It was a calm, clear night of 20th April, 1998, I was a student pilot in a Hughes 500D helicopter on a cross-country flight from the St. Paul, MN downtown airport back home to good old Grand Forks, ND. The flight was my final requirement prior to taking the test to achieve a helicopter instrument rating. My log book shows that we were 35 DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) or 35 nautical miles from the VOR on Airway Victor 2. This put us somewhere south/southeast of St. Cloud, MN, cruising along at what I recall was 4,500 feet above sea level at approximately 120 knots. Then, it happened…BOOOOM! It is not hyperbole to say that it was a thunderous explosion, followed by a hurricane blast of wind to the face.

It all started when my flight instructor asked a mundane question about our planned instrument approach into Alexandria, MN. We swapped control of the aircraft and I bent over to consult the instrument approach plate on my kneeboard. As I snapped on the red lens flashlight, the explosion happened. Given my face-down orientation, the sound, and ensuing blast of wind, several thoughts crossed my mind: the helicopter is falling apart, I'm plunging to my death, and the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion as an HD quality movie going off in my head. In the 1.359 seconds that it took us to stop screaming, we realized that the Plexiglas windscreen in front of me was essentially gone, but everything else was good to go. After slowing the craft, a cursory inspection revealed that the cockpit was covered in blood, guts, and feathers. We had done the improbable by hitting a Mallard duck over Central Minnesota and in the process, destroying the windscreen. Had I not been looking at my kneeboard, I would have been covered in pate. We simply declared an emergency and canceled our flight plan with Minneapolis Center and, like the Memphis Belle, limped our way into Alexandria to await rescue from our compatriots at the University of North Dakota (home of the Fighting Sioux).

So what? Well, I wanted to point out how much of a NASA fan and astronut I am. In a terrifying moment, where for a split second I thought that I was checking out, my mind drifted to the Space Shuttle. Most males my age wanted to shake the hands of George Brett or Wayne Gretzky. I wanted to, and in fact did, shake the hands of Buzz Aldrin. (He was after all on the North Dakota faculty at the time.) Thus, when I found the shuttle dataset in the MASS package, I had to include it in this tome. By the way, if you ever get the chance to see the Space Shuttle Atlantis display at Kennedy Space Center, do not miss it.

For this problem, we will try and develop a neural network to answer the question of whether or not the shuttle should use the autolanding system. The default decision is to let the crew land the craft. However, the autoland capability may be required for situations of crew incapacitation or adverse effects of gravity upon re-entry after extended orbital operations. This data is based on computer simulations, not actual flights. In reality, the autoland system went through some trials and tribulations and, for the most part, the shuttle astronauts were in charge during the landing process. Here are a couple of links for further background information: