QUOTE
Do they always do a "hand-flown instrument approach?
I believe they do. There is precious little live piloting experience with the shuttle, anyway. It has already demonstrated the ability to make the approaches with the autopilot. And I'm sure it is a simple matter of handing off to the AP if they really needed to. But the ability to land manually by taking over from the AP might not be as easy. It's still an extremely fast aircraft on the approach and having your hands on the controls instead of trying to
take control is much faster and safer, IMHO. They record the actual flight path and compare it to what the AP would have done, so they always know which would have been different/better. I don't think the AP has ever been proven better! But that's one reason I didn't call the approach/landing "perfect". A real pilot can almost always see things he could have done better, even on a "perfect" flight.
What also amazed me was the sound of the APU's as the shuttle sat on the runway while they finished running all their checklists. It sounded nothing but a steam engine sitting on a track while its steam powered air pumps worked. The APU's are powered by intermittent bursts of burning gases ( hydrazine and oxygen ? ). So they sit there and you hear a 'chugging' sound as each one gets a shot of fuel every half second or so. With three APU's running, it is a unique sound now that there are so few live steam engines running!
One hundred year old sounds from a twentieth century transport!
Not sure we can call the shuttle "old" but it certainly is not performing as it was hoped. The 'old' style construction of putting the payload and people at the front end of the explosive parts of a rocket seem much more practical and safe now! All 'advances' are not always better. I just hope we maintain the will and desire to explore space with humans. Most of the pure scientific work can be done with robots/unmanned probes, but they will always be limited to the few things they are designed to do. Only humans can change the mission so completely in mid-course and jury-rig a solution that may 'save the day'!
