Shuttle lands short -- story
Danny Deger
runway.
Danny Deger
_________________________________________________________
At about this time, I became the Entry Training Flow Supervisor. In this
position I was overall responsible for training the crew for the entry phase
of flight. In this context, entry is all the way from the end of the
deorbit burn to landing. Within days of my taking over this job, a shuttle
landed short of the runway. Fortunately, the landing was on the lakebed and
Edwards Air Force Base, where landing short is not a problem. If the
landing had been at Kennedy, we would have lost the orbiter and the crew.
The short landing was a classic case of a chain of errors. In aircraft
accidents (in this case a very close call) there is almost always a chain of
events. If any one link in the chain was not made, the accident would not
have happened. It is very rare that a single event causes an accident. The
short landing of STS-37 started with the weather. The winds at the time of
landing were the strongest the shuttle had every flown in. This was true
for the high altitude winds as well as the winds on the surface. The
original plan was to land on the concrete runway, which has the Microwave
Landing System. A helium filled balloon was launched at Edwards. A radar
on the ground tracked the balloon on its ascent. Based on the motion of the
balloon, winds at altitude were calculated. This data was fed into a
computer simulation of a shuttle entry. Based on this simulation, the
shuttle was predicted to be low on energy as it rolled out on final, but it
will make the concrete runway OK. But then the surface winds pick up and
the concrete runway is out of cross wind limits.
Wayne Hale was the flight director and he made the call to land on a lakebed
runway that is pointed into the wind. Unfortunately, there was not enough
time to run the simulator through the expected winds to make sure the
shuttle will be OK. At the time of the flight there was no rule to do this.
The rule is in place now. If the rule had been in place at the time, the
landing wouldn't have been attempted. A post flight run of the simulation
showed the shuttle being very low on energy as it rolled out on final.
Meanwhile a heavily modified Gulfstream aircraft, called the Shuttle
Training Aircraft - STA, makes an approach to the lakebed runway. The pilot
reports a massive wind shear at 7,000 feet on final. The winds are such
that 20 knots of precious airspeed is lost at 7,000 feet. This important
call was made to the ground and discussed at length in the Mission Control
Center. But for some reason, Steve Nagel, who was the commander of STS-37,
was not told about the wind shear. We now had in place at least two links
in the chain.
Steve and his crew performed the deorbit burn and let the computers fly the
shuttle down to Mach 1. At this point Steve took over. Unfortunately,
Steve had to fly a right hand turn to the lakebed runway. He had been
scheduled for a left hand turn on the concrete runway, so almost all of his
training was with left hand turns. The flight director needles commanded
him to start his turn, so he did. Now Steve made a mistake. He was so
interested in finding the runway early he started to look outside. Because
his seat was on the left, he couldn't see the runway until very late.
Meanwhile, the shuttle flew into a tail wind and commanded Steve into the
maximum bank allowed - 60 degrees. Steve missed the command and maintains
the more normal 45 degrees. Without knowing it, the shuttle was flying wide
and losing energy fast.
Finally Steve picked up the runway. He knew immediately he was in trouble.
He was low energy. He rolled out on final with less airspeed than he should
have. He thought he was OK, and based on the information he had at the time
he was. But then he hit the wind shear and lost 20 knots of his already too
low airspeed. Steve knew immediately he was not going to make the runway.
He drops the nose to get back his airspeed. This put him too low to make
the runway, but it was better than running out of airspeed while still in
the air. He planned to land on speed, 195 knots, but well short of the
runway. As he approached the ground, his velocity vector was telling him he
was going down too fast. He pulled up in response to this indication from
the velocity vector. It turned out the velocity vector had a significant
error because this lakebed runway has no MLS.
Steve ended up landing at 165 knot airspeed 1,600 feet short of the runway.
Everyone thinks he was slow because he was attempting to make the runway. I
thought this for about a year. I finally had a chance to have a one-on-one
interview with Steve where he told me this story and straighten me out on
why he landed so slow.
It is hard to believe we were doing such a bad job of teaching the manual
phase of flying from Mach 1 to rolling out on final, but we were. The pilot
usually takes control at Mach 1 on entry and hand flies the shuttle the rest
of the way. This is about 80,000 feet altitude. We had in the training
flow a single class in the simulator to teach this phase. A big problem was
the flight director needles were turned off during this class and the
student did a 100% manual flying task. This is not the way the shuttle is
flown. The flight director needles are on and used extensively, but the
pilots had zero training on how to use the needles. Even worse, this phase
was not trained as the pilots came out of the pilot pool and were trained to
fly an assigned flight. It was common when I took over for the pilots to
not have taken this class in years.
One of my first duties as Entry Training Flow supervisor was to upgrade
training of this important task. First of all I added a 4 hour class to be
taught every time a crew was selected for a flight. Second I modified the
class to have the flight director needles on during the entire class. If
the crew had needles on the actual entry, they were going to have needles on
during the class.
As I was developing this class, many pilots told me based on landing the
Gulfstream aircraft modified to fly like a shuttle, the needles failed a
lot. I did some research. The Gulfstream can't go to 80,000 feet to do an
entire approach. Typically they go to about 20,000 feet and fly the last
portion of the approach. Many times the needles go "goofy". I worked with
the Gulfstream instructors and finally came up with the answer. The
Gulfstream at 20,000 feet is going much slower than the shuttle would be at
this altitude. The shuttle software "gets lost" and thinks the pilot wants
to make another complete circle before landing. The commands to the pilot
via the flight directory needles become completely unusable. If the pilot
were to follow the needles, the shuttle would crash. Based on this, the
pilots had lost confidence on the needles. I worked with the Gulfstream
instructors and we were able to increase the speed a bit. Safety
considerations would not allow them to fly actual shuttle speeds. But I did
get them to teach the needles often going "goofy" would happen very rarely
in the real shuttle. We have had no more problems in this phase after my
training changes were put into place.
MichaelJP
"Danny Deger" <danny...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:46674f12$0$4711$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
> Here's another section of my autobiography on STS-37 landing short of the
> runway.
>
> Danny Deger
>
> _________________________________________________________
>
> runway. Fortunately, the landing was on the lakebed and Edwards Air Force
> Base, where landing short is not a problem. If the landing had been at
> Kennedy, we would have lost the orbiter and the crew.
Interesting stuff, I didn't know about this.
Hypothetically, if this had taken place at KSC, is there nowhere the
orbiter could have been belly landed with some chance of survival? Could a
shuttle ditch without being destroyed?
Derek Lyons
>
>"Danny Deger" <danny...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:46674f12$0$4711$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
>> Here's another section of my autobiography on STS-37 landing short of the
>> runway.
>
>> runway. Fortunately, the landing was on the lakebed and Edwards Air Force
>> Base, where landing short is not a problem. If the landing had been at
>> Kennedy, we would have lost the orbiter and the crew.
>> .. snipped...
>
>Interesting stuff, I didn't know about this.
It's a well known story - Danny just adds a few details and his own
unique spin.
>Hypothetically, if this had taken place at KSC, is there nowhere the
>orbiter could have been belly landed with some chance of survival? Could a
>shuttle ditch without being destroyed?
No and no.
D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
MichaelJP
"Derek Lyons" <fair...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:466826d4....@news.supernews.com...
> "MichaelJP" <m...@nospam.com> wrote:
>>
>>"Danny Deger" <danny...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>news:46674f12$0$4711$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
>>> Here's another section of my autobiography on STS-37 landing short of
>>> the
>>> runway.
>>
>>> Within days of my taking over this job, a shuttle landed short of the
>>> runway. Fortunately, the landing was on the lakebed and Edwards Air
>>> Force
>>> Base, where landing short is not a problem. If the landing had been at
>>> Kennedy, we would have lost the orbiter and the crew.
>>> .. snipped...
>>
>>Interesting stuff, I didn't know about this.
>
> It's a well known story - Danny just adds a few details and his own
> unique spin.
>
>>Hypothetically, if this had taken place at KSC, is there nowhere the
>>orbiter could have been belly landed with some chance of survival? Could a
>>shuttle ditch without being destroyed?
>
> No and no.
>
> D.
So I suppose the only chance would be the bail-out system if it was decided
early enough that the shuttle didn't have enough energy to make the runway?
Jeff Findley
"MichaelJP" <m...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:POmdnRQ_9vYRiPXb...@giganews.com...
>
> "Danny Deger" <danny...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:46674f12$0$4711$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
>> Here's another section of my autobiography on STS-37 landing short of the
>> runway.
>>
>> Danny Deger
>>
>> _________________________________________________________
>>
>> Within days of my taking over this job, a shuttle landed short of the
>> runway. Fortunately, the landing was on the lakebed and Edwards Air
>> Force Base, where landing short is not a problem. If the landing had
>> been at Kennedy, we would have lost the orbiter and the crew.
>> .. snipped...
>
> Interesting stuff, I didn't know about this.
This has been discussed in the past. A quick web search turns up a posting
back in 1999 from Henry Spencer mentioning this:
STS-37 landed 600ft short of the runway threshold, due to a bad call on
winds aloft. (The Edwards runway has a paved underrun area, so this
wasn't
a disaster. I'm told that heads rolled among the weather people.)
This was part of a short list of "close calls" on landing.
> Hypothetically, if this had taken place at KSC, is there nowhere the
> orbiter could have been belly landed with some chance of survival? Could a
> shuttle ditch without being destroyed?
I'm sure the paved underrun at Edwards helped. A quick web search turns up
this document:
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/news/columbia/fr_generic.pdf
From above:
KSC 15/33 is a 300 ft wide grooved concrete runway with 50 ft
loadbearing
paved shoulders and has a total length of 17,000 ft including the 1,000
ft
underrun and 1,000 ft overrun.
So I have to wonder if the orbiter and crew would really have been lost at
KSC since it's got a 1,000 foot underrun... More web searching...
Here's a quote from a posting by Henry Spencer summarizing the April 22,
1991 issue of AW&ST:
Atlantis returning to Cape after Edwards landing. Engineers are trying
to figure out how a 14-inch external tank grounding strap got caught
in one of the orbiter's umbilical doors instead of being left on the
pad at KSC. The strap was found on the Edwards runway after landing!
As a further complication, Atlantis landed nearly 600ft short of the
official runway threshold on the lakebed. Steve Nagel, the pilot,
blames his own conservatism plus unusual winds aloft. "Had that
happened at KSC, it would have caused a few more gray hairs, but we
still would have been okay". (The KSC runway has a 1000ft underrun
area.) [Note added after publication: this was STS-37, Compton
deployment.]
So, I personally don't agree with Danny's assertion that STS-37 landing
short of the runway threshhold at KSC would have caused loss of orbiter and
crew. I think Danny really needs to have someone else fact check his
stories for him.
Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)
Derek Lyons
>So I suppose the only chance would be the bail-out system if it was decided
>early enough that the shuttle didn't have enough energy to make the runway?
Pretty much.
Borderline
the mistake of course was pilot error. There was no reason to leave
the director. this happens all the time in the aviation world and
people usually but not always do the Darwin gig...
Robert
Borderline
Derek Lyons
Jeff Findley
"Borderline" <uc78b...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1181273776....@p77g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
> On Jun 6, 7:17 pm, "Danny Deger" <dannyde...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Here's another section of my autobiography on STS-37 landing short of the
>> runway.
>
Except some of the facts are wrong. The shuttle would not have been lost if
this happened at KSC. The KSC runway has an underrun and overrun that are
each 1,000 foot long. Landing 600 feet short of the threshold would mean
you landed 400 feet beyond the edge of the underrun. Also, the Edwards
runway had a paved underrun as well, so the shuttle didn't actually land on
the dry lakebed, it landed on the paved underrun.
John
>
> - Show quoted text -
Fly a lot do you? . . . Yes he made a mistake, but he had been
trained NOT to fly the needles. The one sim ride failed the needles
at the start, and the modified Gulfstream apparently always had ratty
needle data that pilots were taught to ignore. Was there pilot
error . .. sure . . but there were a multitude of other errors, other
errors that were much more significant in terms of root cause than the
pilot's "failure" to fly the needles.
What I wonder is did anyone consider improving Cockpit Resource
Management as a result. Training the crew to have the Commander say
to the pilot in the right seat, ok Jake, I can't see the runway . . .
is it there? Perhaps with that reassurance Nagel could have relaxed
and flown the vehichle, but he was already set up to be vulnerable by
other issues he was not part of.
I would like the sim people to comment: What would be wrong with the
crew flying half a dozen runs with no malf's, just so they can get a
sight picture of what it feels like under normal conditions. It seems
everything I read suggests that there are never runs where things
works as they normally do. I am not suggesting that training all the
malfs is not vital . . . just do a few more so the crew can say . . .
"oh . .. is that what its supposed be like."
Take care . . .
John
robert casey
> Except some of the facts are wrong. The shuttle would not have been lost if
> this happened at KSC. The KSC runway has an underrun and overrun that are
> each 1,000 foot long. Landing 600 feet short of the threshold would mean
> you landed 400 feet beyond the edge of the underrun. Also, the Edwards
> runway had a paved underrun as well, so the shuttle didn't actually land on
> the dry lakebed, it landed on the paved underrun.
>
It'd still be a cause for concern. You'd want to know why, before
whatever puts you say 1200 feet underrun....
tdadamemd-...@excite.com
> "MichaelJP" <m...@nospam.com> wrote
> > "Danny Deger" <dannyde...@hotmail.com> wrote
Seconded.
It is a gross overstatement to say, "If the landing had been at
Kennedy, we would have lost the orbiter and the crew."
Shuttle landings are targetted to land 2,500 ft down the runway.
Along with the 1,000 ft underrun, you have to be 3,500 ft short before
you're in a threat to kill yourself that way if you choose to fly the
standard trajectory geometry and land on speed. And there are several
key points that I have not seen mentioned here yet. First off, Nagel
does not hold the record for lowest airspeed touchdown. Brewster did
a touchdown in the 150's. No tailscrape on either, which means that
they both had more stretch capability. Now on the topic of stretch
capability... Any decent glider pilot knows the advantages of flying
Max L/D. The standard shuttle trajectory is far from this, which
means that they load up excess parasitic drag by flying a lot faster
than optimum for a max range glide.
The tricks available to any shuttle pilot who finds themselves in a
low energy situation while flying into a non-lakebed runway is to
simply close the speedbrake and then shallow out the dive angle toward
Max L-over-D. If STS-37 had done this at 10,000 agl, I'm sure that
they had the capability to touch 10,000' down the runway! Now of
course no one would want to actually land that far down, but that's
how much capability they had.
Yes, STS-37 had a problem. But let's not over dramatize it by
ignoring what any pilot could have done to get themselves out of such
a problem. Nagel chose to stay close to the standard trajectory
because he knew he had the entire freakin lakebed. That's what it's
there for.
~ CT
Jorge R. Frank
>
> What I wonder is did anyone consider improving Cockpit Resource
> Management as a result.
CRM training has been improved quite a bit since then, but probably not
as a result of STS-37 specifically. I'd give more credit to the STS-87
SPARTAN deploy incident and an LOC that occurred during an STS-83/94
landing sim.
> I would like the sim people to comment: What would be wrong with the
> crew flying half a dozen runs with no malf's, just so they can get a
> sight picture of what it feels like under normal conditions. It seems
> everything I read suggests that there are never runs where things
> works as they normally do. I am not suggesting that training all the
> malfs is not vital . . . just do a few more so the crew can say . . .
> "oh . .. is that what its supposed be like."
They do get some nominal runs, mostly at the very beginning of training
(set the bit: this is what it's supposed to look like) and the very end
(recency).
tdadamemd-...@excite.com
> And there are several
> key points that I have not seen mentioned here yet. First off, Nagel
> does not hold the record for lowest airspeed touchdown.
One other key point that I intended to mention...
Perhaps the most important Big Picture point to make in all this is
that STS-37 was Not the last flight that Nagel made. NASA was
distraught over his performance to the point where they gave him
command of STS-55 which flew two years later (someone probably had a
good laugh when he was sent back to Edwards to land that last time).
Also, the right seater's career got hampered to the point where he was
upgraded to CDR on his next mission. NASA gave him command of a
landing at KSC, not only once but TWO times after STS-37.
~ CT
Skylon
> I wrote:
> > And there are several
> > key points that I have not seen mentioned here yet. First off, Nagel
> > does not hold the record for lowest airspeed touchdown.
>
> One other key point that I intended to mention...
>
> Perhaps the most important Big Picture point to make in all this is
> that STS-37 was Not the last flight that Nagel made. NASA was
> distraught over his performance to the point where they gave him
> command of STS-55 which flew two years later (someone probably had a
> good laugh when he was sent back to Edwards to land that last time).
> Also, the right seater's career got hampered to the point where he was
> upgraded to CDR on his next mission. NASA gave him command of a
> landing at KSC, not only once but TWO times after STS-37.
>
> ~ CT
>
Although according to Burrough's "Dragonfly" Nagel was later denied
command of STS-71 (the first Mir docking), even though he was the
choice of then-chief of the astronaut office Hoot Gibson. But that
may have been unrelated to what happened on STS-37 (as there is
nothing done by George Abbey ever that points to why he made his
decisions).
But yeah, STS-37 didn't seem to seriously hamper Nagel's career. As
pointed out he got a second flight as CDR and the PLT flew two flights
as CDR. Nagel is still with NASA as a research pilot last I checked.
-A.L.
Greg D. Moore (Strider)
"Derek Lyons" <fair...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:4668a54f....@news.supernews.com...
> "MichaelJP" <m...@nospam.com> wrote:
>
>>So I suppose the only chance would be the bail-out system if it was
>>decided
>>early enough that the shuttle didn't have enough energy to make the
>>runway?
>
> Pretty much.
And note, I believe the shuttle was already way to low and slow for a
successful bailout.
I don't recall, but I think it would have crashed just before the runway
overshoots.
>
> D.
> --
> Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
>
> -Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
> Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
--
Greg Moore
SQL Server DBA Consulting Remote and Onsite available!
Email: sql (at) greenms.com http://www.greenms.com/sqlserver.html
Derek Lyons
>John wrote:
>>
>> What I wonder is did anyone consider improving Cockpit Resource
>> Management as a result.
>
>CRM training has been improved quite a bit since then, but probably not
>as a result of STS-37 specifically. I'd give more credit to the STS-87
>SPARTAN deploy incident and an LOC that occurred during an STS-83/94
>landing sim.
Details?
tdadamemd-...@excite.com
> "Derek Lyons" <fairwa...@gmail.com> wrote
> > "MichaelJP" <m...@nospam.com> wrote:
>
> >>So I suppose the only chance would be the bail-out system if it was
> >>decided
> >>early enough that the shuttle didn't have enough energy to make the
> >>runway?
>
> > Pretty much.
>
> And note, I believe the shuttle was already way to low and slow for a
> successful bailout.
Michael's caveat quoted above has already accounted for that fact.
Crews are put through simulations where they are very low energy. The
appropriate CDR action is set up a glide directly to the landing site
up to and including a Max L/D stretch. It will become obvious early
on whether or not you can make the runway. And if not, there is
*plenty* of time to bailout the entire crew.
As for pilots who screw up the approach in the end game, HAC turn on
in, as stated previously, there is plenty of energy slop built into
the standard trajectory of 20deg dive to 1.5deg inner glideslope. If
low energy, simply close the speedbrake and "cut the corner" without
flying it straight down toward the PAPI lights. It's not life
threatening unless the pilot makes it life threatening.
> I don't recall, but I think it would have crashed just before the runway
> overshoots.
This is kinda like saying that there is some primary runway where
there is a tall tower as an approach end obstacle. The pilot lands at
a different site with a low glideslope at a totally clear runway and
then everyone becomes alarmed that had they landed at the runway with
the tower, they would have flown right into it... Um, no. Every
single competent pilot out there would have flown over or around the
tower.
Likewise, every single competent CDR who screwed their HAC turn into a
low energy situation at KSC would have avoided turning their crew into
gatorbait by stretching their shuttle to make the concrete. It is a
totally recoverable mistake. NASA even gave both pilots a chance to
redeem themselves.
One more salient fact that has not been mentioned here is that the
weather patterns at KSC are much different than found at EDW. I'm
sure that DannyDot is well aware of the comparative probabilities that
you'll encounter a scary windshear. For whatever reason, his writeup
has held short of sharing that far-from-trivial tidbit as well.
Ok, I'll throw in one more twist on this. If landing short was really
such a threat, then the easy fix is to target 3000 or 4000 feet down
the runway. No crew has ever been close to running off the departure
end, so I'm sure everyone can agree that there's plenty of margin at
the far end. And even if anyone objected to that, there's always the
barrier to catch a runaway shuttle. And if you were REALLY hard over
about margin at both ends, you'd simply extend your landing strip so
that you had a longer underrun. No one has done it. I haven't even
heard of anyone proposing to do it.
So really now, let's keep all this "they would have died" talk in
perspective.
~ CT
John
CRM training has been improved quite a bit since then, but probably
not
>as a result of STS-37 specifically. I'd give more credit to the STS-87
>SPARTAN deploy incident and an LOC that occurred during an STS-83/94
>landing sim.
Jorge,
While I think I can find information on the Spartan deploy incident, I
have never heard of anything about problems during a STS-83/94 landing
sim. Would you be able to share some details about that sim, or
suggest where I could find more information on it.
Thanks
John
Danny Deger
If you fly Max L/D on final, you will have no airspeed to do a flare and
will crash. I have tried it in the SMS.
Danny Deger
Danny Deger
"Skylon" <sky...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1181426070.4...@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
Nagel was not the problem. He did a good job (except for not following the
needles as close as he should have) The bigger problem was probably more in
the area of flight directing and training.
Danny Deger
Danny Deger
"John" <pel...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:1181315365.9...@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> On Jun 7, 11:35 pm, Borderline <uc78bom...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On Jun 6, 7:17 pm, "Danny Deger" <dannyde...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> Fly a lot do you? . . . Yes he made a mistake, but he had been
> trained NOT to fly the needles.
Exactly. Nagel flew as he was trained to fly. Not following the needles
was NOT his fault.
Danny Deger
snip
Danny Deger
> "Jorge R. Frank" <jrf...@ibm-pc.borg> wrote:
>
>>John wrote:
>>>
>>> What I wonder is did anyone consider improving Cockpit Resource
>>> Management as a result.
>>
>>CRM training has been improved quite a bit since then, but probably not
>>as a result of STS-37 specifically. I'd give more credit to the STS-87
>>SPARTAN deploy incident and an LOC that occurred during an STS-83/94
>>landing sim.
>
> Details?
>
Yes. Please give us some details. Is the landing sim the one that Jim
Halsell flew WAY to low.
Danny Deger
snip
Danny Deger
"Jeff Findley" <jeff.f...@ugs.nojunk.com> wrote in message
news:471ce$466952a2$927a2cda$13...@FUSE.NET...
>
> "Borderline" <uc78b...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1181273776....@p77g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
>> On Jun 6, 7:17 pm, "Danny Deger" <dannyde...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> Here's another section of my autobiography on STS-37 landing short of
>>> the
>>> runway.
>>
>> BTW ...nice writing. Robert
>
> Except some of the facts are wrong. The shuttle would not have been lost
> if this happened at KSC. The KSC runway has an underrun and overrun that
> are each 1,000 foot long. Landing 600 feet short of the threshold would
> mean you landed 400 feet beyond the edge of the underrun. Also, the
> Edwards runway had a paved underrun as well, so the shuttle didn't
> actually land on the dry lakebed, it landed on the paved underrun.
Except the landing was not on the paved runway at Edwards. It was on a
lakebed runway the shuttle normally does not normally land on (e.g. no MLS).
And the landing was 1,600 feet short, not 600 feet
Danny Deger
Jorge R. Frank
The thumbnail description, as I understand it (I was not at the sim):
the CDR's ADI pitch needle froze with a slight pitch-down bias and the
CDR followed it into a low-energy trajectory. Neither PLT nor mission
control spoke up in time to prevent a CFIT. This was not a scripted sim
malfunction; the needle had mechanically frozen.
The technical cause - the stuck needle - was addressed by MEDS, the
orbiter "glass cockpit" upgrade. The human cause - inadequate
communication and cross-checking resulting in low situational awareness
- was addressed by increased emphasis on CRM.
tdadamemd-...@excite.com
> snip
>
> If you fly Max L/D on final, you will have no airspeed to do a flare and
> will crash. I have tried it in the SMS.
I would rather Max L/D to the concrete with a brutal impact on the
struts and scraping the tail off rather than doing a nice controlled
final flare into the mud short of that concrete!
(The first is risking death whereas the second is near certain death.)
~ CT
John
>The thumbnail description, as I understand it (I was not at the sim):
> the CDR's ADI pitch needle froze with a slight pitch-down bias and the
> CDR followed it into a low-energy trajectory. Neither PLT nor mission
> control spoke up in time to prevent a CFIT. This was not a scripted sim
> malfunction; the needle had mechanically frozen.
>
Jorge,
Thank you very much. I remember first reading about this on AvWeb who
posted the following at their website in their safety column on July
21, 1997 :
Memo from NASA MOD (Mission Operations Division)
As most of you have already heard, we failed to make the runway at KSC
[Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida] at the end of our STS-
xx [Space Transportation System...the official name for the shuttle
program] D/O Prep [De-Orbit Preparation: a simulator session that
trains shuttle pilots for re-entry through touchdown] sim earlier this
week. There were several failures throughout the entire sim, including
the glided entry phase. However, by the time we reached the HAC
[Heading Alignment Cone: the big 300-degree turn that the shuttle
makes to do energy management; the crew "plays" the HAC to account for
high or low energy in the phase of the glide just before lining up on
final], we had configured for landing and the systems failures, etc.
were essentially behind us.
We at MCC [Mission Control Center] had basically stopped talking to
the crew, except for the HAC energy calls - things were relatively
quiet the way you like it on the HAC. At some point on the HAC (or,
earlier?) the SMS [Shuttle Mission Simulator] suffered a real hardware
failure of the CDR [Mission Commander's] ADI [Attitude-Direction
Indicator: the "8-ball" instrument installed on both the left and
right sides of the instrument panel, each containing three error
needles that are essentially flight director command bars for pitch,
roll and yaw] pitch error needle - it failed static [the pitch-axis
needle froze with no error flag]. As a result, about 20 seconds after
going CSS [Control Stick Steering: below about Mach 1.3, the mission
commander takes over from the autopilot and flies the vehicle
manually, because the shuttle's autopilot has no real
redundancy...remember it was designed in 1972] the CDR began a
continuous, gradual pitch down. About 20 seconds after that, guidance
commanded a HAC shrink [playing the cone: if you're low on energy, you
fly a smaller cone with a smaller circumference] as a result of the
altitude error low. At some point during this time, the crew called
the MCC and said that they thought they had some kind of guidance or
nav problem.
The MCC confirmed good nav, good guidance, and good sensors. (The MCC
called that the airspeed was much too high and that they should check
the airspeed; the MCC energy call at the 90 was 5 knots low.)
Within 30 seconds from the time that the CDR started the pitch down,
the situation was very serious and essentially out of hand. The MCC
knew that we were getting much too low and that we needed to pull up.
The crew knew that there was a problem but had not identified exactly
what it was, and thus had not started to correct it (still pitching
down). When the CDR realized that his ADI needle must be failed, he
handed over control to the PLT [Pilot: second-in-command to the CDR].
The PLT managed to get theta and EAS [equivalent airspeed] under
control, but the vehicle stalled (Alpha 20 [angle-of-attack, 20
degrees pitch-up], EAS 155) about one mile short of the runway while
the crew was trying to stretch it in.
What happened? We suffered a single, real-world hardware failure, and
we lost the vehicle (and crew?) in this sim. How is this possible,
with all of our tools on the ground and with the many instruments and
built-in crosschecks onboard?
The short answer is not an easy one to come to, but the consensus is
that we essentially had a breakdown in the cockpit - a cockpit
resource management problem. The crew feels like they were able to
determine that there was a problem, but that they did not identify the
problem as quickly as they could have, and thus their response and
corrective action was too little too late. We think also that perhaps
the MCC could have been a bit quicker and more crisp in our
recognition of the problem and in our response. Additionally, we think
that for these kinds of scenarios, the MCC should be emphatic and
forceful with our calls to the crew in order to accurately reflect the
criticality of the situation.
This is a tough case folks, but we need to be able to sustain a single
real-world hardware failure and make it to the runway. Indeed, in such
a case we depend on the crew to be prime for psyching-out instrument
failures onboard. Everyone believes that this crew and any assigned
trained crew can (and will be able to) determine when one of their
primary instruments has failed, and ultimately recover from any
adverse affects. We certainly depend on this for many cases where we
would not be able to react in time from the ground. In a lot of cases,
the crew is on the scene and the actions are super time critical. We
also depend on the MCC to sing out when we see things that we don't
understand or that look bad, whether it's energy or altitude on the
HAC, or some other problem.
I think the message here is for all of us to remember that most likely
in the real world we will not have the second or third IMU [inertial
measurement unit: gives the crew attitude data; there are three on
board] failure, or have to perform a single APU [Auxiliary Power Unit:
the hydrazine-powered turbine that powers the shuttle's hydraulics;
there are three hydraulic systems and three APUs on board] landing, or
suffer two main buss failures. Rather, we will probably see something
like this, something that perhaps we don't understand, or that we
haven't seen before in a sim. When we do, we must be ready to resort
to our discipline and training, and we must separate those things that
we know to be true from those things that we don't understand, and
then communicate that as accurately and as expeditiously as the
situation requires. Be alert, talk to each other, and be aggressive if
it becomes necessary.
Please take time to think about this case, and others like it. I think
we can learn from this, and that we should take some time to think
about other such scenarios that could "look and feel" like this one.
Additionally, we recorded the run on the GPO w/s [Guidance Procedures
Officer's workstation] in the MCC and I would like every GPO and GSO
[Guidance Systems Officer] to see this run at least once or twice on
our GPO displays. For those of you who have not seen it yet, please
make time to do so in the next week. I encourage you to take time to
do this, and to invite other folks to go with you. (End of NASA Memo)
Avweb's comment: (lest some of you harsh on the pilot for not seeing
the malf) A static needle - no shaky when it breaky - without a
warning flag is a serious condition waiting for an accident to happen.
I've seen ILS glideslope needles fail dead-center with no warning
flag, and a failure like that can kill you if it goes undetected. On a
vehicle like the shuttle, the approach sequence is so tightly
controlled (energy-wise) that the needles must almost always be dead-
nuts center. A brief excursion can be deadly. It's a miracle that this
didn't happen on a real mission.
Aviate, Navigate, Communicate...and keep up your scan! -Ed.
Danny Deger
"Jorge R. Frank" <jrf...@ibm-pc.borg> wrote in message
news:7dqdnWoRlJieSPHb...@giganews.com...
This is what happened. I was the Entry Training Flow supervisor at the
time. Needless to say my office got busy afterwards. And you are right, we
jacked up CRM a lot. It is ironic that training had gone from flying this
phase with very little use of the needles (prior to STS-37) to using the
needles extensively. We obviously over shot the mark when a CDR will fly
the needles into an unsurvivable situation. I talked with the CDR and PLT
for some length after this happened, and I don't see how it could have
happened -- but it did.
Danny Deger
tdadamemd-...@excite.com
> "Jorge R. Frank" <jrfr...@ibm-pc.borg> wrote
> > John wrote:
> >> On Jun 9, 3:58 pm, "Jorge R. Frank" <jrfr...@ibm-pc.borg> wrote:
>
> >> CRM training has been improved quite a bit since then, but probably
> >> not
> >>> as a result of STS-37 specifically. I'd give more credit to the STS-87
> >>> SPARTAN deploy incident and an LOC that occurred during an STS-83/94
> >>> landing sim.
> >> While I think I can find information on the Spartan deploy incident, I
> >> have never heard of anything about problems during a STS-83/94 landing
> >> sim. Would you be able to share some details about that sim, or
> >> suggest where I could find more information on it.
>
> > The thumbnail description, as I understand it (I was not at the sim): the
> > CDR's ADI pitch needle froze with a slight pitch-down bias and the CDR
> > followed it into a low-energy trajectory. Neither PLT nor mission control
> > spoke up in time to prevent a CFIT. This was not a scripted sim
> > malfunction; the needle had mechanically frozen.
>
> > The technical cause - the stuck needle - was addressed by MEDS, the
> > orbiter "glass cockpit" upgrade. The human cause - inadequate
> > communication and cross-checking resulting in low situational awareness -
> > was addressed by increased emphasis on CRM.
>
> This is what happened. I was the Entry Training Flow supervisor at the
> time. Needless to say my office got busy afterwards. And you are right, we
> jacked up CRM a lot. It is ironic that training had gone from flying this
> phase with very little use of the needles (prior to STS-37) to using the
> needles extensively. We obviously over shot the mark when a CDR will fly
> the needles into an unsurvivable situation. I talked with the CDR and PLT
> for some length after this happened, and I don't see how it could have
> happened -- but it did.
It required ignoring two good altimeters and one good pitch needle at
the very least. Almost like you had to *try* to kill yourselves. The
most egregious part of this simmed LOCV is that the crew had a
standard critical action right at the point where they were supposed
to initiate the preflare. The standard is for the left seater to talk
to the right seater to Arm the gear and the very next action is for
the CDR to initiate the preflare pullup.
I am astounded that the crew actually got to fly after something like
that. But when it happens so close to flight, I guess it limits your
options. The CDR actually got to fly THREE times after. The PLT
twice. Though I expect this incident had a lot to do with why the PLT
did not upgrade. (As I've mentioned a while ago on this forum.)
~ CT
Danny Deger
<tdadamemd-...@excite.com> wrote in message
news:1181539821.1...@q69g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> >From Danny Deger:
>> snip
>>
>> If you fly Max L/D on final, you will have no airspeed to do a flare and
>> will crash. I have tried it in the SMS.
>
> I would rather Max L/D to the concrete with a brutal impact on the
> struts and scraping the tail off rather than doing a nice controlled
> final flare into the mud short of that concrete!
>
I can't argue with that logic. Fortunately for Nagel he was on a lakebed
runway and didn't have to make this hard choice.
Danny Deger
Derek Lyons
>The thumbnail description, as I understand it (I was not at the sim):
>the CDR's ADI pitch needle froze with a slight pitch-down bias and the
>CDR followed it into a low-energy trajectory. Neither PLT nor mission
>control spoke up in time to prevent a CFIT. This was not a scripted sim
>malfunction; the needle had mechanically frozen.
<nods> Having a real failure during training can be interesting - esp
if the simsups fail to catch that the sim is diverging from the
script. (I know the script is not exact.)