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Hundreds of (mostly non-working) switches, indicator lights and buttons are arrayed in the Full Fuselage Trainer's shuttle cockpit, which is part of the exhibit at Seattle's Museum of Flight.
Some people in the Seattle region might have been disappointed last year when we didn’t land a real space shuttle. But after getting a behind-the-scenes look at the space shuttle trainer being assembled at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, I walked away feeling like we got lucky.
This thing is awesome.
Over the 30-year life of NASA’s space shuttle program, every astronaut spent hours upon hours practicing in the Full Fuselage Trainer, preparing for their missions. The interior of the trainer mirrors an actual space shuttle orbiter in almost every way imaginable — from the placement of the controls to the shape of the toilet.
Stepping inside is a chance to walk in the footsteps of astronauts, and to see what they went through on their long journey into orbit.
The trainer, delivered in pieces over the past few months, is now being assembled inside the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery at the Seattle museum. Our tour was led by Geoff Nunn, the exhibit developer.
Childhood dreams were realized as there in front of me, dominating the room, stood a giant wooden space shuttle replica. The trainer is in pieces now but will be fully assembled by the end of September. The payload half is being outfitted with a new walkway where visitors will be able to walk though the trainer. The nose of the shuttle, housing the cockpit and living quarters, will be attached in its original place.
We enjoyed the rare treat of actually getting to step inside the crew cabin and flight deck. The cabin is so tiny, it’s wild to think of seven people actually living in there (eating, sleeping, using the restroom, but no shower). The trainer is precise when it comes to layout and control placement, and some of the buttons are wired to work.
Even the toilet is completely replicated, although Nunn told us that it’s non-working. Apparently, going to the bathroom in space takes such finesse that it requires its very own mockup for "training."
GeekWire
The Full Fuselage Trainer is not yet fully assembled at the Museum of Flight. The nose section, including the cockpit, is at left. The cargo bay is at right. Sometime this month, all the pieces will be put together.
Everything has its place in the cabin. It’s lined with lockers carrying everything from delicate experimental equipment to athletic exercise bands. The cabin and flight deck are covered with patches of Velcro where tools and other necessities attach. NASA used special NASA blue Velcro strips to denote regular issue items and yellow Velcro for special astronaut-requested items.
Climbing up a tiny ladder, you reach the flight deck, which is even smaller than the main cabin and covered in switches, dials, and gauges. I was momentarily tempted to act out every sci-fi film I’ve ever seen in a crazy montage. The coolest things on the flight deck are the controls for the robotic arm, the closed-circuit television screens of the payload area, and the bags that hold the ropes if one ever has to rappel down the side of the shuttle, using a system called "sky genie."
When the exhibit opens this fall, be sure to visit this amazing icon of space transportation. In the meantime, click on over to GeekWire to see our exclusive gallery of space awesomeness.
More about shuttle museum displays:
- 'Hidden' space shuttle goes public in Houston
- NASA gets set for shuttle transfers in LA and Florida
- Crew compartment trainer goes to Ohio museum
- Shuttle Discovery takes place of honor at Smithsonian
Copyright 2012 GeekWire. Reprinted with permission.
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And about 30 years down the road, the tour guides will first have to explain to school children that people used to fly into orbit aboard ships such as the shuttle. Because by then, the manned US space program won't be around anymore due to the decisions of the Obama administration to privatize spaceflight and abandon the program that Bush had set in motion.
@BT: After explaining the wondered students that after cancelling the Constellation program He set a new goal for the space exploration by raising up the challenge going to Mars. And explaining them that it was your beloved Jr. that killed the Space Shuttle program in 2004. So please, stop watching FAUX News all the time and try to find some information.
http://spaceksc.blogspot.com/2010/04/when-bush-cancelled-space-shuttle.html
http://io9.com/5518187/obamas-plans-for-nasa-mars-by-2030-6-billion-budget-increase-today
Enjoy the reading......
You are assuming that we will have museums 30 years in the future...America has yet to learn a simple lesson" "R-E-P-E-N-T!!!! For the kingdom of God is at hand!" 10.10.12
How can you say this:
"Because by then, the manned US space program won't be around anymore..."
(whatever 'space program' really means) and this:
"due to the decisions of the Obama administration to privatize spaceflight..."
At the same time?
Are you saying 'Americans in space' don't count unless they wear a NASA patch?
No matter what happened, the Space Transportation System (the Shuttle) was never going to be the last word in spacecraft for all time. I'm sure kids at the National Air and Space Museum are shown The Spirit of St. Louis, and told that we once flew across the Atlantic in planes like that, too. Today, commercial aircraft do it many times daily, and crowds no longer gather for their arrival. And that's good, my friend. That's technological maturity.
In time, something will replace the coming Commercial Crew capsules/lifting bodies, bringing us closer to the same day for spaceflight to LEO (and the easier and cheaper that becomes, the easier and cheaper it becomes to assemble deep-space vehicles to do exploratory/research/commercial things still farther away)
Get out of the Apollo/Shuttle rut, and move on, as technology should. There were spacecraft before them, there are spacecraft after them.
Get out of the mindset that all US human spaceflight will always be purely for exploration, and purely by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Oh. and:
"The shuttle's chief purpose over the next several years will be to help finish assembly of the International Space Station. In 2010, the space shuttle, after nearly 30 years of duty, will be retired from service."
— President George W. Bush
January 14, 2004
That retirement was going to fall on the next guy's (or woman's) term, no matter who it was.
And Skeeter, what if I'd taken that attitude in 1982 or earlier? That passage is obviously as old as the Bible itself, and we're still here. You don't know when (or if), I don't know when (or if). Many others prepared for the Second Coming on specific dates, and were quite disappointed. Unless you're suicidal, or a condemned man who's run out of appeals, it's safer to assume there will be a tomorrow, and a next week/year/decade/century.
I'm not going to max out my credit card or stop saving money now, in the expectation (or hope) that it soon won't matter...
Hernan, I was a contractor on the Constellation program that BT is talking about, so you don't have to get insulting with him.
I am also a staunch supporter of president Obama even though he killed the US human space flight program and ruined my company that was working directly with the NASA Cx Architecture Trades and Analysis team at JSC.
I have friends at SpaceX and I hope and pray that they are successful. However, my opinion is that the SLS will take longer and will have less capability of Constellation and will cause the US to not have the ability to (for instance) fly to the Moon until after 2022, if that soon. We flew Ares I (albeit with four instead of five rocket segments) and could have met the 2014 deadline had Cx not been scrapped. The only option now is private vehicles to the ISS, but there are NO answers to the Moon and Mars other than SLS.
And the issue of NASA budgets is always a shell game. You can post all the articles you want on the proposed budgets, but even with multi billions of dollars in the Cx budget, it was NEVER funded and always lived off of scraps from other projects tables. It is not the budget that counts but the expenditures that count, because congress will pass a budget and then not authorize the expenditures. Games, games and more games.
Vision,
Thank you for your comments.
Someone who has lived the effects of politics.
Sorry you do not support a leader more kind to the cause.
I'm sorry that your company was negatively impacted by this (I know someone else who lost a contract position at JSC over this as well.)
But it's incorrect to assert that Constellation (or the Shuttle, as some do) equals "the US human space flight program."
Just tell the GOP that it can delivery bombs and attack Iran or Iraq and they will fund it completely!
That's nice that Seattle got the simulator/mockup. I'm not sure what was meant by "most buttons' dont work, does that mean they are now broken or were always inoperative? Obviously most of the buttons are 'fake' since it doesn't have a real space shuttle attached to it, but it would be nice if they restored it to whatever working order it was originally.
Well since we've gone from "space flight" to politics, I'll throw in the game changer for me. Since the United States is supposed to be about liberty for all, I will always vote for the "party" that includes the weakest of our citizens. Strange how so many are up in arms about Medicare being cut for the elderly yet won't lift a finger when an innocent baby is vacuumed out of its "mother's" womb.
I will always vote for the party that protects its most helpless citizens, the space program be damned! Imagine if one woman decided she didn't want her 84 year old dad any longer and had his skull punctured and his brain sucked out, all in the name of "choice!" For that to happen we just need to extend the definition of "late-term" abortion.
50,000,000 baby Americans never got to vote on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. America has yet to learn a simple lesson" "R-E-P-E-N-T!!!! For the kingdom of God is at hand!" 10.10.12
I HATE politics, which is why I (usually) love the science part of the vine.
"Well since we've gone from "space flight" to politics..."
We?
Government-financed spaceflight will always have a political component. That doesn't mean the thread's open to all political issues.
This trainer was originally in Building 9N (north) at Johnson Space Center in Houston. I worked at JSC in building 9S and have been on it many times.
In building 9S (south) there is a picture gallery of B&W photos taken when this trainer was being built. It was cool to see the large, unpainted plywood frame of the shuttle taking shape and there's also pics of the construction showing people with handsaws cutting it into shape. It was built in 9S and rolled into 9N. There's pic of that also...
Enjoy this Seattle...it's a nice item...
Roger, I have been in this trainer too. I'm pretty surprised that it was able to be dismantled and reassembled without falling to pieces. I am happy to keep everything possible from Shuttle though. The unfinished Shuttle outside the cafeteria at KSC is a real treat though.
Frank, having an inside seat at the Cx table from 2005 to 2009 showed me how complex and fragile and (so far) impossible it is to get a large system integrated and flying. The NASA inter agency competition and lack of cooperation is mind numbing. The various Centers don't even use the same CAD systems and getting competing divisions in different centers to share information is just about impossible. There isn't even a single dictionary of terms used across the agency! I'm afraid that unless there is a fundamental overhaul of the NASA culture and funding procedures, we will forever be trapped within a Groundhog Day nightmare, constantly starting over and over and over on one marginal idea after another.
Skeeter, isn't there some discussion of "legitimate rape" going on somewhere where you can pester people who will actually pay attention to you?