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ESA Astronauts Take to Helicopters for Moon Landing Training

posted by hubie on Tuesday October 28, @02:18AM   

upstart writes:

ESA astronauts take to helicopters for Moon landing training:

European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts have completed a helicopter training course to prepare them for upcoming lunar landings.

The astronauts in question include Alexander Gerst, Matthias Maurer, Samantha Cristoforetti, and Thomas Pesquet.

The course consisted of one week of simulator instruction followed by two weeks of practical flying in Airbus EC135 helicopters. ESA said: "Helicopter training offers a realistic analogue for the dynamics of planetary landings, requiring capabilities such as vertical take-off and landing, terrain-based decision-making, and high levels of coordination and situational awareness."

The Apollo astronauts also honed their Moon landing skills using helicopters, although with occasional catastrophic consequences. On January 23, 1971, the Bell 47G helicopter flown by Apollo 14 backup commander Gene Cernan crashed into the Indian River lagoon near Malabar, Florida. An accident investigation board, headed by Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, pinned much of the blame on Cernan. He'd found the altitude difficult to judge when skimming the surface of the water and accidentally ditched the helicopter. The incident didn't stop Cernan from being the last person on the Moon on the Apollo 17 mission.

A better real-world simulator was the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV), which featured a vertically mounted turbofan engine capable of lifting the machine – nicknamed "the flying bedstead" – to simulate the reduced lunar gravity. Astronauts spoke highly of it. Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong called it a "most valuable training experience." He was almost killed by its predecessor, the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV), in 1968.

Cernan said: "Although there is nothing quite like the real thing, flying the LLTV had been a step toward realism from 'flying' the stationary simulators.

"In the LLTV you had your butt strapped to a machine that you had to land safely or you didn't make it."

Andreas Mogensen, ESA's Human Exploration Group Leader, told The Register:

ESA has yet to strap its astronauts into something as potentially hazardous as the LLTV. However, the helicopter raises some interesting questions – what does ESA expect its astronauts to use for a lunar landing?

Landing the towering Starship manually would be a challenge, while the other Human Landing System (HLS) contender from Blue Origin won't be ready until Artemis V.

The helicopter training is an introductory course that will give ESA astronauts the skills and knowledge to participate in advanced helicopter courses, like NASA's HAATS, which is a requirement for participating in Artemis lunar landing missions.

The purpose of HAATS and similar courses is to train astronauts in vertical landing profiles and to recognize the visual and optical illusions that can arise from a visual environment characterized by mono-colours and stark shadows. Helicopter pilots are well-aware of these illusions, especially when flying in snow and mountain environments. The goal is thus to equip astronauts with the skills to visually monitor the descent and judge obstacles and risks, regardless of the actual vehicle used to land on the moon.

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Original Submission

• LLRV - in flight simulation for the win(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28, @02:57AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28, @02:57AM (#1422565)

  See https://niagaraaerospacemuseum.org/llrv/ [niagaraaerospacemuseum.org] - the Niagara Aerospace Museum is located near the historic Bell Aircraft / Bell Aerosystems plant, just outside Niagara Falls, NY.

  Neil Armstrong’s task to land the Lunar Module on the Moon was unlike any piloting on earth ever performed since it took place in 1/6 Earth gravity with no aerodynamic lift or drag. So as early as 1961, before the design of the lunar lander itself was determined, a need was recognized for a pilot training vehicle. Conventional fixed-based visual simulators, helicopters, and a giant cable-suspended trainer at NASA Langley partially filled this requirement, but ultimately a free-flying vehicle was deemed necessary to provide sufficient fidelity in the piloting experience.

  Thus were the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV), and its close successor, the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV) conceived by Bell Aerosystems of Niagara Falls, NY in coordination with NASA Flight Research Center (FRC). The odd-looking open-framed vehicles earned the nickname the “flying bedstead. The central feature was a vertically-mounted General Electric CF700 jet engine on a dual-axis gimbal, which could be rotated to keep the thrust vector vertical as the rest of the vehicle rotated around it. 3,000 psi hydraulic actuators were used to rotate the engine in its gimbal.

  During a landing simulation, the vertical thrust of the jet engine was used to cancel 5/6 of the LLRV’s weight, approximating lunar gravity. The fly-by-wire control system automatically compensated for changing vehicle mass due to fuel depletion as well as aerodynamic drag and wind. The result, from the pilot’s point of view, was a convincing duplication of flight conditions near the lunar surface. The rest of the vehicle’s propulsion system consisted of Bell hydrogen peroxide monopropellant thrusters derived from the X-15 program. Sixteen were used for attitude control in addition to eight 500 lb lift rockets used to simulate the Lunar Module descent engine in final hover and landing.

  The astronauts were enthusiastic in the training provided by the LLRV and LLTV. In Neil Armstrong’s words:

  “Six crews landed their Lunar Modules on the moon. They landed on the dusty sands of the Sea of Tranquility and the Ocean of Storms. They landed in the lunar highlands at Fra Mauro and on the Cayley Plains. They landed near the Apennine and Taurus Mountains. Each landing, in widely different topography, was performed safely under the manual piloting of the flight commander. During no flight did pilots come close to sticking a landing pad in a crater or tipping the craft over. That success is due, in no small measure, to the experience and confidence gained in the defining research studies and in the pilot experience and training provided by the LLRV and LLTV.”

  There was perhaps no greater praise for the vehicles than from John Young, commander of Apollo 16, just moments after landing the Lunar Module Orion on the Lunar surface: “Just like flying the LLTV. Piece of cake.” (Listen to the audio here.)

  More details about the analog control system and a description of the roughly 2 minute flights, https://heritageflight.org/about/our-history/lltv/ [heritageflight.org]

  As I heard the story, contract money was slow to appear from NASA and Larry Bell himself decided to start building them--knowing full well that the Apollo program was going to need them. I guess Bell was eventually paid back for their work.

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