As we entered Our Space Shuttle it was night. “It will be a night launch!” I thought, and probably a landing by night. I noticed the GMT time on the overhead panel: 02:07 GMT. Yes, it will be!
I’m an anxious guy in life. The HDI was not in the same position as usual (I did STS 1, 8, 41c, 26, and 31 before). Was it new to STS-88? Sure! I don’t know why, this detail made me anxious. At 03:00 GMT, it seemed to me the sky was becoming lighter. A few minutes later, it was sunrise! That’s a few minutes after 9 or 10 PM in Florida?!! Now, I was really nervous. But I’m the kind of sim enthusiast who doesn’t use timeskip during countdown, and as psychologists use to say, I had already invested too much in that mission to go back. The fact that I had prepared the Shuttle for on OMS burn before launch, and now this, well, that was too much!!! Too many things I couldn’t understand. I was really too nervous!
“One minute!” – Liftoff! I looked anxiously at the CRT’s, seemed that Our Space Shuttle was not on the right trajectory – and now A ROLL! “We’re lost”. One or two second later, the message with the explanation to the roll. Now I could understand the OMS preparation and I began to calm down.
We finally reached our first orbit and I had time to look at what we were carrying in the payload bay (At every new mission, I always admire the work of the SSM2207 Team on 3D objects!)
Most of you know the mission, and I don’t need to say how hard it was to get Unity on the docking system. To do that, I really miss a key press for the SINGLE/DIRECT DRIVE when working beyond the ‘reach limit’. That’s my problem, I think.
I finally got it in place (who did say the earth is not pretty in SSM2007? I like this screenshot; yeah it’s the first, because I hadn’t installed a soft for that before-sorry!)
Next screenshot is as we got in (real!) visual range with Zarya. I like to remember…
And after some time (!), Zarya was in place, building that strange configuration where Our Space Shuttle seems to carry the all thing…
…or to be carried from.
Time to work now…
But the ‘Daytime issue’ as I called it for myself was still annoying me. As I could see in the mean time, it seems to be a wrong initialisation when starting the game at the ramp. The “Daytime discrepancy” is not the same when you start the game on orbit. It doesn’t look like a bug. But what is it?
I discussed that with my fellow while working…
“Should be dark here right now!”
“Stop thinking and work!” (or play…)
Yeah… So many things to do before release of what will become the ISS!
And I as Commander must always have a look at what’s happening outside (I’m a little schizophrenic, don’t care!)
But time of release finally came. It always moves me to tears.
That ends the most challenging part of the mission
Now Our Space Shuttle looks like a space shuttle again. What a pretty look on Greenland!
After the Deorbit burn my OMS gauges looked like that:
You can see my N2 Tk pressure shows RED. And I don’t like that. Since one of my first STS-1 flight where I ran out of fuel doing one OMS burns after the other, I’m always afraid of running out of fuel again. Our Ground Crew should be aware that the ascent phase is more or less precise. In the best case, it will be compensated by OMS burns. But it seems to me that OMS burns ‘burn’ a little too much fuel. It’s a Space Shuttle MISSION simulator, and if we don’t make mistakes, we should always be able to land safely. In fact, we have no control about the number of OMS burns.
Always that ‘Daytime issue’! We should have landed at night, but…
My heart’s beating strong
Done!!! At this step, I always miss an after landing checklist. But that’s already in the Wish List of the forum.
Good bye, Endeavour!
(Sorry if I didn’t remove all the MET windows. I read in the forum, it is better, but I read it after my STS-88!)
There’s nothing special, you will say? Yes, but that may interest someone who doesn’t have played with SSM2007 yet. Anyway, I’m in love with this game. So I just wanted to do that.
And again before leaving: Am I the only one annoyed by this ‘Daytime issue’? It’s a Space Shuttle MISSION simulator!!!
