Initial deceleration, we have just started to hit the atmosphere..hold on kiddies!

Pleas ensure your tray tables are up, and your seatbelt is fastened..


Things are starting to warm up a little in here...


Nice view...


Wow, we are a shooting star...Doing about Mach 14 or so here, maximum velocity and falling 14,000 ft a second +



And then we are in the atmosphere proper, you wouldnt know it at first but suddenly we start to cool down..phew, looks like well make it



And then just when you thought you WOULDNT loose your breakfast, program 305 mission control tells you to punch into the computer has the shuttle making steep banks to loose speed...


But we are on track, the neat thing is you can monitor the decent process on the panel. Initially I was coming in slightly off centre and steep, these displays helped heaps to get things on track.

Coming home, here at 310 feet and mack.8, some more steep turns coming up before we hit the glideslope...


All manual now, HUD helping us down..

Gear down and locked..

Well there you go. I havnt shown my landing, the brick stopped flying about 300ft short of the runway

that dose look brilliant B) Welcome home Endeavour

Pity about your landing, I suppose its like all the times iv tried landing a heavy aircraft with no engins, its hard to judge how its gana glide..
When a object travelling in the vacum of space at 17500 mph suddenly hits the Air Particles that surround our planet the more it hits the more friction is created which creates the fireball effect and if you happen to hit at the wrong angle you either skip off the atmosphere or burn up
hmm,anyway, as the shuttle hits the atmosphere at speed hey presto, heat. Just like concorde use to heat up and expand at high altitude and speed.