Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Another great landing!

I took some time on my lunch break to follow the reentry and landing of Endeavour, which seemed to go quite smoothly. For a while I attempted to follow along with Orbiter in a window, and with careful use of time acceleration and deceleration I managed to get the reentry scenario nearly in sync with the real-world reentry (judging from the orbital maps and time announcements from mission control). But continual switching between applications caused Orbiter to lose its keyboard focus, so I could not switch views. When I restarted from the same point, I forgot to re-start the autopilot (or something), and my simulated shuttle missed a roll reversal and ended up low and fast over Cuba, unable to make it to KSC (with impressive warning sounds I had never heard before!). Fortunately the real thing worked as advertised and landed on the planned runway 15 at 12:32 pm EDT. Now maybe I can get over this shuttle obsession and get back to my regular obsessions!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

how do you get a shuttle simulator? I've alwayus thought it would be very cool.
Not MS flight sim sureley?