Space Shuttle inclination "gauge"

[mstram]

It seems ? that the Shuttle does not have an "in orbit" "inclination gauge" / instrument (similar / comparable to the Orbiter Orbit MFD / inclination display.

There are mentions in the SCOM of the HSI during ascent having some kind of "delta inclination" gauge, but it looks like SSU doesn't have that (yet ?).

Do they just rely on mission control to tell them their inclination ?

 

[Donamy]

They know what the inclination is, way before launch.

 

[GLS]

During ascent, on the A/E PFD, there is a delta inclination box on the lower left corner that displays the difference between the current inclination and the target MECO inclination. The target MECO inclination is not displayed during ascent, and in SSU is set in the mission file.
There is also a "X-Trk" box that should display the distance between the target MECO orbital plane and the current orbital plane, but that is currently not calculated by our ascent guidance.
During ascent the 0º mark of the HSI indicates the direction the vehicle should go to achieve the target MECO inclination.

 

[Thorsten]

It seems ? that the Shuttle does not have an "in orbit" "inclination gauge" / instrument (similar / comparable to the Orbiter Orbit MFD / inclination display.

The root of the issue is that the Shuttle has very little Delta v for orbital maneuvering - there's no propellant to change inclination (or longitude of the ascending node) in any meaningful way. So the orbital plane is determined during launch and stays more or less fixed afterwards - and since the launch is planned to a certain inclination... see other posts.

In general, the orbital navigation the real Shuttle avionics does display is very limited and scattered over several places:

* MNVR COAST/EXEC has height of apoapsis and periapsis in miles as CUR HA and CUR HP in the table on the center right and time to next apsis as TTA (TTP, TTC) in the center.

* REL NAV shows a node crossing time to the chosen rendezvous target on the center left as NODE but otherwise displays offsets to the target in local Cartesian coordinates.

* ORBIT TGT displays the current state vector maintained by the navigation software in the lower right

but this is not in orbital elements but in inertial coordinates (though you could compute all orbital elements from there with a pocket calculator).

And that's basically it - no moving map, no standard display of orbital elements, no actual display of an orbit around earth.

 

[mstram]

The root of the issue is that the Shuttle has very little Delta v for orbital maneuvering - there's no propellant to change inclination (or longitude of the ascending node) in any meaningful way. So the orbital plane is determined during launch and stays more or less fixed afterwards - and since the launch is planned to a certain inclination... see other posts.

In general, the orbital navigation the real Shuttle avionics does display is very limited and scattered over several places:

* MNVR COAST/EXEC has height of apoapsis and periapsis in miles as CUR HA and CUR HP in the table on the center right and time to next apsis as TTA (TTP, TTC) in the center.

* REL NAV shows a node crossing time to the chosen rendezvous target on the center left as NODE but otherwise displays offsets to the target in local Cartesian coordinates.

* ORBIT TGT displays the current state vector maintained by the navigation software in the lower right

but this is not in orbital elements but in inertial coordinates (though you could compute all orbital elements from there with a pocket calculator).

And that's basically it - no moving map, no standard display of orbital elements, no actual display of an orbit around earth.

What code version are you running that has a SPEC 33 display running in it ?

 

[GLS]

What code version are you running that has a SPEC 33 display running in it ?

The images that Thorson posted are not from SSU, but from his shuttle project in FlightGear, which has a thread somewhere in here in OH.

 

[Thorsten]

Sorry - my bad.

I merely wanted to illustrate the way the Shuttle displays the information and these were the quickest images I had available. I realize that given the subforum name this generated a wrong impression - my mistake, sorry for any confusion.