Flying Qualities - Relation To Spacecraft

Relation To Spacecraft

Handling qualities are those characteristics of a flight vehicle that govern the ease and precision with which a pilot is able to perform a flying task. The way in which particular vehicle factors affect handling qualities has been studied in aircraft for decades, and reference standards for the handling qualities of both fixed-wing aircraft and rotary-wing aircraft have been developed and are now in common use. These standards define a subset of the dynamics and control design space that provides good handling qualities for a given vehicle type and flying task. A new generation of spacecraft now under development by NASA to replace the Space Shuttle and return astronauts to the Moon will have a manual control capability for several mission tasks, and the ease and precision with which pilots can execute these tasks will have an important effect on performance, mission risk and training costs. No reference standards currently exist for handling qualities of piloted spacecraft.