights were landings got low? I am not asking for
mission numbers or crew names but is there any detail concerning how
close did the crew(s) came to having a bad day? Was this a KSC
specific issue or an issue no matter where the crew was coming down?

Interesting thread?

John

"John" wrote in message
ps.com...
Before I took over this phase, we were training to not trust the
needles and fly
manually using other displays. This created some problems on two flights
that got low during this phase.

Danny,

Is that to say that the sim was getting low and ya'll made changes, or
were there actual flights were landings got low? I am not asking for
mission numbers or crew names but is there any detail concerning how
close did the crew(s) came to having a bad day? Was this a KSC
specific issue or an issue no matter where the crew was coming down?

Interesting thread?

John


They were actual flights. One case was the crew handed off flying the
shuttle while on the HAC. In the hand over, they went wings level for a
while and got very low. They were able to make up energy though and made a
normal landing.

The other was STS-37 that landed 1,600 feet short of a dry lake bed runway
at Edwards. If this had been KSC, the crew would have died. In this flight
MANY things other than not flying the guidance command happened. It was a
"comedy" of errors :-) This happened just before I took over Entry
Training. I was very busy fixing this problem for several months.

Danny Deger

"Danny Deger" wrote in message
...

The other was STS-37 that landed 1,600 feet short of a dry lake bed runway
at Edwards. If this had been KSC, the crew would have died. In this
flight MANY things other than not flying the guidance command happened.
It was a "comedy" of errors :-)

interesting that Nagel still got to command STS-55 a couple years later.


--
Terrell Miller


"Just...take...the...****ing...flower...darlin g"
Terrell's dating style according to OKCupid.com

Terrell Miller wrote:
"Danny Deger" wrote in message
...

The other was STS-37 that landed 1,600 feet short of a dry lake bed runway
at Edwards. If this had been KSC, the crew would have died. In this
flight MANY things other than not flying the guidance command happened.
It was a "comedy" of errors :-)

interesting that Nagel still got to command STS-55 a couple years later.


--
Terrell Miller


"Just...take...the...****ing...flower...darlin g"
Terrell's dating style according to OKCupid.com

It wasn't Nagel's fault as I understand, but problems with MCC's
numbers for re-entry.

He was pretty damn ****ed off post-mission from what I've read.

-A.L.