Conducting Studies for the Space Shuttle

One of the studies that we're doing now is to see what the handling qualities of the shuttle are by moving the center of gravity (CG) more forward. We have pilots that come in and fly many runs with different kinds of malfunctions. We'll give them situations such as bad weather (i.e., low visibility), or we'll blow a tire once they're on the ground. Once they complete each run, they evaluate the landing and use what is called Cooper-Harper ratings for their evaluation of the performance of the vehicle. We take the pilots' comments, and the engineers make recommendations as to what changes should or should not be made on the vehicle.

Lengthening the Nose Landing Gear

Another study that we're doing is to determine the effects of lengthening the nose landing gear. When a shuttle lands, it looks like it's landing on its nose, because the nose landing gear is shorter than the main gear. So we're thinking about lengthening the nose gear up to 25 inches. One of the reasons for that is that when the shuttle comes down on a two-point stance and then "derotates" onto the nose into the three-point stance, sometimes it can come down pretty hard on the nose gear. A really hard "slapdown" can drive the nose gear right up into the avionics bay which would result in the loss of the Orbiter. So, we think that if the nose gear is a little longer, the slapdown is not going to be quite as hard and therefore do no damage.

We've also been conducting blown/leaking tire studies to look at the handling characteristics on the ground after landing on a bad tire. During these studies we use different amounts of crosswinds and headwinds. During the three weeks of engineering, we make hundreds of runs, usually starting each run from about 4,000 feet to a landing and with different pilots who rate each run.