43
votes
Accepted
Apollo simulator practical jokes
From the book "Go Flight!", once the astronauts got an ECG (EKG) of a patient having a heart attack and fed that to the Flight Surgeon during a test run. The surgeon missed it, and was reprimanded for ...
- 121k
34
votes
Apollo simulator practical jokes
Not exactly a prank, but from an article on Ellison Onizuka:
“We were doing simulations of engine-out aborts,” Buchli said. “Most of those wound up in what we called the ‘black zone’ — the area where ...
- 167k
33
votes
Apollo simulator practical jokes
I don't know if this qualifies as a practical joke or not, but at least it's semi-documented and not too in-jokey.
Food and drink was forbidden in the Shuttle Mission Simulator motion base cockpit ...
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23
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Apollo training simulator cgi requirements
I think your source is simply incorrect on this.
As far as I know, there was no computer generated graphics (in the modern sense of the term) in Apollo-era simulators. Motion-controlled cameras were ...
- 167k
21
votes
Apollo simulator practical jokes
I can't seem to find the video of it anymore, but at a talk back in (I believe) 2012, STS-135 commander Chris Ferguson described a story from one of his last mission simulator runs.
For this ...
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12
votes
Accepted
How much of the Shuttle was physically realized in the simulator?
Note: there were a lot of training simulators. This answer concentrates on the Shuttle Mission Simulators. There were mockup type simulators like the Crew Compartment Trainer (CCT) that replicated ...
- 178k
9
votes
Was a real Space Shuttle ever used as a really big simulator?
There was a Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test (TCDT) performed late in the training flow for each mission in which the crew would fly out to Florida where their Orbiter was stacked on the pad.
...
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7
votes
What is the current location of Link-built Apollo Mission Simulators?
Here is a Photograph of the KSC CMS Simulators (x2) and LMS Simulator in the Flight Crew Training Building, from 1968. I toured this building in 1971 with flight crews training in both the CMS and ...
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6
votes
Are Jool's moons' orbits stable?
Since these object have known masses and orbital parameters with physical units, the stability of the system can be investigated numerically.
From Jool I clicked on the five links to its moons and ...
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5
votes
Accepted
Are Jool's moons' orbits stable?
This is a studied concern for the team of KSP modders who wrote Principia, an n-body gravitational implementation. The have released a document explaining the issue with the stock system (a very close ...
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5
votes
How much of the Shuttle was physically realized in the simulator?
One of the Space Shuttle simulators flew
The Shuttle Training Aircraft was a Grumman Gulfstream II that was heavily modified so that pilots could train to land the shuttle in an aircraft that had ...
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5
votes
Accepted
Was it possible to simulate another atmosphere during Shuttle training?
Sure...both nominal and off-nominal
Nominal - for shuttle-based EVAs the cabin was depressurized to 10.2 psi for the prebreathe. Both the Single System Trainers (SST) and the Shuttle Mission ...
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5
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Apollo training simulator cgi requirements
Here is a lengthy description of the Apollo Mission Simulator visual systems.
It is taken from the Apollo Mission Simulator Instructor Handbook Volume 1.
You will note that there is zero CGI ...
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3
votes
Accepted
Tracking OSIRIS-REX
Found the solution thanks to uhoh.
Use this URL to request Osiris-Rex ephemeris from NASA Horizons site, which corresponds to this batch command:
...
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3
votes
Tracking OSIRIS-REX
Where could I get real time telemetries for OSIRIS-REX?
For deep space missions, the spacecraft don't really "know" where they are and don't send position information back to Earth in telemetry as ...
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3
votes
Is "Space Shuttle" written as a proper noun in the spaceflight industry?
This is largely an opinion-based answer, because natural language is a matter of opinion.
I capitalize Space Shuttle because as far as I know, that's the actual name of NASA's spacecraft, ...
- 167k
3
votes
Accepted
Was a real Space Shuttle ever used as a really big simulator?
Aside from the TCDT described in @OrganicMarble's answer the only other test I am aware of where the crew used the actual vehicle during testing was for their flight Crew Equipment Interface Test (...
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2
votes
Rocket Launch Simulation Source Code Locations
Searching “launch simulation github” will probably lead you to a number of options. I found https://github.com/jcreus/launchsim to be a very useful reference and starting point when I was working on ...
- 167k
1
vote
Accepted
Is there a basic 2 or 3 body space simulator
Universe Sandbox is probably what you want. Great tool, drag and drop, add in objects where you desire, etc. Orbits all figured in. There's a ton of stuff you can do with it, I've used it in a few ...
- 121k
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