

Flight Deck of the Space Shuttle Endeavour - flyinglizard
http://www.launchphotography.com/Endeavour_Flight_Deck.html
Quite an apparatus. An interesting mix of controls, from rotary buttons, linear gauges and toggle switches from the 70's, all the way to a modern glass cockpit.<p>The seats look like ancient torture devices.
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jonursenbach
Back in 1996 I was part of the first class as the, now closed, Mountain View
Space Camp. I was 11. When time came for the shuttle simulations, I
volunteered to be pilot. After a quick 10 minute tutorial over what every
button did in the deck we were off.

We were able to get out into orbit with the help of Mission Control, but on
the way back it was just us in the deck.

We burned up on re-entry.

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yesimahuman
If anyone is interested, the X-Plane flight simulator has several space
shuttle situations, such as full re-entry. X-Plane strives to be very
realistic, and re-entry is very challenging.

<http://www.x-plane.com/>

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bandwevil
There's also Orbiter, which is probably even more realistic since its main
goal is realistic space flight. <http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/>

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yesimahuman
Awesome, thanks for that link!

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idank
Truly amazing. What's even more amazing is how ancient the technology inside
one of mankind's most incredible inventions looks compared to what we know
today.

It reminds me of a visit to one of Israel's Air Force bases where I got to see
the F-16's up close. I couldn't believe it when we were told that pilots upon
receiving coordinates, had to open up a notebook beside them and actually look
it up to know where to go because their navigation system was so old. The
F-16I had a lot of improvements in this area that no longer required manual
lookup by the pilot.

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ddbeck
I'd like to note that the shuttle fleet received a "glass cockpit" upgrade
(around 1997-1998), replacing many mechanical indicators with multi-function
displays. Here's a link to a (small) side-by-side comparison:

[http://human-
factors.arc.nasa.gov/ihi/research_groups/isis/M...](http://human-
factors.arc.nasa.gov/ihi/research_groups/isis/McCandless/shuttle.html)

Prior to the upgrade, the space shuttle looked dated compared to commercial
airliners flying at the time. It's debatable whether the shuttles looked more
ancient then or now.

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ams6110
Couple of years ago flew on an MD-80/DC-10 that had what looked like the
original 1970's-era instrumentation. It did look pretty ancient. Wonder how
many pilots are even qualified to fly on that, or if the qualifications are
different.

The same plane was leaking fuel out of the wing throughout the flight. Not
really confidence-inspiring.

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jspthrowaway
There's a few parts of that anecdote which confuse me as a pilot. The first
one is two vastly different aircraft separated by a slash as if to indicate
that they are equivalent. The second is an air crew that completed a flight,
while leaking fuel, without declaring emergency and putting it down. Lastly,
someone _actually_ observing fuel leaking from the aircraft and thinking "meh,
it's just old," rather than alerting the air crew.

(Put another way, I have doubts that you were observing a fuel leak. Those are
generally pretty easy to notice -- "why are we consuming two thousand extra
pounds of fuel per hour?")

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CrankyPants
Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story, unless you can't think
of anything better.

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spencerfry
Getting an Error 999.

Here's a cached version:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:B4tHkMj...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:B4tHkMjhvUEJ:www.launchphotography.com/Endeavour_Flight_Deck.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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raldi
What's with the blue "ENDEAVOUR" sign in the last photos? Is that to avoid
embarrassing "Oh dear, I appear to be boarding the wrong shuttle" moments?

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phreeza
Those seats look exceptionally uncomfortable, I wonder if there is a reason
for that?

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quux
My guess would be that during launch and reentry the astronauts are wearing
pressure suits that include a backpack, are custom fitted and probably provide
padding. In orbit theres no need for padding on the seats.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Crew_Escape_Suit>

~~~
objclxt
Yes, they wore ACES suits[1], which are partially pressurised.

Of course, at launch they wouldn't be sitting on the seats at all, they'd be
lying on them.

[1]:<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Crew_Escape_Suit>

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objclxt
^ Too late for me to edit this, I should have said _fully_ pressurised. The
LES, the suit used on shuttle missions up to the late 90s, was partially
pressurised.

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runjake
Does anyone happen to know the contractors involved with the primary computers
in the Shuttles? I was told they used a newer iteration of the Boeing ACUs
similar to what used to be in the B-52Hs for their Offensive Avionics System.
Did they sit on a MIL-STD-1553 bus variant? Any truth to that?

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spydum
Same photo came up semi-recently: <http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120418.html>

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jlgreco
Did they sit in these seats during takeoff? And if so, how did they climb into
those seats while the Shuttle was vertical on the launch pad?

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CrankyPants
The entire thing is planned, practiced, and executed, with the help of a team
of specialists (some of whom are also astronauts):
[http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/flyoutcapec...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/flyoutcapecrusaders.html)

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retube
Nice pics but the fish-eye ruins it for me. The distortion is very
distracting.

