"Go for Sep" Shuttle ALT film
 

Hello All,

For those of us who are STS (Space Shuttle) scale model rocket--and static model--fans, *here* (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHcB01vx1aE ) is a ~20-minute NASA film, "Go for Sep," which is about the Orbiter OV-101 Enterprise's Approach and Landing Test (ALT) flights, which were conducted in 1977. For modelers, there are numerous still--and slow movement--shots, which can be "frozen" and studied/screen captured/printed for improving models' physical details and decor schemes. Also:

The film covers the things that went right--and wrong--during the five free flights, when the Enterprise separated from the 747 SCA (Shuttle Carrier Aircraft) and glided to landings on the lake bed and paved runways at Edwards Air Force Base. The first three were conducted with the tail cone on, and the final two with the tail cone off. The greater pre-separation aerodynamic buffeting of the SCA's tail during the "tail cone off" flights was shown dramatically in engineering camera films; the flexing of the 747 horizontal stabilizer's rectangular tip plates--and of the horizontal stabilizer itself--is a little unnerving to watch, and:

Everyone knows about the Enterprise's big "bounce"--due to PIO, pilot-induced oscillations--at touchdown on the final ALT flight, the first one to land on a paved runway (to show that landings from space, on the Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility runway, could be done). But many may not know--I didn't--that the bounce's addition to the rollout distance, while still within the safe distance, added nearly 2,000 feet to the landing distance! Also, a potentially more serious problem occurred right at Orbiter/SCA separation on the very first ("tail cone on") free flight. One of the Enterprise's GPCs (General-Purpose Computers) failed a split-second after the explosive bolts holding the two craft together were fired; fortunately, the "inter-GPCs 'voting' system" worked as designed, and the single GPC failure had no effect on the test flight.