ition for this historic simulator, NASA’s manned space program and Aggies.
As the name implies, the MBS is a full-fidelity cockpit and full-motion space shuttle simulator. In fact, it is the single full-motion shuttle simulator used by every one of the 852 people from 15 nations who flew on shuttle missions throughout that program’s 30-year flight history. This machine, driven by the same software that also controlled the shuttles, was used extensively in preparation for all 135 shuttle missions, from 1977 through July 2011, for spacecraft software testing, piloting technique development, and astronaut and mission control training.
Imagine what it means to more generations who will have access to the touch and feel experienced by real, spacefaring shuttle astronauts.
A primary role of the MBS was to ensure that astronauts flying a shuttle felt as routine and “normal” as possible while riding into space at the tip of millions of pounds of fire, or flying through a cloud of fire during reentry at the end of a mission. More critically, the MBS was a key platform on which to practice a seemingly infinite combination of shuttle system failures and emergencies during all phases of spaceflight, also ensuring that the astronauts and Mission Control were prepared for anything this dangerous business conjured up.
As a freshman aerospace engineering student in the fall of 1980, and just before the first launch the following spring, I watched my dad, Larry Hill ’56, a NASA manager at Johnson Space Center, describe the shuttle flight profile in the Rudder Auditorium to a group of students and professors. More than 30 years later, I managed both the training that employed the MBS and Mission Control. In that same capacity a few months after the last shuttle landed, I signed the legal agreements with Texas A&M President Bowen Loftin that delivered the MBS to my university and my aerospace engineering department. In the space left behind the MBS, NASA has already begun developing simulators for next-generation spacecraft.
In the summer of 2013, John Valasek and his team in the aerospace engineering department will reactivate this historic simulator in Aggieland. He plans to get much more life out of the MBS, including Aggie and public access to simulated shuttle flight and a range of flight development projects. Valasek also has insisted on keeping all equipment touched by NASA astronauts exactly as it was when astronauts flew their last MBS sortie. Imagine what it means to more generations who will have access to the touch and feel experienced by real, spacefaring shuttle astronauts, and to the engineering students who lead projects with the MBS that still has that historic authenticity. And those experiences are just up Highway 6 from NASA Johnson Space Center at Texas A&M University.
Again, what a poignant transition for this historic simulator, NASA’s manned space program and Aggies.