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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!seismo!hao!denelcor!lmc
From: lmc@denelcor.UUCP (Lyle McElhaney)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Article on maneuvering unit
Message-ID: <323@denelcor.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Feb-84 00:48:43 EST
Article-I.D.: denelcor.323
Posted: Wed Feb 15 00:48:43 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Feb-84 04:37:16 EST
References: <16459@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: Denelcor, Aurora, CO
Lines: 24

One of the trainers for the MMU is at Martin Marietta Aerospace near
Denver, Colorado (I don't know whether it is the one referenced in AW,
but its the one I'm familiar with). It is a six-degree-of-freedom
tower controlled by a hybrid (yup, there's real analog thingees in there)
computer. The moving head on the tower is man-rated. The astronaut gets
buckled into the harness, his hand controller's signals are fed into the
computer along with the environmental model of his surroundings, and the
computer commands the harness to roll, pitch, yaw and slide. Not only is
it a good trainer, but its really good for doing human-facters (would
velocity or acceleration controls be easier to use? Proportional? How
about different weightings on the offset? Just program them into the
closed loop system and give it a try.) It make a tv-game to end all tv-games.

By the way, the same facility was used to train for the Teleoperator
Retrieval System (see previous note, ~ 2 days ago.) The Skylab docking
ring was done in 1/4 scale on the wall; The harness was replaced with a
TV camera, and the controllers were removed to a mockup of the aft flight
deck. During the Viking Landing studies (circa 1974), the hybrid computers
were used to simulate the Martian atmospheric effects, while some other
digital computers simulated flight dynamics and the actual lander flight
computer. All in all, its one well used computer suite.
-- 
		Lyle McElhaney
		(hao,brl-bmd,nbires,csu-cs,scgvaxd)!denelcor!lmc