Hello everyone,
My name is Clive and I grew up with the Space Shuttle program, well pretty much the whole space program from Apollo 11. I was christened on the very day that Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon, July 20 1969, and made that "one small step" onto history. I can vaguely remember my father trying to tell me that something had gone wrong on Apollo 13, I would only have been barely a year to 14 months old at that time. Its one of my earliest memories so naturally its a little foggy. Apollo 13 (the movie) was therefore very moving for me as the events that transpired were put into perspective for me.
I was just into my last year of elementary school and living in UK (now living in USA since 2003) when the original STS1 took place in April of 1981 and in my last year of high school when the tragic Challenger (51L) disaster happened in 1986 and the Columbia (STS-107)disaster happened just two months before I moved to the USA. I've always been a keen follower of the space program given my historical connections to the moon landing as mentioned above and the way the space shuttle disasters touched me.
That's my potted history / background of getting into the virtual space program. As it happens it looks like I did this back to front. I posted a query in the "in orbit" section and then saw I was supposed(?) to log in here as a new member first(?) However this section appears to be more of a meet and greet section(?)
Anyhow, I have to say if the stunning graphics surrounding launch didn't blow me away, the amazing perspective you get when in orbit - depth perception even when not using 3d enhancement goggles (I don't have those btw) is astounding. When you look from top down, you feel just how high above the atmosphere you are, even those its a pseudo 3d rendition - I've not seen that in a simulation before. Even MS Flight sims rarely show that level of depth perception.
I was unaware of this, but I downloaded a demo version of what would become the original SMS 2007 put out online way before it went commercial, it was just the shuttle on the pad with take off pre flight checks, instrumentation for some of the cockpit was accessible but not all as in the finished version. The sim ran through to take off and to a point just a little bit beyond clearing the launch tower and going into attitude adjustment (roll) ready for orbital insertion. I downloaded it with no idea it was anything more than just an amateur (very good amateur admittedly) attempt at putting out a partial shuttle mission online. I had no idea the idea was picked up and released commercially. I've been looking for a decent PC shuttle simulator for years. The only half decent one I ever came across was by Virgin Games. This was in the days before the PC had really become a reasonable games platform back in the very early 90's and at the time I had a Commodore Amiga 500 and the shuttle sim that virgin released only had a handful of missions, nothing very complex as the real program itself was still comparibly in its infancy and of course the Challenger disaster was still very fresh on a lot of minds. Although I do remember that unlike the current STSMS:TCE, the Virgin version started the sim right from roll out of the shuttle hanger on the specially designed transporter that you could run in real time which would take something like 10 hours to get on site at the launch pad - thank God for the time skip function......LOL I'm glad that part of the mission was left out on this version. The only problem was that the Amiga was pushed right to the very limit of its work load with this sim and so whilst the graphics were quite resplendent, any vast change on screen was very jerky and slow - even pushing a button or throwing a switch could take 10 to 20 seconds to execute which was sad but not wholly unplayable overall. I recently managed to find an old copy of that game released for the PC, but because resolution back in those days was very low, I couldn't jack up the resolution enough on the game or reduce the resolution in my desktop settings enough to make it that playable. Also the number of clock interrupts to slow the game down enough messed with other clock operations. I think the PC version was designed for VGA or even pre-VGA monitors, and I think P33 processors - and my monitor runs at 1700 by God knows what pixels and I have a twin dual core 3.5Ghz set of processor chips so no wonder it was having a job trying to be that retro - so oh well.......thank God I finally found this collectors edition of SSMS which I gather was released just this year.
Oh and another notch of personal history I can lay claim to is that I am one of the probably relatively few people to have been able to witness the Space Shuttle and the Space Station with the naked eye at the same time as they flew directly overhead roughly this time last year. I live in Youngstown Ohio and the night in question was clear as clear could be, no haze to deflect or refract the light reflected from the two "heavenly bodies." OK, they were not distinguishable except the space station was a little brighter but it sure gives you an idea of what an object about 280 miles from the ground moving at roughly 21000 feet per second looks like......its FAST. The two vehicles passed over us on a South West to North East Trajectory and covered the visible horizon from terminator to terminator in roughly 15 seconds. It gave me a much clearer understanding on just how fast an object has to travel around the Earth in order to make an orbit once every 90 minutes or so.
Well I've waffled on for way long enough. I don't see many people who have taken to writing chapter and verse so I hope I haven't bored the more frequent visitors here. By the way, the query I made in the "In Orbit" section is referenced "Mission STS-41C - orienting LDEF-1" if anyone wants to take a stab at answering it (pretty please)
Kind regards
Clive
