Watch A Newbie Try To Land At KSC in a DG

[LTrotsky]

Here is a playback file of my latest re-entry and landing attempt.

It did not go well, but it could have been worse.

It might be entertaining to vets and newbies alike.

I had a couple of brain farts close to the base as well. :rofl:

Thanks to Blixel, this zip should contain the playback file and the flight data files, and will upon unzipping be placed into the right directory. In the playback directory, look for the LTrotsky_Playback.

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

Here is a playback file of my latest re-entry and landing attempt.

It did not go well, but it could have been worse.

It might be entertaining to vets and newbies alike.

I had a couple of brain farts close to the base as well. :rofl:

I think you're missing a fair amount of stuff. You'll need to include the files from your playback in the Flights folder of your Orbiter install. Otherwise we cant see your "telemetry" from this wild ride!

 

[LTrotsky]

Ah. Ok. I thought the file size was a bit small given the amount of data captured.

Also : try to guess whether or not I have a joystick.

 

[blixel]

The better way to include a playback file for others to view is to put the files in their proper directories so that people can just unzip straight into their Orbiter directory.

See the attached zip file as an example.

 

[LTrotsky]

Made another attempt to re-enter and land, this one went pretty well. No damage. The landing was a bit hard, and on the right runway, but the MWS did not light up. Went to the refuelling area as well.

The key I have learned with the DG, at least with what I know now, is to do what I believe is called a "Skip Re-entry" which bleeds off speed in chunks, so that with each skip you can get a little lower and a little slower without risking damage due to stress (and probably heat as well, though the DG does not model that so far as a I know). For me, the skips involved nosing down a bit to get some downward velocity, and then pitching up fairly sharply (around 30 degrees) until the downward velocity becomes upward again. This type of maneuver bleeds off a decent chunk of speed - and on the next skip you get a little bit lower and do the same thing, until you are close enough to the base, at 6 to 8 km altitude with around 1km/sec velocity. At this profile you have attitude and vector control, and can glide the DG to base. In this attempt, I had to use the hover engines during the last 500 meters or so to the runway, and a slight tap of mains to correct vector. The skips started at about 10,000 km from KSC, as my altitude fell below 80km. Think I did around 7. I noticed also that on the succeeding skips I was below 60km when I would normally start to see plasma, but because my forward m/s had been reduced I was not getting re-entry burn at all, or only a bit for a short phase until my upward pitch got to a level where the forward velocity was not enough to cause plasma at the altitude. For example, even at 45km altitude, with a speed of about 4.5 km/s there was no plasma burn.

Just thought I would share this for people on the learning curve. It is much easier to land when your elevators have not been ripped off earlier in the DEI.