-> ok... the shuttle pulls up to the ISS, makes its "gainer" backflip
-> for photo shots of the belly, and then comes up in front of the 
-> station to dock... in effect, the shuttle rises into the station 
-> since it is belly forward to the direction of travel... 
  
-> now, when one is watching NASA TV, the photos of the group's
-> passage over the earth show the ground travel to be away from the 
-> belly of the shuttle instead of toward it as it was when the shuttle 
-> docked with the station... 

-> so... the question(s), how does this happen? do they pancake spin
-> the station after the shuttle has docked so the station is "pulling" 
-> it instead of "pushing" it? if so, why? surely the belly of the 
-> shuttle is much more protected than the open cargo bay? 
  
 DW> Surely the ISS doesn't rotate once every orbital revolution. 

i wasn't (trying) to imply that, actually...

 DW> If it did  so, a lot of the "microgravity" experiments would get 
 DW> messed up. So the  station's orientation is fixed in space, and as 
 DW> it goes around the  earth, as seen from the station, the earth 
 DW> appears to go around it,  sometimes moving "forward" and sometimes 
 DW> "backward".

hummm... so the theory is that the station's belly is toward the earth at
times and then when it is on the opposite side of the earth, the top of the
station is toward the earth? in between, one end or the other is toward the
earth??
   
 DW> Protection has nothing to do with it. 

actually, i suspect that that and cooling issues of the shuttle do come
into play... but i figured i'd drop a line in here and see what others
thought...

FWIW: we've discussed your theory as well as the other one in which the
station's belly always points to the earth... in this scenario, the only
way that the shuttle would go from being "pushed"  to being
"pulled" would require at least one 180 pancake spin... then
another when they undock, if i recall correctly that they leave the station
being "pushed" like they were when they docked...

)\/(ark