I believe touchdown/landing of most if not all aircraft is still done
manually.  Computer control just is not as reliable as a human pilot for
touch down/landing.  This is at least the opinion of Nasa - if you look at
the Mars mission objective for example:  They want to do a 100 second burn
from the space station to accelerate the space craft to more than 35,000
km/s or so to reach Mars in 6 weeks, rather than 6 months.  How do you think
they will stop once they reach their destination ? ... by wizzing around the
planet at low altitude many, many times, using Mars' thin atmosphere as a
break.  Is this to be done by computer control ? ... no way !  The pilot
will do it, keeping a constant eye on the horizon controls to keep the space
craft above the ground.

Rgs
Ian.

-----Original Message-----
From: pic microcontroller discussion list
[mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Herbert Graf
Sent: Monday, 17 March 2003 6:08 am
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: shuttle damage


> >can the shuttle re-enter and land by remote control?
>
> Well my understanding is that at the time of re-entry it is under fully
> automatic computer control. Any sort of manual intervention cannot be done
> fast enough to get out of trouble.

        True, but aren't that last stages of touch down always done
manually? Even
if they are it is likely an autopilot could do it if necessary. TTYL

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