Lunar Lander Handling Qualities

Handling qualities are those characteristics of a flight vehicle that govern the ease and precision with which a pilot can perform a flying task. A series of piloted experiments were conducted in the NASA Ames Vertical Motion Simulator (VMS) between 2007 and 2010, to study handling qualities for the Altair and Orion spacecraft that were being designed for NASA's Constellation program. Four Apollo astronauts and over 30 Space Shuttle astronauts participated in these studies and provided evaluations of spacecraft handling qualities for various flying tasks. The knowledge gained from these studies may be used to guide the design of flight control systems and cockpit displays, and/or key design trade-offs between candidate configurations of piloted spacecraft. This seminar provides an overview of three handling qualities studies focused on the lunar landing task for the Apollo Lunar Module and the Altair lunar lander. These studies have already been published in journals and presented at conferences.