posted 02-26-2009 09:57 PM               

For Jack's point of view in HIS own words, go a few posts down and read them. I suppose in some ways it might have been better to edit completely over this and put Jack's words down in the first posting. But then some of the reply postings would be confusing to the newcomer reading this thread for the first time. Plus, I tend not to like doing blanket edits with something that has already been posted. So here is the original message, warts and all. I just have to take my lumps is all. If anything, Jack's reply still shows that he is a class act for letting me post this to get the record straight.

Anyway, as most of us are aware, Jack Lousma never flew another space mission after STS-3 as the landing was apparently a little hairy. I do recall the wheelie pulled to try and keep the nose gear from de-rotating too fast, but he revealed a couple other things about it at Spacefest when I asked him about the wheelie. The subject just started with the wheelie, but he went on to describe the approach in detail and it was interesting to say the least.

For STS-3, the goal on approach and landing was to test the autoland system although it wasn't complete. The software was programmed for the approach, but not the landing, so the CDR's job was to put the ship on final and let the autoland system fly the approach until just before the flare, then the CDR would take over again and do the touchdown.

As Jack relayed to me, there were problems. Apparently the approach was on course and speed when Jack turned it over to the computer and the system responded by closing the speedbrake fully, resulting in a steeper descent. It then opened the speedbrake fully and I believe cycled like this a couple times. In any event, Columbia was carrying too much speed on the final approach. Since Jack is a test pilot, he let the autoland run the approach rather then shut it off right away since that was one of the goals of the mission and he wanted to see how it would respond so they could collect data on it. Perhaps it could be said that he might have let the system run for too long, but gathering data is what test pilots do.

So he takes over right before touchdown and they are still too fast. Normally the orbiter is supposed to drop its gear at 270 knots and about 300 feet or higher up. But they were about 200 feet up and at 275 knots when he told Gordo (Fullerton) to drop the gear and it snapped down at 150 feet. If you watch the video, this was probably 5 seconds before touchdown.

The nose I believe was supposed to de-rotate at about 160 knots and the nose high attitude is to help get a little aerodynamic braking and lessen the wear and tear on the brakes of the orbiter. It started going down at a little too high a speed so Jack tried to hold it off and it resulted in the wheelie before it dropped.

As Jack described it, he felt they salvaged a botched landing and judging by what he told me, the thing could have easily ended up in the dirt on its belly (like so many bad approaches on the shuttle landing simulator games at Titusville and other places with shuttle approach simulators for museum goers). It sounds like Chris Kraft probably had it out with Jack when he got back to Houston probably for keeping Columbia in autoland too long when things started going bad from the start, but I do understand what Jack was trying to do and considering how hairy the approach was, I don't know of a better astronaut qualified to try the system if they had aborted the test on STS-3 and pushed it back to the next flight (although I imagine Ken Mattingly would have done a good job on STS-4 if the duty fell to him, given his cool reputation as a pilot).

As such, after the results of STS-3, the autoland capability got scrapped after that and Jack says NASA would never have been able to certify the thing like an airliner as autoland systems for airliners require 10 approaches to certify with the FAA. Look at the development work the Soviets did on Buran as they were able to test it like that with the jet powered Buran analog and the operational system flew on the Buran shuttle in 1988.

Another story relayed to me by Jack had to do with the installation of a HUD on the shuttle. For the ALT flights and Columbia's development flights, no HUD was installed. Jack got into the shuttle development program late since he was involved with Skylab, so the systems and hardware parameters were pretty well established when he went over to Shuttle. He had tested Heads Up Displays (HUDs) for the Navy and wondered why shuttle didn't have one and apparently did some simulation runs apparently with a HUD type system and mentioned to NASA management it would be a very good idea to mount a HUD in shuttle. Management said it was too expensive and would cost I believe ten million dollars to mount as the instrument panel would need a pair of holes cut in it to mount the things. Rockwell and other contractors weren't too keen on it either.

posted 02-27-2009 10:20 AM               

When he started training for another flight, he said to himself, been there done that and decided that he didn't want to dedicate himself to another 1-2 years of training, so he decided to move onto other things.

That being said, Jack is truly a class act and would never bad mouth anyone, regardless of the circumstances. In all of the conversations I've had with Jack, there is only one person who he deeply dislikes and it's not CK, but still, he refused to say anything negative about them.

posted 02-27-2009 12:08 PM               

I believe that Jack handle the situation very well and performed a great landing as well. It would of have been neat to see him fly a third flight, but he wanted to leave when he did. He told me that he was in the simulator with a pilot but he couldn't recall the pilots name for training for his third flight.

posted 02-27-2009 02:57 PM               

Your posting was well written and I believe, on target Jay.

In regards to the above, two things come to mind.

First, this was a test flight (STS 1-4 were). Jack was there, and better suited to make the decision than someone who never flew and wasn't there.

Secondly, Jack is one of the finest pilots (and humans) around.

posted 02-27-2009 06:08 PM               

Young was the first CDR to fly again STS-9. Engle was in DC in 1982 and came back to JSC in 1983. Mattingly was on STS-10 when it was going to be the first DOD flight which got delayed to STS 51-C. Before STS-7 flew Crippen was already on STS 41-C.

posted 02-28-2009 10:56 AM               

At one point he said he and Fred Haise had been training for a shuttle mission to boost Skylab into a higher orbit. However the idea was canceled because, of Skylab's earlier than anticipated re-entry and delays to the shuttle program. I think this was also confirmed in the book "Homesteading Space, The Skylab Story" By Own Garriott, Joe Kerwin and David Hitt.

With regards to the STS-3 mission, Lousma said there was an awful wind that was blowing from alternating directions. He over rotated slightly on landing, but considering the speed they were carrying and the fact that they were flying a fairly new vehicle in poor conditions, the landing went fairly well.

He never did mention the reason he never flew again and I did not think to ask.

posted 02-28-2009 11:37 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by alanh_7:
At one point he said he and Fred Haise had been training for a shuttle mission to boost Skylab into a higher orbit. However the idea was canceled because, of Skylab's earlier than anticipated re-entry and delays to the shuttle program.

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posted 02-28-2009 11:45 AM               

I have sent it to Jay since it's his posting to add if he wished. He may want to edit some personal parts out (which of course I would too) first. If he does not, I will.

Interesting historical insight and I think you'll enjoy it. Plus it will answer all of the questions.

posted 02-28-2009 09:08 PM               

Jay's account of the STS-3 approach and landing is only partially correct. He should have asked me to review his report before posting it. The most objectionable part insinuates Chris Kraft is unreasonable and that he ended my flight career because he was unhappy with the landing. That kind of speculation is out of bounds and publishing such rumors is poor journalism. Chris is objective, candid, an original space pioneer, and a dynamic, effective leader.

Reports and rumors about how the STS-3 approach was flown and what "must have occurred" (but didn't) have come and gone over the years. Interestingly, none of these reports and rumors was preceded by asking me what happened, except for the recent conversation with Jay. Incidentally, Jay and I did not discuss anything about Chris Kraft's reaction to STS-3, as alleged in his commentary.

The fact is that Chris Kraft and I have always enjoyed cordial relations both professionally and socially. In a private, post-mission conversation, he did not criticize any part of STS-3, including the landing which was within shuttle limits. He was pleased with the overall outcome of the mission and brushed off the landing as acceptable under the circumstances. I consider Chris as a personal mentor and friend in my career at NASA, and he never put me under the gun. It was made clear to me that I could command another flight, but after proceeding with early training on a flight that was about two years downstream, I decided it was time to be moving on with the inevitable next phases of life's journey before it was too late to get started. Had I been able to fly again sooner I probably would have stayed around to do so, but I made the right choice at the time and have never looked back. Life is good!

The STS-3 approach problem is simply explained by stating that the auto system, while it correctly controlled the nose of the ship on the outer glide-slope, through the preflare, and on the inner glide slope, it did a poor job of modulating the speed brakes to control the airspeed on the outer glide-slope. The auto system also fully closed the speed brakes 1,500 feet before I would have done so manually. This resulted in a substantially higher speed coming out of preflare and being closer to the ground (further down the inner glide-slope) when the gear were lowered procedurally based on airspeed (270 knots) rather than altitude (gear down was changed to 400 feet after that). I took back manual control when stabilized on the inner glide-slope by depressing the "Manual" button on the eye-brow panel; not by moving the hand-controller out of detent, as has been rumored. It was mandatory to land in manual control because the landing software was not yet fully developed and tested.

The auto system also lined-up the shuttle slightly to the right of centerline, which I decided not to correct that close to landing. In essence, the auto system did not fly the approach I would have flown manually, but it was not unsafe. So my job became one of salvaging a less than perfect approach, which I did, but not as well as I would have preferred. Further, we did get the data required by the autoland test objective, and we also proved the well-worn adage of our first flight instructors; 'To make a good landing you must fly a good approach'. Incidentally, we never experienced this speedbrake control problem in simulation. The simulators always modulated the speedbrakes in small increments to control speed perfectly. If the flight software had been installed in the simulators we would have been ready for this problem, except that we would have rejected the autoland test objective altogether until the flight software was capable of smooth speed control. We vigorously insisted on simulating with flight software installed, but this requirement 'fell through the crack' somehow in the fixed and motion-base simulators as well as the Shuttle Training Aircraft. Unfortunately, we didn't know of this oversight until we flew STS-3.

With respect to the "wheelie" right after touchdown, the nose began to drop before aerodynamic braking was complete at 160 knots, so I tried to hold it off with a short nose-up pulse on the hand-controller. The nose did not react quickly enough for me, so I gave it another short nose-up pulse. This caused the nose to rise rapidly whereupon I lowered the nose to the runway manually. I was told later there was an instability in the longitudinal control software in that landing configuration causing the unexpected pitch-up. Perhaps there was. In any case, we learned a lot with no harm done; that's why we do test flights. And that's why I have moved beyond the rumors and speculation on this whole subject, and that's why it was of little consequence to Chris Kraft.

The autoland system was scuttled after that experience because it was not "certifiable" in the aviation sense of "certification". Moreover, our experience implied that if the autoland failed close to the ground, it would force a "late takeover" in a possibly unrecoverable attitude. Thus, it would be better to not fly the autoland system down to a position that would be potentially unrecoverable. I think some sort of autoland system has been installed in case they would want to try to recover a damaged shuttle, incapable of safe reentry (like Columbia) that was abandoned at the ISS, the crew having been ferried home from the ISS in a rescue shuttle.

posted 02-28-2009 09:58 PM               

Classily done Jay. Especially giving Col. Lousma the chance to set the record straight. Reading his posting proves without a doubt, it was a test flight, he and Gordo were test pilots, mission accomplished. With panache.

posted 03-01-2009 11:23 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Hart Sastrowardoyo:
Hmmmmm.... since STS-1 was delayed at least two years, what shuttle flights had patches done by the time it flew? By that I mean, the OFT crews had been pretty much decided, except for OFT-5 and -6, which were unknown if they were needed. When did STS-3 have their patch done (and if I had Photoshop, I'd create an STS-3 patch with Haise's name and Skylab over the RMS...)

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In a conversation I had with Jack at last year's Spacefest, he told me that the STS-3 patch artwork was still being produced as the flight neared.

Robert McCall did some original designs, with his trademark sunburst behind the orbiter. The deadline for having the patch done was coming up, and the crew still didn't have the final art, so Jack grabbed an airplane and flew up to McCall's place to see if he could hurry things along.

When he had to get home to Houston, he took back the still unfininshed work of McCall and gave it to his former commander and budding artist Al Bean.

Al put the finishing touches on the STS-3 logo and submitted the design, which was approved and became the mission patch.

posted 03-10-2009 12:03 PM               

On another note, I'd love to see a Jack Lousma book for a few reasons. Jack has over 700 hours the LM simulator, an equal amount in the CM, he's supported & backed up every Apollo mission and he has trained on every piece of Apollo and shuttle equipment.

posted 09-13-2023 12:11 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Jay Chladek:
Since Jack is a test pilot...

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Reviving this 2009 thread with a small point of correction — Jack Lousma was not a test-pilot, in that he had no formal training in any test-pilot school.

posted 09-13-2023 05:05 PM               

The shuttle flew very wide S-turns to bleed off speed and shift from eastern flightpath to southern heading for landing. The turns were so sharp that you could see the top of the shuttle from the ground. The actual landing looked good to me. Much faster landing speed than a commercial airliner.

2008 photo of Lousma and I. I am wearing the T-shirt sold at White Sands.

I am in the crowd in the background.

posted 09-14-2023 01:34 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Blackarrow:
Jack Lousma was not a test-pilot...

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There were test pilots long before there were test pilot schools. The schools were founded to increase quality and safety by giving graduates the knowledge and experience that test pilots would acquire through years of "on the job training." Even today, for example, to join the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, you can be acceptable via the school or experience route.