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from the where's-a-kerbal-when-you-need-one? dept.
SpaceX Crew Dragon simulator challenges you to dock with the ISS, and it's not easy:
It's a good thing I'm not on board the historic SpaceX Crew Dragon launch to the International Space Station scheduled for May 27. It turns out I suck at piloting a spacecraft.
SpaceX released a docking simulator online Tuesday that lets anyone try to safely connect the crew capsule with the ISS. Spoiler alert: I missed.
"This simulator will familiarize you with the controls of the actual interface used by NASA astronauts to manually pilot the SpaceX Dragon 2 vehicles to the International Space Station," SpaceX said, warning that the process "requires patience and precision." I had neither.
My attempt at the delicate dance of control and corrections didn't go well. "Do not use large movements near the ISS," SpaceX advised. I'm pretty sure I accidentally crashed into one of the ISS solar arrays.
Fortunately, the upcoming SpaceX Demo-2 mission will be crewed by NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who are trained experts at this whole complicated docking thing.
The astronauts probably won't have to call on their training. "Crew Dragon missions will autonomously dock and undock with the space station, but crew can take manual control of the spacecraft if necessary," SpaceX tweeted.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine also took to Twitter on Tuesday to remind everyone that he aced the simulator on his first try last year. Show-off.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:29PM (2 children)
Got it first time too. I hope the real thing shows more significant digits than the sim. Spending several seconds wondering if 0.1 meters was going to change to 0.0 or 0.2 was an unnecessary hassle. I can't say it was *easy*, especially towards the end. For some reason I couldn't get the Z-axis to stabilize and I had to keep correcting it. This made sense when I was far out and might have had some minor deviation in the Yaw-axis. Once again, -0.0 almost certainly hid some significant digits. OTOH, it made no sense at all when I was less than a meter from the station and kept having to zero out the Z-axis. I can't believe the real thing has that much of a pucker factor, or lack of significant digits, unless the haptic and visual feedback factor of reality makes up for it.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by rigrig on Thursday May 14 2020, @12:07AM (1 child)
Pah, you had digits?
My rate of approach was NaN all the way. At least the color changed from green to cyan(and orange) to give some indication, but I do hope the real thing will have actual numbers.
I can't believe we have cars navigating traffic by themselves, but we let humans handle this kind of maneuvering which computers would actually be good at.
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 2) by rigrig on Thursday May 14 2020, @12:08AM
Also I can't even be bothered to even read TFS, apparently.
No one remembers the singer.