Way too much fun!

[Cracker]

To Dan and Dr. Schwieger,
You guys are the most amazing minds! I started with Dan's DGII scenario, landed at KSC. I then
changed focus to the PB Shuttle at Habana. I flew the PB to KSC, eyeballed it to the runway, and
hovered down next to the DGII. Way too neat! Then I saved the scenario. I then got in the DGII,
and got all set to meet ISS with the autopilot. I fired it up, got the gear up, and jumped into the
PB. I chased the DGII up to 60km or so, but with the joystick, I was corkscrewing around pretty
crazily. It was very cool, watching the DG. The PB is much "peppier", having a definite advantage in
power to weight ratio. I gave up on chasing the DG. I then re-started the scenario, launched the
DGII, and let it go, no air intake, no turbo. I got back in the PB, hovered up, yawed around to the
correct heading(135) and flew to orbit with the joystick. I was a few degrees off in alignment, but
the little PB is a hotrod, so I flew to ISS (I forgot to mention that amazingly, ISS was just about to
pass over as The ships were on the runway at KSC.) I just used the docking H.U.D. to fly directly to
ISS in a fraction of an orbit. I did this with my girlfriend on my lap in the PB, pretty cramped, now
WHERE is that joystick!?!?!?!?! Then I jumped BACK into the DGII, and found that without
turbopump it got to orbit with 9.9% main fuel remaining. Half an orbit later, I fired up the docking
H.U.D. in the DGII, and used translate mode to sync up. My girlfriend sat in the seat next to me in
the DGII, because my legs were asleep from the ride up in the PB. I have 9.0% main fuel, and
63.5% rcs. The view is nice. I can almost feel my legs now.
You guys should try this. it was an example of how amazing this simulation is. I used no time
acceleration, and start to finish was under two hours.
Thanks for putting this together. I have been flying sims since 1982, psion's "flight simulator" for
the ZX81, 16k ram.
Regards,
B.H.
Out.

[reekchaa]

Way to Go, B.H. <Cracker>  ...I have to try something along those lines.  Sounds like a hell of a
ride.
May I suggest some 'serious' Aerobraking procedures for extra Fun?  Try taking the DGII into a
sigle-pass reentry at a speed of 10k+, aerobraking a full orbit to carefully slow down enough so
that you don't burn or max-G.  The effect of trying to GLIDE into enough atmosphere so that you
can 'hold-into it' and not get flung back out into orbit, yet stay shallow enough so that the
atmospheric friction doesn't kill you is surprisingly exciting (eyeing 'D'isplay-3).  You got quite a bit
of Play to fly around manually, but an earthly alt of about 80k seems a good target to stay close
to, with a re-entry angle of about 3-6 degrees for full, luxurious managability.  (no, I'm not talking
about my hair)    Super Fun !

[DanSteph]

I tried to see a take-off of DGII from shutllea but didn't think to chase it
everytime we think we had got the most from this sim someone come with
a new fun things to do

Dan