Study of automatic and manual control problems of spaceplane atmospheric flight under simulated g-load effect

The descent in the atmosphere belongs to the most complicated phase of flight and presents stringent requirements for spaceplane systems. The enhanced requirements for reliability, the necessity of aircraft-type landing and a number of other reasons lead to the necessity of maximum involvement of the crew by means of creating, along with fully automatic, manual and director control systems and providing the crew with the possibility to monitor the systems operation and to actively override them. Participation of man in performance of such tasks during the atmospheric descent is hampered by a number of major difficulties caused by alteration of his state under the g-load effect.To evaluate the utmost capabilities of the manual and director control systems and to make rational selection of indication systems and controls it is necessary to create special flight simulation complexes comprising a hybrid computer complex capable of simulating vehicle trajectory and angular motions and the computer complex controlled centrifuge equipped with a crew-cabin, which would allow real-time simulation of the g-load effect upon the crew.This paper describes the structure of such complex, the distribution of tasks between the analog and digital computers and presents some results from evaluation of manual and director control system characteristics.