News The Space Shuttle for Flightgear 3.6

[Thorsten]

The opacity of the dust layer is a parameter, so you can 'bulk-clean' the screens easily (I don't have the procedure implemented yet, but it is no conceptual problem).

If you want to see single wipes of the NASA-approved piece of cloth, that'd require some extra coding (basically there needs to be a mask texture which is runtime-assembled) - probably too much work to do this in practice...:lol:

 

[Thorsten]

I've started the testing phase prior to the next milestone release - as usual, this tends to produce nice screenshots.

Beautiful early morning light over the Provence - the Shuttle landing at LeTube airbase (grass is still wet from dew...)

 

[Gingin]

The dirt on the screen looks so real, breath taking


One of my last mission, almost a full nominal one
Nice sum up of what we can achieve so far on the nominal side

Small Fictional Scenario on my last trip into Space ( without any failure for once )


August 2018, Nasa decided to restart STS program for military purpose.
Vandenberg was chosen for that purpose, Hidden Launch site into the mountains on the Pacific Coast.
Top secret location for a top secret mission. 3 Astronauts, Ex Military guys, Commander, Pilot and Mission Specialist.
Aim of that Mission : " Exploratory Mission", Polar Orbit, 300 Nm.


Launch at Sunrise, new Camo for the Launch site, Trees and bushes

Cockpit ready, Holdover time finished and final countdown initiated

Burning sky at the horizon, heading South for the pole.
Not a discret Launch, they might said it was a couple of Fighters Sonic Boom..

Foggy Morning on California, soon enough we will be in space again after 7 years of inactivity

Out of Amosphere, Boosters Separation, and no more G's to handle. No Warnings, no failures, Stage 2

Main Engine Cut Off. Passing through 60 Nm and climbing towards our Apogee of 200 Nm

ET separation and Oxygen Dump by the Main Nozzles
Atlantis is still in good shape, hopefully

Sunset now, and what a view
40 mn before OMS 2 burn to raise the apogee to 300 Nm
Actively working on our Checklist to prepare the lady

Working while enjoying a view, what more could we ask for ?

Out of the shadow, overflying Madagascar and DAP manoeuvers the Shuttle to the correct attitude for the burn

Time to use our last Cannon Camera

EXEC and ignition of the ergols, monitoring of the parameters during 4 mn.
Nothing to report

Good burn, OMS are secured with Helium and Ntrogen valves closed until the next burn
300 Nm Apogee, and circularisation in 45 mn, looking good

Time for more Check list

GPC reconfigured for Orbital OPS.
2018 and my i Watch is faster than those antiquity

Doors opened, Max intensity for Halon lights.
Small secret cargo is there.
It has to be damn important to spend half a billion to put it into orbit

Last burn, 50 % of Props remaining, just enough for our deorbit later on.

ECLS fine tunning, Environnment, Control and Life Support.
In other terms, Radiators are activated and Freon cooling is monitored

All good, porla orbit, 301 by 296 and Freon Temp at 53 °

Post insertion finished. Rest time before the RMS operation




Nap is over, time to work on that INTEL Satellite
Our desk for the next hours

Very well modelization of RMS activities, giving me some headache with all those angles and positions.
Hard to master that thing





Another Sunrise above the South Pole, Breathtaking

Checks done, the arm is removed from its safety position
Very useful layout to both contemplate the scenery and work on the RMS

Let's use the coordinates to automatically position the End Effector near the point of attachment.
Item 25 to check the reachability of that position, GOOD, perfect.

For the last part, it will be manually done for the fine tunning

Satellite Grasp, some attach points to release and we can safely put it out of the bay

Probe is now working on its own, and final checks are made.
Mission partially accomplished, time to head back to Earth

Time to Go back, several checks to do before that.
First, let's close the payload doors

We can follow that process on the DPS, to see if everything is well closed and latched, so cool

GPC final reconfiguration, let's wake up those antiquities
GPC 1 2 3 and 4 for Entry Soft, 5 for Back up and System Management

Polar Orbit, so we have pretty much a large choice of terrain below use.
How ever, crossrange might be an issue there as the Earth is moving " faster"below us compared to a full eastward Orbit
I choose ZAZ and Kefvlavik, not too far from each other ( reachable from the same entry interface) and quite offset laterally to cover a greater zone of recovery.

Thermal ReConfiguration of the Shuttle.
Bye Bye Radiators, Hello again Flash Evap
Mindblowing Shadow effects

Lets rock there.
5 mn of burn, 500 ft/s to loose to decrease the Perigee around 20 Nm
Its gonna be tight Fuel wise, Shuttle is pushed in its limits .
Parameters looking good, some more monitoring

Good results, but too far laterally from ZAZ ( more than 500 Nm of crossrange, not doable)
It will then be Kef in Island, lets go for Ski and Hot Wine

4000 Nm at Entry Interface, perfecto ( it would have been 3300 for ZZA)
Glowing Plasma and last checks especially for the Hydraulic Pumps

And another Sunrise to salute our discreet arrival above the Ocean

Frozen world in sight Commander

And some Golden clouds to welcome us, Ray Ban incoming

Kef in sight, Runway 28.
180 ° into the HAC to be well on the path at 6 Nm final /12000 feet

Sliperry Runway, even maybe contaminated but who cares, no go around there
Strong Braking coupled with anti skig and chute will do the job

Welcome home Guys, Well done and be ready for a confidential debrief
Not very secret with the airliner in the back ahah

 

[Zandy12]

Wow Thorsten, I am very impressed through the pictures with what this add-on looks like. I have heard of flightgear before but I never pursued playing it. It's really great to know that your a part of taking the open-source game into a different direction .

 

[Yuri_Gagarin]

I have not looked at all the posts but could you add all of the shuttle orbiters please.

 

[Thorsten]

On what level are you interested in different orbiters - do you want to fly a 3-string GPS rather than 3-string TACAN vehicle, or do you want to read a different name on the fuselage?

 

[Thorsten]

It's been a while, but the next flight-tested milestone of the Shuttle is on the server in time for the next stable FG release (to appear soon). To accompany the milestone, the Shuttle Flight Manual has been updated and extended to reflect the new options and capabilities (the full version of the manual now has 237 pages). It aims to give a comprehensive introduction to Shuttle operations by not only detailing the procedures but also giving some engineering, spaceflight and physics background to understand better why the procedures are the way they are.

The Basic Edition of the manual (describing how to get the Shuttle into space and back) is free for FG users (voluntary donations are gratefully accepted though), a license for the Deluxe Edition (describing off nominal procedures such as aborts and troubleshooting as well as interaction with the computer systems or details of orbital targeting) can be obtained for 15 Euro.

Download your version from here !

 

[Thorsten]

Since the first people started to hack (manually trading payload weight against OMS fuel) to reach into higher orbits, I've decided to do it properly and interface an optional OMS Kit as payload.

So this can now be selected as payload and connected to the cross-feeding manifold regularly - here's a test with a kit-to-right crossfeed setup (right tank isolation closed, right crossfeed valves open, kit isolation valves open and feeding into the crossfeed manifold):

Does anyone have an idea what the planned tool for monitoring content in the OMS kit would have been? It seems just wrong to add it to the normal alphanumerics somehow?

 

[DaveS]

Does anyone have an idea what the planned tool for monitoring content in the OMS kit would have been? It seems just wrong to add it to the normal alphanumerics somehow?

AFAIK, all the displays for the OMS Kit are already there both in S/W and panel O3. The FRCS readouts are shared with the OMS Kit readouts.

 

[Thorsten]

The FRCS readouts are shared with the OMS Kit readouts.

Thanks a lot - in hindsight, that's kind of the obvious solution...

*goes writing some code*

 

[Gingin]

We can almost reach the Moon now :lol:


Some small videos with real voices and Headband



Launch from T-5 mn up to ET separation

Final Approach from 10000 feet to Touchdown


[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0Q-RaJyHpM"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0Q-RaJyHpM[/ame]



Hope you will enjoyed it

 

[Thorsten]

The OMS kit (1500 fps variant) installed in the payload bay

Weight of the support structure is now more accurate, and all three variants (500 fps, 1000 fps, and 1500 fps) can be chosen for your propellant needs.

I guess someone eventually needs test CoG shifts and abort dynamics - I suppose flying Nz holding with that much extra propellant in might not be fun...

 

[IronRain]

Cool! Still have to check it out again, after a long long long time...

Slightly unrelated; were you, be any change, at FSWeekend in Lelystad November 3rd and 4th?

 

[Thorsten]

Not this year, but I plan to go next year again (it's quite the trip from central Finland to Lelystad, so I don't do this every year).

 

[IronRain]

Not this year, but I plan to go next year again (it's quite the trip from central Finland to Lelystad, so I don't do this every year).

Let me know if you do

 

[Thorsten]

New effort by FG contributors to create a more detailed scenery for Florida. Much more detailed vectorized shorelines.

And now the benefits of geodata toolchains can be leveraged - OSM2City creates lots of buildings in the vicinity as 3d structures - not only around the VAB, but also Titusville and other surrounding communities are now there with plenty of buildings, the whole road network is there (with cars moving on them...), power lines are placed...

It's an ongoing effort - lots of buildings which need to be custom-created are still missing, and ground vegetation can be improved.

But already now it looks quite compelling and finally gives the Shuttle in FG a nice homebase.

 

[Thorsten]

Power loss during the night portion of the orbit - emergency flashlight out and trying to make sense of the electric system:

(I actually never planned such a scenario, but the effect family we use for rendering the interior has it, and since during a moonless night it actually gets really dark... it's kind of a cool scenario)/

And... freshly baked lightmaps for the airlock module and the OMS kit (done with a raytracer) - leaving them much better defined with the lights on.

---------- Post added 11-24-18 at 06:19 PM ---------- Previous post was 11-23-18 at 07:45 PM ----------

Heh - I've had my moment today....

For quite a while I've been struggling with the fact that with the center engine gone, the gimbals of the remaining engines may saturate during the last few seconds prior to MECO for low propellant levels - leading to a potential loss of control during, say, an RTLS.

I've been checking gimbal angles, tried to revise my assumption about the internal weight distribution of the dry ET and a few other things.

Today I've learned reading the Flight Procedures Handbook - Ascent Aborts that the problem is actually real and complicated by the bending of the thrust structure under stress, so in reality the good engines would be throttled back to provide load relief for the thrust structure.

So I must be doing *something* right...

 

[Yuri_Gagarin]

Is flightgear safe and free.

 

[JMW]

Yes, and Yes.
But you need a fast processor and fair size HD

 

[Yuri_Gagarin]

THX. downloading it as I write.