I'd have to say this project has seen me warming up my Orbiter installations again.
I don't think there's a better compliment.
Ascent information and feedback is a lot easier to work with than I thought it would be. It really kinda puts you right into the thick of what the spacecraft is doing, and makes planning your next move that much easier. I found it not very difficult to discern which way to start my roll maneuver off the pad, and my pitch maneuvering was very easy to follow.
I'm glad you found it useful! All of the extra HUD data is stuff I came up with while testing - things I found I really needed. They are definitely "organic" and aren't yet part of a cohesive design. Any ideas for improvement are welcome.
I ended up placing the LR1 stack at a 335' heading on the pad given the base scenario.
That is very reasonable. I think my original pad heading was 325'. I changed it because I figured the crew arm would extend straight from the tower - but the more I think about it, the payload bay should probably either face towards or away from the ramp. In any case, the Shuttle pad is the wrong pad for the Skyhammer, so most any orientation would be legal at this point.
PS if anyone is interested in modeling a pad, I would happily include it for the time being. Or just release it on the hangar in parallel if you like.
...do you think this vehicle would be a decent candidate for retrieving dead (or decommissioned) satellites either in LEO or geosynch?
I will give you a technical answer and a philosophical answer.
Technically, the Skyhammer should have no problem retrieving a satellite from LEO. It's not very different from, say, an ISS mission, assuming the altitude is not too high. Geosynchronous orbit is far outside the Skyhammer's propulsion capability, unfortunately. Its dry mass is simply way too high.
Philosophically, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to retrieve dead or decommissioned satellites from orbit and bring them back to Earth (at least not until propellant is the majority of the mission cost). If your objective is to clear debris, a much smaller automated vehicle to rendezvous with and destructively deorbit it is probably better. If your objective is to repair and refurbish - you should probably not do it at all. Satellites are useful in orbit but they go out of date very quickly (electronic technology moves fast). I would expect that replacement is the right approach in almost all cases.
I understand that the Shuttle flew at least one set of retrieve-and-relaunch missions, but I believe those were largely politically rather than economically useful.
---------- Post added at 03:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:41 AM ----------
Now that many of you have had a chance to try out this little prototype, I'd be interested in your thoughts on where to push next. Originally I had planned on doing final approach and landing as that seemed like a fun portion of flight, but I would do something else if y'all were more interested.
What would you most like to see?
- Final approach and landing.
- Orbital maneuvering / docking.
- A "horizontal slice" (all other phases of flight, badly/hastily implemented).
- Something else?