How Did The Shuttle Get Home Before GPS? 

I’m old enuf to remember when MLS approaches were gonna be everywhere. I must have revised hundreds of Jepp plates with MLS. But in 50+ years of flying, 38 of them international on DC-8s & B-747s I never heard anyone get cleared for one. Used to see the shuttle trainers in ELP all the time, they practiced over White Sands & McGregor ranges.

So cool! Thank you for sharing

Thank you for sharing!

Ward Carroll covered the Shuttle Training Aircraft landings on his channel recently.

Wow, thank you a lot! That's so interesting and basically an unexpected, free extra to the video. ❤

I thought that the missile only knew where it isn't.

The space shuttle knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn’t. By subtracting where it is from where it isn’t, or where it isn’t from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the shuttle from a position where it is to a position where it isn’t, and arriving at a position where it wasn’t, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn’t, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn’t. In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn’t, the system has acquired a variation-the variation being the difference between where the shuttle is and where it wasn’t. If variation is considered a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the onboard guidance computer. However, the shuttle must also know where it was. The shuttle guidance computer scenario works as follows: Because a variation has modified some of the information the shuttle has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn’t, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn’t, or vice versa. By differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn’t be and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which we call ‘error.’

You'll flip like a beginner stage KSP rocket?

I don't get it. Tell us the original joke about the missile!

I would love a video from Scott explaining that meme.

So that's where the "fly safe" comes from.

@@andrasbiro3007 you win the Internet for today.

The Shuttle had no abort system but , in theory, if it reached a sufficient altitude it could detach and perform an RLS--Return to Landing Site. Young was aked how that works and he answered, "i'ts simple, it only requires two miracles followed by an Act of God."

@@docjanosJohn Young was never short of a quip !

@@docjanos He also had a famous response to some NASA leaders who wanted to do an RTLS abort during a test flight just to see if it could be done, "We don't need to practice bleeding."

Yeah they were on self destruct mode on the way up but got their act together on the way down.

Maybe if not for the USSR falling apart they would decide that adding jet engines to Buran wasn't needed at all

This landing video shows just how good the pilots were. They make such tiny, perfect corrections to stay right on course. Of course, they also had the very best instrumentation, planning, and assistance from the ground.

@@chrisfrederick9934 The only difficult part of landing the shuttle was when you had the mains on the ground, the shuttle itself was stable and responded to inputs predictably. Dropping the nose on the ground at the right time to not stress anything out was all on the pilot, there was no instrumentation or guidance for it. Everything else was just a matter of following the course, then picking up the guidance pip on the hud, and finally watching the lights on the runway. Everything was set up specifically for the shuttle so there was no guesswork, but dropping the nose at the right time had to be precise and judged manually.

@@chrisfrederick9934 Nerves of steel but no nervousness. Ie if they botch the landing via under or over shoot, the shuttle breaks up and the landing is unsurvivable. It was calculated it could not even do a water ditch without a break up (for the case of booster fail during critical points in ascent).

Thank you Douglas Adams! 😆

Definition of an orbit.

Am I the only one who appreciates an expertly-applied Toy Story quote?

The orbiter has/had a natural glide ratio around 4 down for 1 forward. It literally cannot land unpowered, period. (Unless we include crashing. It's really good at that.) That's why it's called a flying brick. It's *better* than an actual brick but not really by much.

@@nateschultz8973 It's 25% better than an actual brick. Not an earth shattering number, but when you need those 25% it makes all the difference in the world.

My car can take more than 3G!!

Why is it "nuts?" It worked. What's wrong with you?

@@user-dh6bj2me5pnuts doesn’t necessarily mean something stupid or hair brained. It can be used more like that’s crazy or that’s shocking

@@user-dh6bj2me5p Nothing is wrong. It's nuts, because something that was orbiting the planet had smaller g-load tolerance than GA planes. That easily puts it into the "nuts" territory. It's unexpected.

@@flare242 The more I know about the science and engineering used back in the day the less impress and more disapointed I am by the actual one. Spacex is a joke compared to what they did back in the 60s

Agree !!! Also , the shuttle was sexy looking !

Agreed!!! Scott does good work!

Sure it is!

Mattel made a lot of the plastic parts for M16s. Contracting gets pretty interesting.

Like a great many companies, Singer made a lot of stuff for the war effort. They excelled at making small, complicated, precision parts.

Singer made Colt ACPs in the second world war. They made only perhaps a thousand units but they were beautifully made and finished and command high prices today . Probably most are never fired to protect their value. At some point Singer was taken off to do other War work that required high precision -- likely bomb sights or something similar. The original Singer sewing machine man was a Russian Jewish chap who came from St Petersburg. He developed his base idea in Ru and then emigrated to the US of A. Tim Fidler.

Such as the Mk113 FCS I used to operate and repair.

@@F_Tim1961 Colt ACPs

Hey, it's Scott Manley we're talking about. I'd say "what we'd expect from you" would qualify better. Ofcourse, compared to other mortal beings, you're absolutely right.

Well... airplanes can do that. You can't really use VOR/DME for your car or during hikes.

@@flare242 That's what paper maps were for. Don't know the last time I saw one.

You can use radio directions finding with handheld equipment to triangulate your position.

​@JohnDoe-jh5yr I can't speak for other places but my local Walmart still has paper travel maps. Probably not a bad idea to have some on hand.

It's being spoofed by Russia it often doesn't work.

Gotta make sure the taxpayers get their monies worth 🤣

What’s wrong with you folks. The shuttle program was an abject failure run by super-bureaucrat NASA which murdered two crews by considering money not science. My wife tried out for Teacher-in-Space which turned out to be crew falling for several minutes into the ocean while their families stood in horror and tears in the grandstands provided for the asinine NASA.

@@georgedobler7490I agree, and it seems you have a personal grudge against this too.

People dislike the shuttle? It's one of the most badass things EVER! And that's coming from someone with a primary love for *sea* ships.

Cool story! I went to school with his daughter, Patty

Thanks for sharing your memories. I didn't know about the fans, but it makes a lot of sense. The Shuttle RCS system used those fuels, so it was probably wise to make sure there were no fumes or vapors left in the piping so that NASA didn't expose its crews to hazardous substances! It's amazing to look back and see how much we thought up and accomplished without smartphones and the internet.

I don't think the pilot puts the gear down, I think another crew member does that.

@@JoshuaTootell well **obviously** in this case! 🤣

@@HuntingTarg Yeah, I've been learning about all the various nitric compounds used in...let's call it "high energy chemistry"...lately, such as hypergolics and liquid fuels... It's amazing how ungodly nasty we can make *air* with the addition of a couple extra atoms and some energy!

And did it with really shitty computers, compared to what we have today. The engineering and thought that went into the space shuttle is mind boggling. Right up to what was done for the Apollo program, which was done with even shittier computers. I.E. there were actual humans doing pipelined computations as a backup, in case the actual computer failed.

@@jeromethiel4323I'd say today's computers are pretty shitty compared to those ones. They might have more memory and be faster, but the quality and robustness is lacking. Also over-complication creates more things that can go wrong.

​@@BrandyBalloonThis is just wrong, a genuine Arduino Uno is arguably far more reliable then all of the computers we brought into space during the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. Atmel/Microchip makes a hardened space rated version that's even better. However, today's engineers seem to be far worse at engineering due to a failing of colleges across the US to convey engineering and instead are wasting credits by requiring crap like Film History, Philosophy, Gender Studies, and other worthless classes into an engineering degree. Not to mention the general politics issues at universities tend to drive out the old white greybeard engineers replacing them with some Indian woman who doesn't understand an opamp.

@@linuxguy1199 Rofl, you think an engineering degree has Gender studies and film history in it? You believe to much nonsense you read on the internet.

​@linuxguy1199 Just surprised you didn't blame "Woke" too

Space shuttle takes a screenshot

@@sethwallack8089 Screenshot? looks more like a selfie to me.

In 1982 only 6 GPS satellites had been launched, with one already retired. They'd need a lot more than that for reliable use with quick position fixes.

More like graceful falling than actual flying.

As i recall the rate of descent up til the final part of the landing approach was near that of terminal velocity for a freefalling person. Edit: rewording my statement because my less than optimal choice of words seems to be triggering everyone's pedantry. Carry on 🫡

@@razorfett147mad monkeys going into space and back.

​@@razorfett147It makes sense, you *want* the shuttle to take on as much energy as possible during that final, because you're gonna need the extra speed to have any hope of sustaining level flight for the landing.

@razorfett147 It was falling at an angle rather than soaring like an angel.

It would have made for cool pictures, although it would have made international news. I would rather have seen an incident like that than the two full-loss mission failures that happened.

When I worked as Air Traffic Controller we occasionally received AFTN paper NOTAMs regarding delays in Lajes AFB, Azores, due to a possible diversion from the Space Shuttle. When they expired we threw them away. Nowadays I regret so much not having kept one of them! 😐

@@duartesimoes508 I worked in airfield management in the Air Force and we'd issue those NOTAMs😂 I was at Cannon AFB and we were an alternate for the shuttle a couple of times while I was there. That would be a cool one to keep though

TACAN is DME with the silent periods filled with the encoded direction signal.

Shuttle was the Bugatti of space travel. It's only problem was high cost to launch and maintenance, something SpaceX will realize soon with Starship.

Yeah, ridiculously impressive. Really stupid design requirements.

Shuttle was a bodge of Lego, Mechano and Sticklebrix all held together by extremely intelligent mathematicians and software writers. The two failures were caused by managers pretending a something was all fine & good when it clearly was not.

As impressive as an F1 car engine is in terms of engineering, you don't take it out for daily errands.

@@05DonnieB Most people dumping on NASA now are immature ignorant Musk fan boys with no concept of how hard things were in the time before GPS with so many other obstacles to surpass during 1960s to 1980s.

The Wii Remote had to put up with G forces that would overwhelm the shuttle.

Sometime in the 80s a software company released a shuttle simulator. It was, for the time, amazingly advanced, with features like interactive buttons and switches (yup...just like DCS). Due to computer mice still being weird, wingding toys, *all* the cockpit switches were bound to keyboard commands, often in nested sets (first keybind got you to the right area of the panel, second keybind actually flipped the switch). It was incredibly complex, amazingly immersive for the time, and had a near-vertical learning curve. Or would have, if it had had even a half-decent manual or tutorial. Which it didn't. I managed to stick several launches - easy because crew input is minimal - and orbital insertions, but I never managed a de-orbit, never mind an actual landing. Something always glitched, forcing me to manually enter the parameters...and with no manual to go from...🤷‍♂️

I really appreciated the point about doing landings manually to get real-situation experience and not trusting the computer. The same argument was made against terminating the Orbiter program on America's experience curve with manned spaceflight and spacewalks, and arresting the performances of the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds during C0VlD. The higher degree of expertise & skill that is required to do something, the faster it is lost after it stops being done.

A straight-in from orbit would be very unforgiving if the energy was too low for any reason. The final turn was a flexible way of burning off excess energy just in time for the final approach, which meant the shuttle could carry extra airspeed/altitude for a safety margin. It's a clever design.

@@AdrianColley it is, no doubt 😀 makes total sense after Scott showed it, exactly for the safety reasons. Nevertheless i've never seen it mentioned anywhere and all shuttle landings i've watched only showed the last minutes of final approach and touchdown. I've always wondered how they can calculate it that precisely. Then i learned about the s-turns and was happy with that explanation. I never thought the shuttle had enough authority to glide actual circles/spirals.

@@CherryGSremember, space shuttle's attitude thrusters use poisonous fuel hence cannot be fired during final approach

Unfortunately, NASA has basically always been of the opinion that external engineering cameras are useless.

The STS program gave Americans many of the technologies they enjoy today.

No joke

Quite stunning really for what was essentially early 1970’s technology.

Aerospace tech from the 50’s through the 70’s was completely mind blowing. It is difficult to comprehend how smart these designers were.

@@nsh1980gmail The people who built the Saturn V, Apollo, LEM, etc, did so with slide rules and graph paper. They got so good at putting people on the moon, that they even gave them golf clubs and buggies to play with. Now you have people with all the data from Gemini, Mercury, Apollo, STS, ISS, etc...using essentially super computers, with far better material science advances, CNC, etc...making tin cans explode and spin out of control to their demise. NASA built a WELL MAINTAINED nature preserve around their launch site, SpaceX built a launch site around a nature preserve with endangered species, that they regularly burn down, pollute, deafen mammals, etc. NASA worked for the taxpayer money they were given, with results. SpaceX enriches it's owner, via the tax payer dollars he gains profit from...while destroying more Starships in 3 flights, than the STS program lost in well over 100. This is before the 'starship' is even human rated, let alone cargo rated.

In Soviet Russia, Buran fly you. 😂

While I vaguely remember Scott doing an overview video of Buran-Energia, I think it's a fair bet that a lot of the documentation and test articles on Buran were lost after the USSR had a collapse of economy and industry, so; "...the world may never know."

even more curiously with strong winds they didnt account for during that day. what a feat for a first (and sadly only) flight.

gotta give it to the soviets they can pull off some cool stuff from time to time. along with the Buran came the An-225.

I made a comment on Ward's video about this. He also left out the 'ouch' comment from the crew when the wheel touched down.

When they had only flown with humans onboard they definitely needed a lot of that.

Shocking fact ⚡

Resistance gained against: death

Fun (related) fact: the first shuttle test landing almost didn't make it to the runway (and bounced a bit when it did)!

Roy Sulivan claimed 7 lightning strikes between 1942 and 1977. Bit more than 2.

Jeez….Thor really had it out for him.