Karol Bobko "We have the altitude, you can see we're a
little below 8,000 feet.
On the left hand side we have the airspeed.
In this case that's 300 knots, which is about 345 miles an hour…"
Astronaut Karol Bo Bobko is telling me how to land the Space Shuttle.
It's not the kind of thing I need in my normal life, but this is no normal place.
NASA's Ames Research Center in the heart of Silicon Valley is where astronauts like Bo
came to practice Shuttle landings before the real thing.
He's flown on the Shuttle three times, once as pilot and twice as mission commander logging
386 hours in space.
Now he's one of the team that runs the simulation laboratory and will be accompanying me on
my flight inside one of a handful of simulators here.
This one is configured to simulate Shuttle landings and is on the ground, but it can
be hoisted onto a large hydraulic platform to allow for an even more realistic simulation.
As we start flying, things don't get off to a great start.
With Bo piloting ……
"So slow, why are we so slow?"
"We crashed"
"Oh dear"
"Yes"
But don't blame the pilot.
A configuration error in the simulation was to blame and subsequent landings were perfect,
setting a high bar for me.
The Shuttle is represented on the head-up display by the little circle with three lines
coming out of it.
My target is the small circle near the center of the display and the computer is telling
me that to get there I need to aim for the guidance diamond.
Sure enough, when I line up on the diamond, everything else follows."
"You've got it.
Right on top of it.
But you can expect that's it's going to want you to go up a little bit."
"'Cos it's going to bring you up"
"Here come the pre-flare cues"
"Pre flare"
That pre-flare point marked the move from a 20 degree approach angle -- several times
the 3 degree angle used by commercial airliners - to a 1.5 degree angle.
These are very important because the Shuttle doesn't have any engines.
It's gliding down to the runway so everything has to be done just right.
"You're a little below the touchdown zone."
"Bring the nose up to the horizon"
"You skipped"
I touch down, not quite in the center of the runway, but at least I'm back on earth however
I haven't stopped yet.
"Steer, push on the right pedal to get it back on the center"
I'm not quite sure how this snaking across the runway will look on the evening news.
But I finally get things on track and successfully the Shuttle is coming to a halt.
I can't get over feeling how much the head-up display, and perhaps many hours of playing
video games, aided that approach.
It's importance is underlined to me on my next approach, which is to Halifax, one of
several alternate landing sites and today under heavy cloud.
I just have to put my faith in the computer that we're on the right track until the airport
appears at 5,500 feet.
Without the head up display and computer aiding things, I would probably be crashing into
the ground about now.
"Runway in sight"
Halifax is shorter so I need to be quicker on the brakes.
And eventually the Shuttle comes to a halt.
A successful landing, but Bo said I had it easy.
"We didn't give you any blown tires, or bad crosswinds, or navigation errors."
So nothing too difficult.
At least that means a tiny bit of my astronaut dream can remain intact.
At NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, this is Martyn Williams, IDG News Service.