3 ms·

Give their docking simulator[1] a go on a phone or tablet - I was dubious at first, but even on an iPhone I managed to complete manual docking on the first atte

Give their docking simulator[1] a go on a phone or tablet - I was dubious at first, but even on an iPhone I managed to complete manual docking on the first attempt. It turns out flying a spaceship is very different to flying a plane, and rapid inputs just aren't massively important. Generally your edit is probably true as well - in standard flight everything is meant to be on autopilot using predefined routines for the mission, computers are just significantly better at performing a 16 second burn at 82% thrust at precisely T+12:48:16.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago
That makes sense. Flying a plane is all about responding to perturbations to keep on an even course. A spaceship has literally zero perturbations. It goes exactly as you direct it to go, within the precision of your burns. So its all about carefully issuing bang-bang control signals (burn for 2 seconds) then measuring the response against expectations.
- e_y_ 6y ago
  It's close to zero over short distances (ignoring solar wind and LEO atmosphere), although you're still trying to dock with a moving target. If you've played KSP or read about Gemini 4, the relative motion can be unintuitive due to orbital mechanics. The SpaceX docking simulator puts you right next to the ISS with low relative velocity -- as it would be in real life if everything went as planned -- but it would be much more challenging if you needed to do it manually from a greater distance and relative velocity.
0xffff2 6y ago
You managed to dock in a simulation in which it's guaranteed that nothing goes wrong. Most of the switches and buttons are there for when something does go wrong. I think the main reason there are so few buttons on Dragon is that it evolved from an uncrewed vehicle that was designed to be flown from the ground, so everything is much more connected and software controlled than was even practical in the shuttle era.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

That makes sense. Flying a plane is all about responding to perturbations to keep on an even course. A spaceship has literally zero perturbations. It goes exactly as you direct it to go, within the precision of your burns. So its all about carefully issuing bang-bang control signals (burn for 2 seconds) then measuring the response against expectations.

e_y_ 6y ago
It's close to zero over short distances (ignoring solar wind and LEO atmosphere), although you're still trying to dock with a moving target. If you've played KSP or read about Gemini 4, the relative motion can be unintuitive due to orbital mechanics. The SpaceX docking simulator puts you right next to the ISS with low relative velocity -- as it would be in real life if everything went as planned -- but it would be much more challenging if you needed to do it manually from a greater distance and relative velocity.

0xffff2 6y ago

You managed to dock in a simulation in which it's guaranteed that nothing goes wrong. Most of the switches and buttons are there for when something does go wrong. I think the main reason there are so few buttons on Dragon is that it evolved from an uncrewed vehicle that was designed to be flown from the ground, so everything is much more connected and software controlled than was even practical in the shuttle era.