Author Topic: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M  (Read 11234 times)

Offline collectSPACE

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Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« on: 12/29/2011 03:13 pm »
Retired space shuttle simulator to 'fly' again at Texas A&M
http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-122911a.html

NASA's long-running space shuttle program came to its end in 2011, but thanks to a recently signed agreement between the space agency and a Texas university, one of the winged spacecraft's iconic cockpits will continue to "fly."

The Shuttle Motion Simulator (SMS), which for more than three decades exposed astronauts to the sights, sounds, and motions they'd experience when they launched and landed on the real orbiters, is being moved 100 miles from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to Texas A&M University in College Station. Once there, the hydraulically maneuvered platform will resume work as a simulator...


I suspect a good number of shuttle enthusiasts will be planning trips to College Station in the coming years...

"It will definitely be widely accessible to all of the public to come in and enjoy for many years to come," said Valasek. "There have been 135 missions, 355 astronauts and now, it's your turn."

The simulator will be loaded with one of the STS-135 profiles, as well as be able to run new missions the university plans to program.  At first, the SMS will be operated as a static simulator but within a "few short years" they hope it to have restored to full motion.

Online Chris Bergin

Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #1 on: 12/29/2011 04:22 pm »
That's got to be one of the more positive T&R stories. Living on at a Texas Uni and even having 135's profile loaded in.

I bet some people will even have their choice of university swayed by that being on site ;D
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Offline Fequalsma

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #2 on: 12/29/2011 04:36 pm »
It's definitely an E-Ticket ride!

Offline gordo

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #3 on: 12/29/2011 05:55 pm »
Its a mamoth task, as what you find with these things is that they are built in situ, so moving them is a massive operation.

With the people on board form JSC to help, it will be a fantastic project to follow over the coming years.

Offline Nascent Ascent

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #4 on: 12/29/2011 06:01 pm »
What would be the most you would pay for a 10 min "ride"?

Offline TheFallen

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #5 on: 12/29/2011 06:34 pm »
What would be the most you would pay for a 10 min "ride"?

Not as much as I would pay riding on SpaceShipTwo :)

Offline mtakala24

Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #6 on: 12/29/2011 07:04 pm »
well, if the ascent aborts were included as options, then I would pay for each one of them.

Offline collectSPACE

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #7 on: 12/29/2011 07:33 pm »
Just to be clear, there was no mention of Texas A&M charging anyone to fly the simulator. Quite the opposite, they seemed genuinely eager to have as many visitors experience taking the controls as possible, regardless if you are an engineering student, sixth grader or older than the simulator itself.

In its static set-up at first, Texas A&M said the simulator will run reentry and landing approaches. Once motion is restored, it will fly ascent profiles as well.

Aggie astronaut Mike Fossum offered this description of flying the SMS:

Strapping into the motion base simulator takes about 20 IQ points away, which is an issue, especially as it tips its nose toward the sky to simulate the launch conditions. That's pretty cool but you've never felt that before. All of your time in simulators has been sitting in a chair with everything stationary. Then, all of sudden, you start to feel like you're getting ready to go to space or something...

(For comparison, he later said that strapping into the real orbiter takes about 40 IQ points away...)
« Last Edit: 12/29/2011 08:09 pm by collectSPACE »

Offline Jorge

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #8 on: 12/29/2011 08:21 pm »
Just to be clear, there was no mention of Texas A&M charging anyone to fly the simulator. Quite the opposite, they seemed genuinely eager to have as many visitors experience taking the controls as possible, regardless if you are an engineering student, sixth grader or older than the simulator itself.

In its static set-up at first, Texas A&M said the simulator will run reentry and landing approaches. Once motion is restored, it will fly ascent profiles as well.

There's nothing stopping them from running any scenario, with or without motion. We ran ascents without motion all the time. We even ran orbit sims, though usually just for checkout purposes since the MB lacks an aft flight deck (the instructors can flip all the switches from the instructor station, and even bring up simulated views from the aft windows, even though there are no aft visuals installed).
JRF

Offline psloss

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #9 on: 12/29/2011 10:00 pm »
There's nothing stopping them from running any scenario, with or without motion. We ran ascents without motion all the time. We even ran orbit sims, though usually just for checkout purposes since the MB lacks an aft flight deck (the instructors can flip all the switches from the instructor station, and even bring up simulated views from the aft windows, even though there are no aft visuals installed).
Maybe I missed it, but what happens to the instructor station "parts?"  Are those going with the MB?

Offline collectSPACE

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #10 on: 12/29/2011 10:17 pm »
Maybe I missed it, but what happens to the instructor station "parts?"  Are those going with the MB?

From what Texas A&M's director of the vehicle systems and control lab said after the Dec. 19 ceremony, I believe so. He said that all the related control systems and computers were being transferred to College Station, which is why (at least in part) it will require two shipments.

Offline Jorge

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #11 on: 12/29/2011 10:20 pm »
There's nothing stopping them from running any scenario, with or without motion. We ran ascents without motion all the time. We even ran orbit sims, though usually just for checkout purposes since the MB lacks an aft flight deck (the instructors can flip all the switches from the instructor station, and even bring up simulated views from the aft windows, even though there are no aft visuals installed).
Maybe I missed it, but what happens to the instructor station "parts?"  Are those going with the MB?


Yes, the MB instructor station is going to A&M along with the simulator. A&M is also getting much of the "guts" of the other two SMS bases (fixed base and GNS) as spares since Adler Planetarium and Wings of Dreams Museum are only planning static displays of those simulators.

Four pics attached. 1) MEDS IDPs from the fixed base bagged up for A&M, 2) Motion base instructor station consoles, 3) Motion base controls with A&M stickers attached, 4) AP-101S GPCs from the GNS with A&M tags (and valued at $450k!). First pic was taken 28 Oct, the other three 22 Dec.
« Last Edit: 12/29/2011 10:56 pm by Jorge »
JRF

Offline psloss

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #12 on: 12/29/2011 10:42 pm »
Thanks, guys -- that's pretty cool.  Definitely sounds like it's worth a trip someday.

Edit: definitely a tangent and maybe a duplicate, but I liked this YT video of what the SMS MB looked like outside during the first part of an ascent simulation synch'd with real video --


« Last Edit: 12/30/2011 12:50 am by psloss »

Offline gordo

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #13 on: 01/01/2012 08:22 am »
Thanks for the video clip, great see the use of the motion to give the crew the feeling of the thrust tailing off before booster sep.  I guess if we watched this for longer by the time we got up to 3Gs they would be back vertical, then fully horizontal as we went through Cut off.

I suspect they will have to work with a commercial partner for any public flights. No matter what they say now, to run this for he long term will eat money like no tomorrow, for example  when a GPC dies etc... How do you fix this?

« Last Edit: 01/01/2012 08:22 am by gordo »

Offline Jorge

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #14 on: 01/01/2012 09:16 am »
Thanks for the video clip, great see the use of the motion to give the crew the feeling of the thrust tailing off before booster sep.  I guess if we watched this for longer by the time we got up to 3Gs they would be back vertical, then fully horizontal as we went through Cut off.

I suspect they will have to work with a commercial partner for any public flights. No matter what they say now, to run this for he long term will eat money like no tomorrow, for example  when a GPC dies etc... How do you fix this?



As I noted earlier, A&M will be getting all the electronics from the other two SMS bases, including the five GPCs from the fixed base and the five from the GNS, for a total of fifteen. So at least for the short-to-mid term, they can simply use up the spares until they die. They can also run with fewer than five GPCs. Since they're not doing crew training on GPC failures, they can run with two (one PASS and one BFS). They'll need to create new reset points if they want to run like that, though.

The SMS also supports GPC emulation in software, though this was not used in SMS crew training. (It *was* used in other simulators that used the SMS host software but lacked GPCs, such as the SSTs). Once they get to the point where they can't scrape together enough components to keep two GPCs running, they can fall back to emulation. They'll also need to do this should all three Simulation Interface Devices (SIDs) (the avionics cabinets that house the GPCs in the SMS and make the GPCs "think" they're in a real orbiter) fail.

Ultimately, though, I do agree A&M will need to bring on the FDOC (Lockheed-Martin) contractors to run the SMS, either by contracting to L-M or hiring the employees directly, if they want to keep running it as a shuttle simulator.

I suspect, in the long run, they'll mothball the shuttle electronics and use a modern computer architecture to run the simulator. That ties in better with the goal of using the simulator as a research/teaching tool.
JRF

Offline fatboy66

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #15 on: 06/05/2012 05:03 pm »
I hope that the space shuttle simulator is open to the general public. I have seen a video here of a guy landing it. Not sure how I would do. If anyone has more info on it please let me know.


[URL =http://flightsimulatoruk.blogspot.co.uk]Flight Simulator[/URL]

Offline psloss

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #16 on: 06/05/2012 05:28 pm »
I hope that the space shuttle simulator is open to the general public. I have seen a video here of a guy landing it. Not sure how I would do. If anyone has more info on it please let me know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpFmR5kve8g
Mr. Sullenberger is better known than most "guys."  (As a search of nickname used in the video title would show.)

He did make at least one appearance at Johnson Space Center, so perhaps he flew the Motion Base Simulator before it was taken out of service last summer; however, this YT video may be of a visit to a different Shuttle simulator -- the Vertical Motion Simulator at Ames Research Center.

Offline psloss

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #17 on: 06/08/2012 04:01 pm »
Speaking of, saw that @waynehale retweeted this from @astro_reid:

http://mobile.twitter.com/astro_reid/status/211077848356761601

"End of an era...walking to my sim yesterday I watched the motion based Space Shuttle sim being removed from building 5"

(Link includes pic.)

Offline rdale

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #18 on: 02/26/2013 02:31 pm »
Sign me up!!!

===

Simulator Becomes Reality : A piece of U.S. space history comes to Texas A&M

http://engineering.tamu.edu/research/2012/simulator-becomes-reality

"The simulator is expected to open to the public in summer 2013."

"We plan to restore the simulator to the way it was when the last mission flew in July 2011. Those astronauts who flew that last mission will be able to come to Texas A&M, sit in the simulator and say, "That's exactly how I remember it." It's going to be a time capsule, frozen in time so that everyone who comes to see it and fly it will get to experience a piece of space history."

"And it's living history. Unlike a typical museum display, where you look at exhibits and read a placard, this is history that you actually get to interact with. You'll get to sit in it, fly it and run the full simulation exactly how the NASA astronauts did."

Offline psloss

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #19 on: 02/26/2013 02:45 pm »

Offline Fequalsma

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Re: Shuttle Motion Simulator at Texas A&M
« Reply #20 on: 03/01/2013 01:48 am »
This definitely puts a visit to College Station high on the list...
F=ma

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