Last Shuttle Cockpit Photos Before Powerdown

[scannon]

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

[Mondo]

Guess they didn't need much lumbar support... oh, the row of switches on the right, third row down, second from left.. that switch should be in the up position

[westy turbo]

Now thats a proper cockpit!!!

[Off Road SHO]

I've looked at those pics for nearly an hour now and for the life of me, I don't see a "Start" switch, or even a CD player. Meh, I'll wait for next year's model.

 

Tom

[coffee break]

Holy Crap!

[jimrankin]

If you print out the owners manual for an I-POD it runs 65 pages. Any guess on how many tons of paper the manual for all the systems on this would run? :-)

[scannon]

Early in my career in aerospace it was determined that the paper to build and operate a spacecraft roughly equaled the weight of the spacecraft. From what I saw I have no reason to doubt that figure. The last few years we finally went digital and eliminated much of that paper. Didn't eliminate much of the labor cost to produce the drawings and documents, just the cost of printing and reproduction of the paper.

 

I understand why hammers cost $600 when the government buys them and I know that companies I worked for lost money even at that kind of figure. It all comes down to the government's way of doing business.

[DeanG]

Cup holders?

[Sevnn]

When I was a kid I was able to go to Space Camp in Huntsville, AL. While there I had time in 2 of their SS simulators. One was an accurate reproduction of the SS avionics and was used in the Space Camp movie for their time in space. I was a science officer on the mission in that simulator so most of my time was spent doing nothing in the lower level.

 

Their second simulator wasn't nearly as accurate (about 1/3 of the switches and panels) but it was hydraulically suspended and operated by the controls we had in front of us. We had a couple days of training before our big mission. During none of those days were the controls active so we assumed they didn't trust us with a moving simulator.

 

I was commander in the big seat for that mission, probably because I was a huge nerd and knew more than anyone else in my group. On the day of our mission myself and my pilot bought some freeze dried ice cream and got someone to give us some fishing line. We rigged the fishing line through the overhead panels and down to the side of our seats. When we were "in space" during the mission, we pulled on the fishing line so that the ice cream was "floating" in space. I had the video of the mission and it looked great, but unfortunately the video tape is long gone.

 

The best part of the mission though was during approach I was supposed to pull back on the stick to reduce speed. No one told us that the hydraulics had been activated so when I pulled back on the stick and the simulator jumped back, I was so startled that I blurted F*** into my voice activated mic. Mission control quickly responded asking us to watch our language on open mics (since it was being recorded and we were about 8 years old at the time...).

 

Thanks for posting these pics and giving me a great throwback.