Electromechanical Lunar Lander | Hacker News Reader

Electromechanical Lunar Lander

chrisfenton.com

49 pointsluu8 comments

There was an electro-mechanical landing simulator for the Space Shuttle, which "flew" a video camera over a miniature landscape. Unfortunately, it's very hard to search for, because of all of the Space Shuttle simulator products.

EDIT: The lack of references to those electro-mechanical video landing simulators is pretty dramatic. They came at the brief period of time when computers were powerful enough to enable very sophisticated motion control, but too weak for real time 3D simulation. For a brief period of time, they were rare and valuable equipment, then quickly became obsolete junk. There are simply no references to them which show that mechanism!

For an example of that period's motion control as used in VFX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtPA6nIBs5g

Can anyone help find a reference?

The technology was originally developed in the Apollo project for the lunar landing simulator and even spawned an optics company called Televue. The scale of Apollo was mind boggling.

Astronauts inside a lander mockup and the scenery projected on screens.

NASA Vertical Motion Simulator: https://www.cnet.com/news/a-wild-ride-on-nasas-massive-fligh...

Not what we were just talking about, but tangentially related.

Project LOLA, there's a Gizmodo article about it: https://gizmodo.com/project-lola-is-a-bizarre-snapshot-from-...

This project was both super fun to build and surprisingly fun to play. It had been on my project “to-do” list for a really long time, and it was one of those rare projects that turned out better than expected. It even held up to a night of drunken party-goers playing it!

There's a certain visceral sense when a media device involves any kind of substantial mechanism. This even extends to video games. There is something special about the vector graphics produced by electron guns. The original Lunar Lander video game, glowing in the dark arcade room with its substantial throttle lever was a memorable experience, especially when your cold hard cash is on the line and your game can be cut short by a mistake.

See also: Bally Space Flight from 1969: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVdonoSadcA

I have a fairly strong memory of an electromechanical space docking game (Apollo command module and lander IIRC). My favourite of that type was a "sit-in" fighter aircraft simulator where you had to shoot aircraft images projected on a wide screen - the chair would turn to point at your targets on the screen.

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