Picture landing a 747 with no jets, just gliding in , chop about half the wings off, and then come in for your one- time shot not on a concrete runway, but on Daytona Beach. Yeah, they're pretty good pilots. Like Mrs. Lovell said, " if they could make a washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could LAND it "
I don't know if you know the work of David Sedaris, but once he did an entire essay where he just read cooking instructions from China. ("When I read the phrase, 'cut the penis into small pieces and arrange attractively,' my first thought was ... HOW?")
If this is the landing I think it is, I sustained an injury because of it. I was working in an oilfield southwest of Bakersfield when the shuttle came over. It created a sonic boom that sounded like a small explosion directly behind my head as I was bending over a valve. Not expecting this, I faceplanted into the valve, cutting my forehead and getting a concussion that led to a lost time injury of 4 days bedrest before the doctor cleared me for work. I don’t know if you have ever been part of an accident investigation, but chance event and accident are terms that are not allowed in the root cause analysis. In addition, the report must contain a method to prevent future accidents. The wording of the final report was so twisted that it was actually funny.
I've read a similarly weird work-related incident report where the injury was due to an AT missile hitting an APC. Questions like "Did the tool causing the injury work as intended? Unfortunately, yes.", "What could have been done to prevent the injury? Build inert missiles." etc.
Where I live, the government's sample form for incident reports includes a space for a picture of how the injury happened. Clearly some desk jockey had visions of photos of an injury re-enactment. The reality is that you get a paper form to fill out, and you try to draw a cartoon of how exactly this all happened. Which is a hilarious result on the form no matter what the accident was.
I don't laugh out loud often, but your comment got me 😂 This is one of my favorite things to do on paperwork when prompts are confusingly non-applicable and I know it won't get me in trouble
I worked the STS-37 landing convoy on TV-2 and I remember the radio chatter when everyone realized how short Atlantis was going to be. Made for an interesting drive to the orbiter.
This video was so good I had to watch some of it twice.. thanks for sharing the comment. As for the "BS" claim: prove it or stfu. Just because you've never gone anywhere or done anything interesting in your life doesn't mean others haven't.
I was an ISS (not Shuttle) flight controller from 1998-2012. I met/worked with Wayne Hale several times. As Scott said...really REALLY knew his stuff. He rivals Gene Kranz (best known for Apollo 13 mission) as a predominant Flight Director (realtime operations) and Program Director (management operations).
To fly into edwards, get your plane into the static display during an airshow. Saw a couple of RV pilots there a little over a year ago and that's what they did. Also, great place for an airshow because it's in a supersonic corridor. Three booms at the show, and the Thunderbirds! Awesome!
Hey Scott, I’d like to offer a tiny bit of trivia. You said this wasn’t the slowest shuttle landing. Well technically it depends on if you are talking about airspeed or groundspeed. STS-37 main gear touchdown was at 168 KEAS (airspeed), but 156 KGS which is the slowest ever groundspeed for a shuttle landing. However, on STS-28, Brewster Shaw touched down at 155 KEAS - the slowest ever airspeed for a shuttle touchdown, but his groundspeed was actually 157 KGS which was 1 knot faster than Steve Nagel’s groundspeed on STS-37.
My husband, Donovan Conrad, worked in building 5 as a tech for years and was able to fly the simulator for years on 3rd shift before the program started scheduling training 24/7. Therefore he was one of the best pilots on the shuttle. He had more flight hours than most of the astronauts. He was consulted on STS 37 and showed them that he could land at 155mph.
Yet they managed it in all previous programs, with the exception presumably of Skylab. Though if that went wrong hardly a show stopper. Some will think it’s a consequence of mixed gender crews, I say in space, no one gives a crap. Patronizing too.
The unisex toilet on the ISS is private to the extent that a screen prevents direct observation. However, it’s neither sound proof nor odor proof. Astronauts have to be grownups about these things.
You being a pilot now made this video a whole lot better! This happens with airliners as well but we have power to compensate for all the computer errors on the descent path all the way down.
@@emmata98 Actual gliders glide pretty efficiently and have a lot of margin for error. Gliders typically have a glide ratio of between 30:1 and 60:1, so for every foot of altitude you lose you can glide 30-60 feet horizontally. The shuttle's glide ratio starts at is 2:1 at supersonic speeds and improves to 4.5:1 during approach and landing, so for every foot of altitude it loses it only gets another 4.5 feet horizontally. So in a glider, every foot of altitude you have gives you about 10 times as much ability to maneuver and reposition as in the shuttle.
@@ellayararwhyaych4711 I thought so aswell, until I went from flying without an autopilot to flying a very modern airliner a few months ago, those things are far from optimised, lagging autothrottle and FMS software performance assumptions being slightly off, unless you egregiously fake your wind forecast to shallow the path out significantly in certain ways the plane will get itself into trouble EVERY time. No doubt soon this won't be an issue anymore with software updates.
5:03 I can certainly help with this. I promise you'll be able to land there. Once. You may never get to do anything else ever again, but you'll get to land there once.
Best friend John here. Yeah. I can get an approach to runway 4 at Edwards. Outside chance you'll die, but should be able to land with just a few decades of prison time. Just wanted to let you know I'm there for you. BFF's forever. ❤ John
There's a joke about a GA pilot who lands at Area 51 or Edwards by mistake. The CIA grill him and swear him to secrecy and send him home. The following day he lands there again with his wife. The CIA are pissed, but he says "I swear I didn't tell a soul, but can you please tell my wife where I was yesterday?"
@@ABrit-bt6ce The Cessna. Always been a perfect fit for the Russian air defence blind spot. Last week, Ukraine sent an autonomous Cessna 1,200kms into Russian territory to take out their largest military drone factory. :)
LOL. Talk about landing short when I was a flight engineer on 130's out of Little Rock when we would land on the assault strip you would always see tire tracks/ruts about 20 feet before the beginning of the strip in the grass. Oppppps.
You’ll love this Scott. Long ago I was supporting test flights out of Edward’s. We had an urgent trip out there from Orlando and flew in one of the corporate jets and landed at Edward’s. There was just me and another guy as passengers and we got a call from the pilots to come up front as we approached. The pilot said “which one should I land on?” Meaning the concrete runway or the shuttle landing strip. Had to be one of the coolest experiences ever.
Amazing story Scott! Roy Bridges is a relative of an exwife. We saw a launch a year or so before it blew up (challenger?). Amazing engineering technology and astronaut skills. Totally amazing. Mr Bridges an extremely humble and polite man. RB
If you listen to the mission audio you can hear Steve Nagel was annoyed but keeping his cool when welcomed back. "Postflight Analysis showed the wind velocity profile outside of the 'Edwards Maximum Design Wind'. Early in the HAC tailwinds were 100 knots. The Final touchdown speed was 167 KEAS with a right crosswind of 10 knots and a sink rate of 2.3 feet per second -- STS-37 Flight Crew Report p. 26 From the recommendations it would seem the crew was given nothing specific about the STA observations.
My uncle worked for NASA during this time period. His job title was Director of Safety. I asked him once is that just for the vehicle assembly building and he said , no, no , no, Im over all of NASA safety. he died about 12 years ago. I've never been able to find any reference to him on the internet. Im still not sure exactly what he did but I remember him talking about having to go out to Edwards every time a shuttle landed out there. He had a background in law enforcement and public safety. He was not an engineer and that caused some problems when he would tell the engineers they couldnt do something for safety reasons. So NASA got a college somewhere to give him an honorary degree so the engineers wouldn't complain so much that a policy wonk was telling them how to be safe.
I think from the amount of effort needed to attain an engineering degree, anecdotally around double the amount of lecture content from other degrees, most engineers would have contempt for honourary degrees.
One of the big ironies about this that you didn't mention is that Kennedy wound up improving in time and would've been just fine for a landing that day. Surprised Wayne didn't mention that, but in all the space news articles of the time, especially AvWeek, it was a huge deal.
"I'm in the Air Force." "Oh, that's cool! What do you do?" -"I measure the dryness of dry lake beds."- "I play a key role in decision making. I decide whether or not it is safe for the Shuttle to land."
oh hell yeah. HELL yeah. i forgot about this one! i always think the white sands landing is super interesting too - would love a video about alternate landing sites if you ever have enough to say about them!
And still nothing can bring back a sattelite back to earth for repairs and relaunching. Also performing an EVA on a sattelite. It was not the expected succes, but a different kind of it. Politics were the issue we had no replacement launcher foe humans in the US for decades.
@@emmata98 yes, it was the politics of the country that hindered it. Even today we wouldn't have the ability to do what we did in the past, like repairing the mirror in the Hubble telescope.
Space Shuttles killed more people than the Manson Family or the Son of Sam. If I were to pick a single success criteria for a space vehicle, it would be zero fatalities.
@@LasRozasDeMadrid I love the Space Shuttle but it was a political monster, and whenever politics is involved you have absolute greed, selfishness and stupidity.
Love these recent videos about unusual shuttle landings! Would you consider making a video about the single shuttle landing at White Sands Space Harbor?
I loved Wayne's post about this and was glad to see you cover it. That said, I'm really upset that you didn't break out your E6-B whiz wheel to explain crosswind components! 😉
The shuttle pilots were amazing. Once committed to landing they had no go around option which is kind of nuts in a vehicle of that size. But they pinned every one. Massive respect to all the shuttle pilots.
Your posts are always such a treat! I learn so much from them. Thank you Scott! I was a USUA BFI (United States Ultralight Association, Basic Flight Instructor) at the time. I taught in a top mount Quicksilver Sprint II. I flew within a mile of the 747 piggybacking STS-37 back (I was 250’AGL or so). What a sight! I was lucky enough to fly from Edwards because one of my students was a member and he took me up in a T-34. I think he was an F-16 driver ...but he sure loved flying that Quicksilver! What a great memory! My business was called Magnificent Flying Machines and we flew from a small field called Brian Ranch out near Crystalaire airport. I still fly a Sprint II but don’t teach anymore. Antelope Valley is a truly inspiring place to fly. ☺
Thank you for the great information. Learned alot about the landing fields. and never knew about the short landing. The pilots for the shuttles are amazing.
I got to watch STS-40 land at Edwards summer '91. My dad's cousin was on the mission. Two things still stick in my mind from watching: that steep glide (drop!) slope coming in was downright scary to see, and the double sonic boom.
I love these stories. Normally, I would not even think about this type of thing. Or, if I read about this, would think nothing of it and miss out on such a fantastic story.
I was stationed at Edwards AFB (South Base B2 OTE project) was there watching it & with our flight line truck we had ability to be close vs everyone else. Night Landing was better, I sat in drivers seat of our maintenance van with high beams shining onto runway. Wind rushing was something to hear couldn't sew much till touch down about 200 yards directly in front of me. 😊😊😊
Very interesting story about the STS-37 landing. The Edwards Dry Lake is an incredibly forgiving surface for landing. Some emergency backup landing sites are also dry lake beds.
I’ve spent a lot of time landing on those lakebed runways over the last decade. There are dangers associated with not landing on the marked areas, as there can be large fishers that the USAF fills in on the lakebed runways.
I think there should be a video about some of the alternate shuttle landing sites around the country. For example, I believe there were two airports in Maine on the alternate list that were deemed long enough.
I'm pretty sure this is one of the landings my dad took me to. We used to make the 15-minute drive from Boron whenever the shuttle would land at Edwards.
A fascinating tale. What serious Space Shuttle aficionado doesn't know the name Wayne Hale? A true legend from the glory days. Scott, you refer to the HAC as "heading alignment cone", but the documentation I have refers to it as _heading alignment cylinder._ That is from a text file titled *Space Transportation System Technical Reference Manual* that I downloaded from a BBS in the '90s. Unfortunately I have never been able to find it on the internet. Fly safe.
I got to see this missions return trip to the cape. The shuttle and carrier landed in Oklahoma to refuel. It was majestic seeing the combination trundle down the runway and then taking off. Aerospace nut since birth, this is one of my core memories with my mom and dad making sure I got to see it.
Wow this was a really cool story. So much goes into these little jaunts into space, makes you really think what will go into future space flights that are to other planets and beyond.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver You heard the sonic booms. It's how you knew the shuttle was close. Edwards has a sitting area for people to watch anything going on. As for hearing the sound going by the shuttle as it lands. We were not on top of the shuttle.
Amusing you should talk about _Atlantis_ and mention the toilet being a mission critical part... On the final shuttle mission, as if sensing it was no longer needed, there was a mention of the toilet door slamming open and become partly detached when it landing at KSC
I remember being in an aircraft that used that overshoot once, rotated just about the end of it. Hot, altitude and a full load of fuel on board. Flew in ground effect for a while as well, till those 4 jet engines had burned off enough fuel, and gotten up the speed, so we could climb. Trees were companions for a few minutes, as well as the town we went over at a little above treetop and rooftop height.
@@MattH-wg7ou Probably not calculated correctly, or they figured they could get away with it. Helped by a 6km long runway, not by it being 41C that afternoon, and bright and sunny. We did land mostly empty, part of the fuel load was transferred en route as practice for the other planes.
@FreigeistaufReisen No. There were no propellants (hydrogen and oxygen) for the three main engines after jettisoning the big orange tank during the launch. I don’t know precisely why the Shuttle couldn’t have extra propellant on board, but I assume it either wasn’t safe or it wasn’t possible to have liquid hydrogen on board for the entire mission. Or maybe it wasn’t even possible to restart the engines in flight. The Shuttle also had two Orbital Maneuvering System engines, but those only worked in a vacuum.
There are so many stories like this that will never see the light of day, but at least folks like Scott can highlight a few of them. I guess you could also jump down the Wikipedia rabbit hole but then you don’t have the Scottish accent so not really worth it then.
Black rock desert! Glad the shuttle never had to bring her on the playa. Having flown around burning man, I'm just happy I never had to deal with hypergolic fuels. Scotty thanks for the footage I've never seen before and your analysis of what in the Navy when I would drop Nukes as ephemeris data. High wind speeds in the upper atmosphere would cause havoc on a free falling cylinder of mass distruction. Just saying. Also Naked Records are my favorite house to spin. You get it
It's so cool that there are SO many moving parts and decisions to be made for a successful space mission. The sheer number of little details guarantees that we get handfuls of these murphy's law stories where ofc the one runway they didn't train on is the only one they can land on
These videos on the space shuttle are brilliant, I’m a massive Apollo and STS fan, even despite the new technology provided by Space X, can’t beat the old NASA machines :)
@@flynnjspain Not semantics and nothing new. NASA developed and used that technology 50 years ago for manned lunar landings and planetary probes. In the 1990s, NASA was testing the terrestrial retrofire method SpaceX uses today. Shuttle SRBs were also recovered and refurbished as were the Shuttle main engines. SpaceX simply modified longtime technology--and not by much.
Reminds me of the tried and true KSP career mode strategy. Launch from the lvl 1 runway, but taxi to the grass adjacent and take off from there. In a very funny oversight it was more smooth than the gravel runway you started with.
I never realized that. I'm pretty sure that's the one I went to see while stationed at VAFB. It seemed further away than I expected, but I'd never seen a landing there so I had no reference.
Hey @Scott Manley , can you make a video on the latest SpaceX presentation? I'm especially interested in propellant transfer and how the numbers work out, how Raptor 3 improvements like higher thrust ultimately lead to higher mass to moon/mars, I'd love to see back-of-the-napkin math.
I admit I had trouble seeing the risk of a short landing, given the point Scott made about the runway being an arbitrary point in the lakebed. That photo of the layout is just featureless nothing aside from the landing markers, so as long as you're lined up straight it's just a slightly different patch of dirt than intended. Not like that other runway, where the same approach might involve bumping across a meadow and a road in the space shuttle before getting to pavement.
Scott, can you do a video on the gamut of g-forces experienced by all types of astronauts? I want to know the forces they undertake during launch, orbital manoeuvres, and descent. I also want to know the duration of those forces, perhaps a graph showing values over time. I also want to know these values for each type of rocket since manned space flight began, for all countries with manned space flight programs. In addition, maybe you could include the g-forces undertaken by dogs and chimps that also went to space. And perhaps you could tell us about the g-forces used for cargo-only flights - are they any different? And maybe on another subject, do cargo flights have breathable air on board, CO2 scrubbers, or even an oxygen supply?
after seeing footage of inside a shuttle moments before it breaks up on reentry, seeing any footage inside a shuttle gives me the heeby jeebies. I can't imagine stressing about landing problems while ignoring the fact that you could just explode at any second just getting there
The instrument was simply called GRO at Ball, while I was there at KSFC supporting another program CRRES I ran into another Ball worker bee who had been there a long time maybe a year supporting GRO? Not certain the exact timeframe. The Spacecraft also had a Ground emergency when they pulled the Battery connection while in the PHSF (Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility) I think that was during a fueling operation, the Battery power wires were dangling when somehow the inner connector insulator insert came out, wasn't good, the battery was rather large. Ball furnished the Star Trackers for the STS (On Orbit Navigation) Fun memory thanks!
ISTR many modern missions using clones of the Ørsted star tracker design from DMI or DTU . Ørsted was a smallsat mapping the Earth magnetic field as an update to a 1960s NASA program .
Scott, were there ever any procedures for doing something like ditching the shuttle? Lets say there was a flight control issue and they couldn’t make the final 270 degree turn or the rolls to reduce altitude. Was there ever a contingency to ditch in the Atlantic? Or what if there was a computer failure and their guidance was wrong and they didn’t reach the runway. What would happen if they landed somewhere in say, texas. Were either of these ever considered as a possibility?
Yes, certain abort scenarios would result in a ditching. The problem is, the shuttle cannot survive a water landing. This was mostly ignored until the Columbia disaster. After that, a ditching procedure was put in place where the shuttle would be put into autopilot, the side door would be blown off, a telescoping pole would extend out the door, and the astronauts would slide down the pole with parachutes hopefully far enough to avoid impact with the shuttle's wing.
Scott, I have an interesting subject for you: we are getting dependent on falcon 9 big time, Delta 4 heavy and atlas V are gone soon. What if F9 has an accident and is grounded for months. Has happened before with spaceshuttle… Isn’t that a huge vulnerability? Maybe a good topic, appreciate your videos! 😊👍
"Make sure the lake was suffiently dry that it could handle a space vehicle" is a magnificent phrase.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who felt that way! 😂
That’s happened before. We are not alone.
Good thing there was a warehouse full of shamwow's nearby
Picture landing a 747 with no jets, just gliding in , chop about half the wings off, and then come in for your one- time shot not on a concrete runway, but on Daytona Beach.
Yeah, they're pretty good pilots.
Like Mrs. Lovell said, " if they could make a washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could LAND it "
I don't know if you know the work of David Sedaris, but once he did an entire essay where he just read cooking instructions from China. ("When I read the phrase, 'cut the penis into small pieces and arrange attractively,' my first thought was ... HOW?")
If this is the landing I think it is, I sustained an injury because of it. I was working in an oilfield southwest of Bakersfield when the shuttle came over. It created a sonic boom that sounded like a small explosion directly behind my head as I was bending over a valve. Not expecting this, I faceplanted into the valve, cutting my forehead and getting a concussion that led to a lost time injury of 4 days bedrest before the doctor cleared me for work. I don’t know if you have ever been part of an accident investigation, but chance event and accident are terms that are not allowed in the root cause analysis. In addition, the report must contain a method to prevent future accidents. The wording of the final report was so twisted that it was actually funny.
I've read a similarly weird work-related incident report where the injury was due to an AT missile hitting an APC. Questions like "Did the tool causing the injury work as intended? Unfortunately, yes.", "What could have been done to prevent the injury? Build inert missiles." etc.
@@CBDuRietz 😂
Where I live, the government's sample form for incident reports includes a space for a picture of how the injury happened. Clearly some desk jockey had visions of photos of an injury re-enactment. The reality is that you get a paper form to fill out, and you try to draw a cartoon of how exactly this all happened. Which is a hilarious result on the form no matter what the accident was.
I don't laugh out loud often, but your comment got me 😂 This is one of my favorite things to do on paperwork when prompts are confusingly non-applicable and I know it won't get me in trouble
Sorry to hear it resulted in an injury though!
I worked the STS-37 landing convoy on TV-2 and I remember the radio chatter when everyone realized how short Atlantis was going to be. Made for an interesting drive to the orbiter.
BS
@@junejabarbidubi3173retard
This video was so good I had to watch some of it twice.. thanks for sharing the comment.
As for the "BS" claim: prove it or stfu.
Just because you've never gone anywhere or done anything interesting in your life doesn't mean others haven't.
@@junejabarbidubi3173 flerf detected
Did anyone complain that the Shuttle crew was trying to make them drive further?
Just another plug for Wayne Hale’s blog. A treasure trove written by a relentlessly decent and thoughtful guy.
Wayne is the man!
I was an ISS (not Shuttle) flight controller from 1998-2012. I met/worked with Wayne Hale several times. As Scott said...really REALLY knew his stuff. He rivals Gene Kranz (best known for Apollo 13 mission) as a predominant Flight Director (realtime operations) and Program Director (management operations).
To fly into edwards, get your plane into the static display during an airshow. Saw a couple of RV pilots there a little over a year ago and that's what they did. Also, great place for an airshow because it's in a supersonic corridor. Three booms at the show, and the Thunderbirds! Awesome!
There's an airshow happening in October 2025!
@scottmanley See you there in Oct 2025!!
Love it! My mom actually designed the STS-37 patch! The video was super interesting!
Hey Scott, I’d like to offer a tiny bit of trivia.
You said this wasn’t the slowest shuttle landing. Well technically it depends on if you are talking about airspeed or groundspeed. STS-37 main gear touchdown was at 168 KEAS (airspeed), but 156 KGS which is the slowest ever groundspeed for a shuttle landing. However, on STS-28, Brewster Shaw touched down at 155 KEAS - the slowest ever airspeed for a shuttle touchdown, but his groundspeed was actually 157 KGS which was 1 knot faster than Steve Nagel’s groundspeed on STS-37.
mmK
And *that*, kids, is why we read the comments on UA-cam videos.
How is the air speed and ground speed so different when you're basically touching the ground.
@@Ilove3SGTE wind
@@Ilove3SGTE
Because of differences in surface winds at touchdown. STS-37 in this case had a higher headwind than STS-28.
My husband, Donovan Conrad, worked in building 5 as a tech for years and was able to fly the simulator for years on 3rd shift before the program started scheduling training 24/7. Therefore he was one of the best pilots on the shuttle. He had more flight hours than most of the astronauts. He was consulted on STS 37 and showed them that he could land at 155mph.
Was he 155 years old? Sure?
Asking astronauts to risk their lives to deliver cargo is one thing, but having them poop into bags is just a bridge too far
Poop in a bag in zero G. Talk about un-fun activities, especially for the females.
Yet they managed it in all previous programs, with the exception presumably of Skylab. Though if that went wrong hardly a show stopper.
Some will think it’s a consequence of mixed gender crews, I say in space, no one gives a crap. Patronizing too.
It is as it is ....
I have to wonder if the pilot needed that poop bag following touchdown. I kinda expected those pressure suits to be soiled.
The unisex toilet on the ISS is private to the extent that a screen prevents direct observation. However, it’s neither sound proof nor odor proof. Astronauts have to be grownups about these things.
You being a pilot now made this video a whole lot better! This happens with airliners as well but we have power to compensate for all the computer errors on the descent path all the way down.
Except if you are in an unpowered glider
@@emmata98 Actual gliders glide pretty efficiently and have a lot of margin for error. Gliders typically have a glide ratio of between 30:1 and 60:1, so for every foot of altitude you lose you can glide 30-60 feet horizontally. The shuttle's glide ratio starts at is 2:1 at supersonic speeds and improves to 4.5:1 during approach and landing, so for every foot of altitude it loses it only gets another 4.5 feet horizontally. So in a glider, every foot of altitude you have gives you about 10 times as much ability to maneuver and reposition as in the shuttle.
I think you really meant to write "...all the HUMAN errors on the descent path.."
Yeah, "computer errors" because the humans didn't enter the data correctly.
@@ellayararwhyaych4711 I thought so aswell, until I went from flying without an autopilot to flying a very modern airliner a few months ago, those things are far from optimised, lagging autothrottle and FMS software performance assumptions being slightly off, unless you egregiously fake your wind forecast to shallow the path out significantly in certain ways the plane will get itself into trouble EVERY time. No doubt soon this won't be an issue anymore with software updates.
I didn't even know that happened. Thanks!
Hearing that the toilet was a critical piece of equipment, it begs the question about toilet redundancy. 🤔
Guess where I'm just reading....
Plastic bags and zip ties.
@@jimmywrangles but thats not redundancy, that is a contingency plan.
@@Ganiscol It was all the redundancy you were going to get.
@@andreasu.3546 bad planning, NASA!
5:03 I can certainly help with this. I promise you'll be able to land there. Once. You may never get to do anything else ever again, but you'll get to land there once.
I'm a simple man. I see Scott uploads a video about the shuttles, I watch it :)
I'm a simpler man, l see Scott uploads a video, I watch it :)
@@NoName-zg2te Absolutely valid
I'm a simple man
@@dermotgannon4895 Im a simp man
I see Scott uploading *anything* I watch it... :-)
Best friend John here. Yeah. I can get an approach to runway 4 at Edwards. Outside chance you'll die, but should be able to land with just a few decades of prison time.
Just wanted to let you know I'm there for you.
BFF's forever. ❤ John
They said a Cessna into Red Square would be bad idea, but someone had to try it.
Hi John🙋🏻♂️
There's a joke about a GA pilot who lands at Area 51 or Edwards by mistake. The CIA grill him and swear him to secrecy and send him home. The following day he lands there again with his wife. The CIA are pissed, but he says "I swear I didn't tell a soul, but can you please tell my wife where I was yesterday?"
@@ABrit-bt6ce The Cessna. Always been a perfect fit for the Russian air defence blind spot. Last week, Ukraine sent an autonomous Cessna 1,200kms into Russian territory to take out their largest military drone factory. :)
@@TheRealDuckofDeath I've seen the RC Cessna but didn't understand the context. Thanks.
Any landing where you can walk away is a success.
On two or four legs?
😊
It's a _good_ landing if you can use the aircraft again!
Naw, that would mean that I had a "successful" landing that costs $25K. Still have bent airplane parts in my music room to remind me.
@@UncleKennysPlace You're still with us, I'd argue that's at least some level of success :)
@@jantjarks7946
Three in this case.
LOL. Talk about landing short when I was a flight engineer on 130's out of Little Rock when we would land on the assault strip you would always see tire tracks/ruts about 20 feet before the beginning of the strip in the grass. Oppppps.
15year Ac-130 mechanic here.
Hercs don't need no runway anyhow!
Thanks!
You’ll love this Scott. Long ago I was supporting test flights out of Edward’s. We had an urgent trip out there from Orlando and flew in one of the corporate jets and landed at Edward’s. There was just me and another guy as passengers and we got a call from the pilots to come up front as we approached. The pilot said “which one should I land on?” Meaning the concrete runway or the shuttle landing strip. Had to be one of the coolest experiences ever.
But which one did you land on?
Weellllllll......we are waiting....
@@kiereluurs1243 The regular concrete one. I’m assuming that was the only real choice.
My mind is blown ones again! Thank you for telling us about this, i had no idea this happened!
Amazing story Scott! Roy Bridges is a relative of an exwife. We saw a launch a year or so before it blew up (challenger?). Amazing engineering technology and astronaut skills. Totally amazing. Mr Bridges an extremely humble and polite man. RB
Hi Scott,
GREAT job on this video!
Very good, and thank you for the link to Hale’s blog.
If you listen to the mission audio you can hear Steve Nagel was annoyed but keeping his cool when welcomed back. "Postflight Analysis showed the wind velocity profile outside of the 'Edwards Maximum Design Wind'. Early in the HAC tailwinds were 100 knots. The Final touchdown speed was 167 KEAS with a right crosswind of 10 knots and a sink rate of 2.3 feet per second -- STS-37 Flight Crew Report p. 26 From the recommendations it would seem the crew was given nothing specific about the STA observations.
I think these are my favourite Scott Manley videos. "Here's a cool space story that I'm going to take 10 minutes to tell you about."
My uncle worked for NASA during this time period. His job title was Director of Safety. I asked him once is that just for the vehicle assembly building and he said , no, no , no, Im over all of NASA safety. he died about 12 years ago.
I've never been able to find any reference to him on the internet. Im still not sure exactly what he did but I remember him talking about having to go out to Edwards every time a shuttle landed out there.
He had a background in law enforcement and public safety. He was not an engineer and that caused some problems when he would tell the engineers they couldnt do something for safety reasons. So NASA got a college somewhere to give him an honorary degree so the engineers wouldn't complain so much that a policy wonk was telling them how to be safe.
I think from the amount of effort needed to attain an engineering degree, anecdotally around double the amount of lecture content from other degrees, most engineers would have contempt for honourary degrees.
One of the big ironies about this that you didn't mention is that Kennedy wound up improving in time and would've been just fine for a landing that day. Surprised Wayne didn't mention that, but in all the space news articles of the time, especially AvWeek, it was a huge deal.
"I'm in the Air Force."
"Oh, that's cool! What do you do?"
"I measure the dryness of dry lake beds."
The people who do it manege the whole airfield. Pretty good people
"I'm in the Air Force."
"Oh, that's cool! What do you do?"
-"I measure the dryness of dry lake beds."-
"I play a key role in decision making. I decide whether or not it is safe for the Shuttle to land."
oh hell yeah. HELL yeah. i forgot about this one! i always think the white sands landing is super interesting too - would love a video about alternate landing sites if you ever have enough to say about them!
WOW! What an adventure in flight! Thank you for bringing us this story and the archival recordings to picture it with!
love the shuttle vids scott, keep it up!
Great job Scott, very interesting history of the Shuttle. What a great way to fly, lol
Love these kinds of historical stories, Scott!
I miss the shuttle, it was so cool.
Shuttle was a fail, America couldn't launch astronauts for a lot of years until a South African came to the rescue.
And still nothing can bring back a sattelite back to earth for repairs and relaunching.
Also performing an EVA on a sattelite.
It was not the expected succes, but a different kind of it.
Politics were the issue we had no replacement launcher foe humans in the US for decades.
@@emmata98 yes, it was the politics of the country that hindered it. Even today we wouldn't have the ability to do what we did in the past, like repairing the mirror in the Hubble telescope.
Space Shuttles killed more people than the Manson Family or the Son of Sam.
If I were to pick a single success criteria for a space vehicle, it would be zero fatalities.
@@LasRozasDeMadrid I love the Space Shuttle but it was a political monster, and whenever politics is involved you have absolute greed, selfishness and stupidity.
Love these recent videos about unusual shuttle landings! Would you consider making a video about the single shuttle landing at White Sands Space Harbor?
Would love more of these!
Thank you Scott!
I loved Wayne's post about this and was glad to see you cover it. That said, I'm really upset that you didn't break out your E6-B whiz wheel to explain crosswind components! 😉
Very nicely done! i'll stay tuned. thanks
The shuttle pilots were amazing. Once committed to landing they had no go around option which is kind of nuts in a vehicle of that size. But they pinned every one. Massive respect to all the shuttle pilots.
Your posts are always such a treat! I learn so much from them. Thank you Scott! I was a USUA BFI (United States Ultralight Association, Basic Flight Instructor) at the time. I taught in a top mount Quicksilver Sprint II.
I flew within a mile of the 747 piggybacking STS-37 back (I was 250’AGL or so). What a sight!
I was lucky enough to fly from Edwards because one of my students was a member and he took me up in a T-34. I think he was an F-16 driver ...but he sure loved flying that Quicksilver! What a great memory! My business was called Magnificent Flying Machines and we flew from a small field called Brian Ranch out near Crystalaire airport. I still fly a Sprint II but don’t teach anymore. Antelope Valley is a truly inspiring place to fly.
☺
Thank you for the great information. Learned alot about the landing fields. and never knew about the short landing.
The pilots for the shuttles are amazing.
The space shuttle was insane in retrospect. Yeah we have Dream Chaser and X 37B but it was the size of a Starship landing like an airplane
I got to watch STS-40 land at Edwards summer '91. My dad's cousin was on the mission. Two things still stick in my mind from watching: that steep glide (drop!) slope coming in was downright scary to see, and the double sonic boom.
I love these stories. Normally, I would not even think about this type of thing. Or, if I read about this, would think nothing of it and miss out on such a fantastic story.
CGP Grey likes the little gem about the runway names.
Fascinating episode here Scott.
Thanks
I like how after the one time they landed at White Sands, _Columbia_ puffed gypsum dust into orbit the rest of her career. RIP crew of STS-107.
The first several landings were done on lake beds and not paved surfaces. I just found that out a couple months ago. I didn’t remember that as a kid.
_Enterprise,_ 1977.
I was stationed at Edwards AFB (South Base B2 OTE project) was there watching it & with our flight line truck we had ability to be close vs everyone else.
Night Landing was better, I sat in drivers seat of our maintenance van with high beams shining onto runway. Wind rushing was something to hear couldn't sew much till touch down about 200 yards directly in front of me. 😊😊😊
Very interesting story about the STS-37 landing. The Edwards Dry Lake is an incredibly forgiving surface for landing. Some emergency backup landing sites are also dry lake beds.
I know it makes no sense to have a favorite orbiter.. but Atlantis is mine. Saw Discovery a number of years ago, so awesome to see in person
Fantastic vid, thanks Scott!👍🏻
wow - holding a brick off the ground at 157 kts, "come on bessy, just a little bit more...." - thanks for the vid sir
I’ve spent a lot of time landing on those lakebed runways over the last decade. There are dangers associated with not landing on the marked areas, as there can be large fishers that the USAF fills in on the lakebed runways.
They fill in large fishers? What kind of information does one give to a member of the weasel family?
Hi Scott
Thanks for telling this amazing story ❤
I think there should be a video about some of the alternate shuttle landing sites around the country. For example, I believe there were two airports in Maine on the alternate list that were deemed long enough.
The space shuttle..... What an amazing machine.
I'm pretty sure this is one of the landings my dad took me to. We used to make the 15-minute drive from Boron whenever the shuttle would land at Edwards.
I knew as soon as i saw the title, Wayne Hale''s blog post was the inspiration😄
A fascinating tale. What serious Space Shuttle aficionado doesn't know the name Wayne Hale? A true legend from the glory days.
Scott, you refer to the HAC as "heading alignment cone", but the documentation I have refers to it as _heading alignment cylinder._ That is from a text file titled *Space Transportation System Technical Reference Manual* that I downloaded from a BBS in the '90s. Unfortunately I have never been able to find it on the internet. Fly safe.
I've also heard it called Heading Alignment Circle, perhaps in a nod to any Flat Earthers out there. ; )
I got to see this missions return trip to the cape. The shuttle and carrier landed in Oklahoma to refuel. It was majestic seeing the combination trundle down the runway and then taking off. Aerospace nut since birth, this is one of my core memories with my mom and dad making sure I got to see it.
Wow this was a really cool story. So much goes into these little jaunts into space, makes you really think what will go into future space flights that are to other planets and beyond.
I watched most of these shuttle landings. It was a great time to be around Edwards Air Force Base.
What did the Orbiter sound like on glide to landing?
@@RideAcrossTheRiver
You heard the sonic booms. It's how you knew the shuttle was close.
Edwards has a sitting area for people to watch anything going on.
As for hearing the sound going by the shuttle as it lands. We were not on top of the shuttle.
Amusing you should talk about _Atlantis_ and mention the toilet being a mission critical part...
On the final shuttle mission, as if sensing it was no longer needed, there was a mention of the toilet door slamming open and become partly detached when it landing at KSC
Maybe the refurbishment team knew when readying it before launch. Such knowledge can affect work quality whenever humans are involved .
Rally great story! Thanks for posting.
I was lucky enough to see the shuttle land at Edward's in the early 80s. 😊
"STS-37...Edwards Tower...stand-by, I have a number for you to copy..."
Love these nuggets of history!
Watched this Landing live in my office. Had the only TV on my floor in Houston. It was packed.....
I remember being in an aircraft that used that overshoot once, rotated just about the end of it. Hot, altitude and a full load of fuel on board. Flew in ground effect for a while as well, till those 4 jet engines had burned off enough fuel, and gotten up the speed, so we could climb. Trees were companions for a few minutes, as well as the town we went over at a little above treetop and rooftop height.
Yea did someone not calculate TOLD correctly or what? Thats scary as hell, being stuck in ground effect.
@@MattH-wg7ou Probably not calculated correctly, or they figured they could get away with it. Helped by a 6km long runway, not by it being 41C that afternoon, and bright and sunny. We did land mostly empty, part of the fuel load was transferred en route as practice for the other planes.
How much fuel does one "burn off" down the length of the runway?
3:12 Anyone know what the debris flying down and up at the release is?
"Hello this is Scott Manley" should be a ringtone. Best voice on the youtube.
Was it possible to use the shuttles thrusters/ rocket engines to give it a small boost during the glide phase?
no
@FreigeistaufReisen
No. There were no propellants (hydrogen and oxygen) for the three main engines after jettisoning the big orange tank during the launch. I don’t know precisely why the Shuttle couldn’t have extra propellant on board, but I assume it either wasn’t safe or it wasn’t possible to have liquid hydrogen on board for the entire mission. Or maybe it wasn’t even possible to restart the engines in flight.
The Shuttle also had two Orbital Maneuvering System engines, but those only worked in a vacuum.
Thank you Scott Manley
There are so many stories like this that will never see the light of day, but at least folks like Scott can highlight a few of them. I guess you could also jump down the Wikipedia rabbit hole but then you don’t have the Scottish accent so not really worth it then.
I mean... _Surely_ there's a TTS engine with a Scottish profile for you to download and have it read whatever you've got on screen! 😁
@@DUKE_of_RAMBLEbut none of them are *Manley* enough
@@Barty.Crowell _Ha!_ 😋
Although, there's certainly enough content to train a voice synthesizer on... 🤔
Like the shuttle mission that almost burned up but was saved by a steel door rather than the aluminum frame after a tile was lost.
Fantastic. I always learn something new from you.
Black rock desert! Glad the shuttle never had to bring her on the playa. Having flown around burning man, I'm just happy I never had to deal with hypergolic fuels.
Scotty thanks for the footage I've never seen before and your analysis of what in the Navy when I would drop Nukes as ephemeris data. High wind speeds in the upper atmosphere would cause havoc on a free falling cylinder of mass distruction. Just saying.
Also Naked Records are my favorite house to spin. You get it
This was a great story. I love Concord and eclipses so what a great combo
Apollo to the moon and back - don’t tell them about the inconvenience of pooping in a bag for 2 weeks.
Knead germicide capsule into bag contents.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Just what I "knead" on my trip to the moon.
It's so cool that there are SO many moving parts and decisions to be made for a successful space mission. The sheer number of little details guarantees that we get handfuls of these murphy's law stories where ofc the one runway they didn't train on is the only one they can land on
These videos on the space shuttle are brilliant, I’m a massive Apollo and STS fan, even despite the new technology provided by Space X, can’t beat the old NASA machines :)
What new technology from SpaceX?
@@RideAcrossTheRiver their new rockets
@@flynnjspain That's not new technology.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver compared to 1970s it is, semantics aside you know what I mean 😂
@@flynnjspain Not semantics and nothing new. NASA developed and used that technology 50 years ago for manned lunar landings and planetary probes. In the 1990s, NASA was testing the terrestrial retrofire method SpaceX uses today. Shuttle SRBs were also recovered and refurbished as were the Shuttle main engines. SpaceX simply modified longtime technology--and not by much.
Valeu!
Reminds me of the tried and true KSP career mode strategy. Launch from the lvl 1 runway, but taxi to the grass adjacent and take off from there. In a very funny oversight it was more smooth than the gravel runway you started with.
I never realized that. I'm pretty sure that's the one I went to see while stationed at VAFB. It seemed further away than I expected, but I'd never seen a landing there so I had no reference.
5:10 great bunny trail tossed it. That’s a nugget of gold.
Hey @Scott Manley , can you make a video on the latest SpaceX presentation? I'm especially interested in propellant transfer and how the numbers work out, how Raptor 3 improvements like higher thrust ultimately lead to higher mass to moon/mars, I'd love to see back-of-the-napkin math.
Fascinating story, thank you!
the space shuttle era was so wild. Compared to F9, where every flight just seems like routine
For excitement, watch the ITS test flights (Starship/BFR) .
The shuttle flights were the same way after the first few. When Challenger exploded no tv network was even carrying the launch that day.
Very interesting video, as always. Wheren't any of the Transoceanic Abort Landing sites in Spain, Portugal and France even considered?
I admit I had trouble seeing the risk of a short landing, given the point Scott made about the runway being an arbitrary point in the lakebed. That photo of the layout is just featureless nothing aside from the landing markers, so as long as you're lined up straight it's just a slightly different patch of dirt than intended. Not like that other runway, where the same approach might involve bumping across a meadow and a road in the space shuttle before getting to pavement.
Scott, can you do a video on the gamut of g-forces experienced by all types of astronauts? I want to know the forces they undertake during launch, orbital manoeuvres, and descent. I also want to know the duration of those forces, perhaps a graph showing values over time. I also want to know these values for each type of rocket since manned space flight began, for all countries with manned space flight programs. In addition, maybe you could include the g-forces undertaken by dogs and chimps that also went to space. And perhaps you could tell us about the g-forces used for cargo-only flights - are they any different? And maybe on another subject, do cargo flights have breathable air on board, CO2 scrubbers, or even an oxygen supply?
Go for... "Launch the Compton Gama ray observatory", how cool is that?!
Never heard about this incident! Every landing that I watched coverage of, touchdown was at the exact spot that CapCom announced just after reentry.
Another memory I ran into the Hamilton Standard guys who built the Space Toilets, they called the solid waste products 1/4 Pounders 😆
after seeing footage of inside a shuttle moments before it breaks up on reentry, seeing any footage inside a shuttle gives me the heeby jeebies. I can't imagine stressing about landing problems while ignoring the fact that you could just explode at any second just getting there
The instrument was simply called GRO at Ball, while I was there at KSFC supporting another program CRRES I ran into another Ball worker bee who had been there a long time maybe a year supporting GRO? Not certain the exact timeframe. The Spacecraft also had a Ground emergency when they pulled the Battery connection while in the PHSF (Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility) I think that was during a fueling operation, the Battery power wires were dangling when somehow the inner connector insulator insert came out, wasn't good, the battery was rather large. Ball furnished the Star Trackers for the STS (On Orbit Navigation) Fun memory thanks!
ISTR many modern missions using clones of the Ørsted star tracker design from DMI or DTU . Ørsted was a smallsat mapping the Earth magnetic field as an update to a 1960s NASA program .
7:02 Ron Weasley's Dad must be proud to be able to play around with such advanced muggle technology
Scott, were there ever any procedures for doing something like ditching the shuttle? Lets say there was a flight control issue and they couldn’t make the final 270 degree turn or the rolls to reduce altitude. Was there ever a contingency to ditch in the Atlantic? Or what if there was a computer failure and their guidance was wrong and they didn’t reach the runway. What would happen if they landed somewhere in say, texas.
Were either of these ever considered as a possibility?
Yes, certain abort scenarios would result in a ditching. The problem is, the shuttle cannot survive a water landing. This was mostly ignored until the Columbia disaster. After that, a ditching procedure was put in place where the shuttle would be put into autopilot, the side door would be blown off, a telescoping pole would extend out the door, and the astronauts would slide down the pole with parachutes hopefully far enough to avoid impact with the shuttle's wing.
Scott, I have an interesting subject for you: we are getting dependent on falcon 9 big time, Delta 4 heavy and atlas V are gone soon. What if F9 has an accident and is grounded for months. Has happened before with spaceshuttle… Isn’t that a huge vulnerability? Maybe a good topic, appreciate your videos! 😊👍
the shuttle lands without power, in other words its a "dead-stick" landing. When you're down, you're down! runway or not!
Actually it has power just not fueled propulsion. A dead stick relates to lack of flight control altogether, the shuttle was a glider with controls.
Thanks Scott!