Saving the shuttle simulator–“It was an artifact that needed to be preserved”
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Maybe I'm weird, but the details of the computers and however they were producing the graphics with mid-70s technology is actually more interesting to me than the simulator itself.
Are they using computer graphics by that point? Or are they stuck with computer-controlled cameras over over physical models?
Edit: Found some high-level documentation of the whole computer systems[1]. Based on the description of the visual system on page 117, it looks like has specialised hardware for lit, flat-shaded polygonal graphics.
While it's a imperfect preservation from a historical standpoint giving a lot of people the opportunity to experience it would help preserve it for the future.
Museums often struggle with this. Some historically interesting piece of whatever languishes and then eventually gets chucked whereas something that's more completely unremarkable and low value and common enough to let people actually interact with it winds up being the star of their collection.
But then it would also offer an arcade style version that the general public could just flip switches to try out.
I’m guessing the general public would not be able to follow the sequences needed to make the original approachable or fun.
I proposed a interactive art piece for Burning Man that offered this “follow the sequence by flipping switches and hitting buttons” game.
But then the pandemic hit became one of the worst ideas possible.
Here’s the concept video I put together:
IIRC, the original ones were not raster displays, but long-persistence X-Y displays.
With adequate documentation, they could be emulated, at least at the input/output level.
Would be fun then to add new missions to an old simulator :-)
> After the real work was done, they let me shoot a couple of approaches into Kennedy. It has an intuitive Heads Up Display, similar to what some 737s have. The control stick was quite unique however. It sits between your legs like a fighter jet and it's fly-by-wire with an unusual activation mechanism that I can't really describe. It was very sensitive so you have to make short inputs, almost flying it with just 2 fingers. It's just like flying an approach in an airplane except you were coming in at 250-300 kts most of the way, you were flying a 18.5 degree glide path (normal plane is 3 degrees), and there was no 2nd chance . The HUD guidance plus the approach lights at Kennedy made it very easy to fly an approach. I had no trouble landing safely, but it was nearly impossible to get a "greaser". I think I bounced one and floated one. I left Buidling 5 with the biggest grin on my face that day
- Gman737 - DEC 10, 2021 10:24 AM
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/12/saving-the-shuttle-s...
Yeah, the Shuttle was such a bad glider that they trained pilots using a business jet with gear down and reverse thrust.
Keeping the cockpit lights on is about as far as it usually goes. The Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos has some aircraft where the cockpit lights are lit, but that's all. The Museum of Flight in Seattle used to try to keep some of their planes in flyable condition, but as the Boeing retirees die off, that's become harder.
As a student, this simulator was just another piece of junk collecting dust at the Riverside campus at Texas A&M. The storage building itself was an old WWII hanger, and was mostly used by student groups for constructing design projects, with access to the adjacent (long-retired) runway space for testing.
The amount of legacy/surplus aerospace hardware stored in that hanger was overwhelming. I don't think I fully appreciated it at the time. Most of it is probably cleared out by now. Small world
That's a strange design decision given it'd be known that those incandescent bulbs would need regular replacement.
It's a shame they went with a static display rather then add a "ride" aspect. While some may argue this is a museum not a theme park, the more engaging it is the more people will visit and learn.
Also, I'm bummed they replaced them because LEDs have a very different feel.
Assembly of Endeavour, the final STS to be built, was completed in 1990. Blue LEDs appeared in 1993 and white ones several years alter. During the shuttle era, LEDS were invariably red, green and yellow. I'd be surprised if those colours were considered suitable for general illumination of flight instrumentation.
Then it is interesting that my father's 1989 Wolfsburg Edition Jetta has a blue LED in the dash
"The first blue-violet LED using magnesium-doped gallium nitride was made at Stanford University in 1972 by Herb Maruska and Wally Rhines, doctoral students in materials science and engineering." [1]
"In August 1989, Cree introduced the first commercially available blue LED based on the indirect bandgap semiconductor, silicon carbide (SiC)." [2]
What you must be thinking of: "Two years later, in 1993, high-brightness blue LEDs were demonstrated by Shuji Nakamura of Nichia Corporation using a gallium nitride growth process." [3]
[1,2,3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#blue_LE...
Regarding your father's car, I'd suggest the indicator in question is either an after-market addition, or an original incandescent mini-bulb behind a blue plastic filter. The latter was a common way to implement coloured dashboard lights back then.
Except for "clearly," then sure. I should have known because when most people talk about LED they mean "hardened for aerospace LED." Right? Come on.
> Regarding your father's car
Nope. Volkswagen used what anyone would recognize as an ordinary blue LED in their 1989 model year dash, along with ordinary red, green & yellow LEDs.
Similar to this one: http://gtcarlot.com/interiors/Volkswagen/Rabbit+Pickup/1981/...
Theme park rides are designed from scratch for high-uptime usage. Like real aircraft, something like this probably required several hours of maintenance for every hour of "flight-time" back in the day.
This simulator is over 50 years old; anyone actively using it, especially unsupervised, would cause damage.
I mean I'm all for someone building a newer and more resilient simulator, or reproducing it in VR, but at this point this is a genuine museum piece and the focus should be on conservation, not entertainment.
It's expensive and takes up a lot of space. Letting people use it, even if they can't truly "fly" it, is probably the best shot it has at having any staying power in its new home. Sure that'll probably require some motor, lightbulb and upholstery replacements over time but it should be fine as long as they stay on top of it.
When the museum comes under hard times a decade or more in the future, after the novelty has worn off, being a cost positive attraction vs a cost neutral use of space that could be used for something that can attract people is likely the difference between the simulator staying or going.
The Delta museum near the Atlanta airport has an old, full-motion, level D 737 flight simulator anyone can pay to "fly". A operator joins you in the simulator and sets up and operates the simulator for you. $425 gets you 45 minutes and it seems to stay relatively busy.
I would imagine the operator of a Space Shuttle simulator could charge quite a bit more for the opportunity to fly one of the most famous aircraft ever built.
Also soldering them would be least of the cost concerns for the shuttle program, which had much bigger and nastier cost centers.
Crashed it like nine times