no 914 content, but cool anyway


We have all seen on TV how the last Space Shuttle is now in Los Angeles. Here is one final picture of the cockpit with everything powered on…for one last picture before the electronics and secret stuff were removed.

http://www.launchphotography.com/Endeavour_Flight_Deck.html

so many switches; so little time.

Thanks for sharing Jim,

I think it's a sad day in US history.

It's a sad sign of the times, just sad....

For all the billions of dollars spent on the space program, you would think they could afford a little more padding on the seat... They didn't skimp on the headrest???

Thanks for the pics!

All through college, I had this giant fisheye poster of the inside of the Apollo capsule and these fisheye shots are of the next generation cockpit.

Had a college professor who was on the space shuttle 5 man review board, and took his graduate level class on "Space Shuttle Technology". Have lots of class handouts on the shuttle systems/ windows/ power options. mission options, etc. He said each shuttle was suppoed to be good for 100 launches, and that "with the number of parts, there was no way that they weren't going to lose one".

As per the "secret stuff" I worked at Harris while they were building the flight control computers based on the old IBM AP-101's, and a 286 computer was probably smarter and faster, and had more RAM.

Private companies will do it safer, cheaper and better.

Nice Pic!

I have been fortunate enough to see 2 Shuttle launches (one was Endeavour) and two landings.

One launch was in the predawn hours and we were on the causeway between KSC & Cape Canaveral ( air force side).

When the shuttle lifts off, you see the bright lights and the shuttle rising into the air, but you dont hear it for many seconds.
The water in the river was as smooth as glass and you could SEE the shockwave of sound pressure approaching the causeway before the sound hit us. It was something I will never forget.

I also have two space shuttle belly tiles from the TPS. One has been on orbit, and the other is a pristine test specimin.

Stu

Remember when they are sitting in those seats they are wearing full-up Space suits. They dont need anymore padding.

Stu

I did a bunch of work for the Shuttle program over the years. I wrote emulators of the HUD (heads-up display) and of the glass cockpit displays for a NASA simulator. It was pretty cool stuff.

--DD

A buddy of mine worked for Singer down in Houston back in the 80's
and they had lots of fun on the simulators.
There was a huge chamber with an arm that different cockpits could be attached.
The arm could spin and move to simulate motions and even G forces.
I remember him telling me that they had created a 1st person pac-man game
that used the f16 cockpit and they flew through the maze.
Sounded like a lot of fun.
(our tax dollars at work.....)

He actually got into serious trouble for changing one of the voice
announcements for one of the non-crital alerts on the shuttle to something
a bit commical.

Interesting/Odd thing was that on the day of the Challenger explosion
he called me about 20-30 minutes later and said everthing was in lock down
and told me that things were going to get really strange and I might
not hear from him for a while. He also said that it looked like the problem
was due to not draining the fuel tanks the night before and because of the colder
temperature it caused an o-ring failure.
I always thought it was interesting that he knew (and I assume others knew) the cause
of the problem immeidately, yet we spent so much time and money trying to "figure out" the problem.

On a funny note, not sure if many of you remember back in late 1985 or so
there was a shuttle mission that had a communcation & antenna problem.
My friend was responsible for the s/w that controlled the antenna on the shuttle.
He had already planned a trip to Dallas and we were headed off to see
Flock of Seagulls and the Gogo's.
Nasa didn't want' him to leave Houston because of the radio/antenna issue but he
managed to get away. He was confident it wasn't his s/w causing the problem.
A day or so later I remember him laughing so hard after seeing a photo on the
news of a camera image of the antenna taken by the robotic arm.
In the photo all you could see was a bit of brown stuff around the antenna.
He laughed and said that was crap from the toilet that floated up and stuck
to the antenna and froze. That is why that antenna wouldn't move.
The solution was to simply rotate the ship to point it into the sun to melt it.
I've always wondered who's crap it was.....


--- bill

People were warned about the effect of cold on the "O" rings befor the Challenger launch. The warnings were ignored. This tragedy could have been prevented. I often thought that someone at NASA and/or Morton Thiokol should have been held accountable or gone to jail. Too bad they canceled the Shuttle porgram but like the Saturn 5, it was time to move on.

apollo 13 made it back in using 20amps. I wonder how many amps this cockpit takes?

The proximal cause was evidently pretty immediately known. The time and money was spent trying to figure out how the safeguards that should have prevented the problem failed, and what to do about that.

--DD

And there is even more to it than that. NASA made a Public Relations choice- go with disposable non-recoverable solid rocket boosters (SRB"S), or go green and "recycle" the boosters. The shuttle was the first time they ever bothered to recover, refurb and reuse the SRB's. In the grad class, we had an interesting discussion on the effects of a water dunk on an extremely hot SRB, and apparently they never followed up on their idea of an "inflatable" balloon" that would fill the SRB nozzle and prevent the ingress of cooler seawater. We spent a good amount of time discussing the effects of a quick non-uniform quench on the the steel used on the SRB. Can you say "warp it" boys and girls?

Fast forward several years and I was hanging out with one of my old college friends. Seems he worked in the Vehicle assembly building and oversaw the stacking and assembly of the SRB segments. Like the Titan III SRB design, different length segments could be stacked and bolted together to produce more or less thrust to orbit. He quit that job because it scared him. First, the segments were warped and ovaled after the dunking/cooling process, and they had to build the stack horizontally. They ran a chain through the central star opening within the solid fuel, and suspended the segment from the loop of chain. They rotated the stack segment around the chain axis to allow gravity to correct the ovaling, and then tried to ram the segments together. Once they got the tapered edges of the segments sorta together, they supported from underneath and tried to pull the chain out. And if that didn't work, they would press, poke, squeeze, and hammer to fit.

Hey brah, can you hit the light switch for me ? Thanks