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Space

On EBay: Shuttle Flight Deck Simulator 200

Posted by chrisd from the lance-may-be-able-to-afford-this dept.
An anonymous reader writes: "Just to pass time before taking the real trip. shuttle flight deck simulator" Not a real nasa simulator, but a very impressive operating replica. The construction details are quite interesting too.
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On EBay: Shuttle Flight Deck Simulator More

On EBay: Shuttle Flight Deck Simulator

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  • ...but I'd prefer the real thing! ;-)

  • Price.. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    $14,999 and no bids! I can't ever think why!

    • Gotta love the caption on the photos, too:

      (Note: not all items in this photo are included in this auction)

      So I don't even know how much of that thing $15K buys! Maybe it just buys the frame and all the knobs are to be sold on another auction?

      Sheesh...

      GMD

    • He'll never sell it with that high a minimum bid.

      He should have started the bidding at $1 and had a reserve of $14,500. Then he could at least see what the market will bear for his thingy without risk.

  • Oh, great. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @05:41PM (#4114863)
    Now terrorists can buy it so that they can train to hijack the shuttle.
    • with all the problems its been having recently we are probably all better off with that choice.
    • And we will get to watch the video of the moon collapsing for the next year

      If we allow the resulting change in the tides to affect us, the terrorists will have won
  • But beside that fact this is a real nice thing, it is a shame that a school dropped a program like this though.

  • What's with the pictures? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nanaki ( 602955 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @05:44PM (#4114881)
    Most of the pictures on the page have a little note under them saying what's being sold doesn't include everything shown. What is included?
  • ... that the construction site is actually still up.

  • Public Property? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The Dobber ( 576407 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @05:45PM (#4114886)
    If he recieved a grant (I'm assuming some type of educational type), wouldn't this be property of the goverment/school system/public entity?
    • As the website says, the school dropped the flight shuttle program and allowed him to take the simulator with him when he left. Now, he doesn't want to pay $60/month any longer to store it, so he decided to sell it on ebay.
    • Many grants come from private sources. My mother was a teacher and got a load of cool tech gadgets from a weather study grant once (digital cams, laptops, etc..) in the early 90's. The grant specifically stated that any materials/items bought with the grant were NOT to be given to the school system when the project completed. So she could keep them, sell them, eat them, whatever.

    • Re:Public Property? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by aslagle ( 441969 )
      Not the way most high school-level grants work. Most grants (even Federal ones) at this level are to the teacher, not the school. Included in the terms of the grant are that the property bought with the money goes with the teacher - not the school they were at the time. So, the school probably couldn't really have stopped him from taking it anyway.
  • If you want a cheaper way to play shuttle-pilot, X-Plane [x-plane.com] offers a space shuttle landing scenario. The demo version limits you to about 6 minutes of flight time, but that's enough to land the shuttle from final approach. Of course the payed version doesn't have a time limit, and you can start from space and land from there.

  • Hmmm.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @05:45PM (#4114892)
    "This one-of-a-kind simulator is almost exactly like the simulators the NASA astronauts train on"

    So it's a simulated simulator?

  • Operating? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rlangis ( 534366 ) <rlangis&geekfest,net> on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @05:47PM (#4114908) Homepage Journal
    Not a real nasa simulator, but a very impressive operating replica. The construction details are quite interesting too.

    I'd hardly call that 'operating'. Did you actually LOOK at the construction details? Most of the knobs/switches and doo-dads aren't even connected to *anything*. I would at LEAST like some of the switches to turn on a light or make something buzz or whirr or SOMETHING. Especially for the list price of $15k.

    • Re:Operating? (Score:2, Funny)

      by mlh1996 ( 446618 )
      It's actually more functional than a lot of the ship simulators I learned on in the Navy.

      Want really lame? Try operating the "simulator" you just drew on the chalkboard.

    • Actually, a lot of them do make a corresponding indicator light up. Most of the guages aren't wired and a surprising number of the lights aren't wired, though. The computer keypad and joystick DO work, and I believe the creator has a computer with simulator software on it, though it doesn't appear to be included in the auction...
  • 13933 hits at 5:48 PM EDT ;-)

    Already had read through the stuff, so far from the first hit

  • Not the only one (Score:4, Informative)

    by Burdell ( 228580 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @05:51PM (#4114926)
    Two of the Space Camp simulators in Huntsville, AL are fairly accurate recreations of the whole flight deck and mid deck of an orbiter (the panels are really only a small part of it). One of them (Atlantis) is from the movie "Space Camp" [imdb.com] (don't ever watch it if you can help it). The other simulators in Huntsville are not as accurate (they are motion-based, and it is hard to build a two story motion-based simulator), but the panels are just about as accurate (although the relative placement isn't 100%).

    Basically, when he says "To my knowledge, there is not another like it in the world.", he may be right (to his knowledge, but then that just means that he is not very knowledgeable). There are other Space Camps around the US and the world (they are franchisees from the original in Huntsville) and at least some of them also have simulators.

  • Hey Baby (Score:5, Funny)

    by FakePlasticDubya ( 472427 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @05:54PM (#4114952) Homepage
    Want to train for the 150-mile high club?
  • but my first thought was "great set for a photo shoot or a film".
  • I've been playing with auction sniping [auctionsniper.com] clients recently. They work really well when you don't want to be "one-upped" when bidding on auctions. Pretty cool.

    Maybe they'd only work with an object of this magnatude if you throw a pack of "wonder diet pills" in with it.

    • I've been playing with auction sniping [auctionsniper.com] clients recently. They work really well when you don't want to be "one-upped" when bidding on auctions
      Why not just bid what you are willing to pay? You know how proxy bidding works, don't you?

      I'm guessing that would just make too much sense.

      • Why not just bid what you are willing to pay? You know how proxy bidding works, don't you?

        Because other people tend to base what they are willing to pay on what you are willing to pay.

        Placing a competitive bid early in an auction is just plain stupid.

  • Did you see this guy's seller history (Score:5, Informative)

    by thelinuxking ( 574760 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @06:02PM (#4115005)
    He tried selling this thing a total of 4 times, each of which he recieved NO BIDS AT ALL! It took him 3 times to sell his Actual NASA Mission Control Console Computer. Here are his attempts to sell that: First: Wanted $199, no bids Second: Wanted $175, no bids Third: Sold that thing for $50 Chances are by the time he sells this, it will be around $1000...
  • see the counter at the bottom of the e-bay auction site?

    watch it spin!

  • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I'm guessing you (like several people I know) don't understand why people play videogames either.
      A lot of people (like myself) would like to do things that we can't - whether it's flying a space shuttle, piloting mecha, or leading a party of adventurers into a dungeon.
      Flying an airplane is cool, but it's just not the same thing, any more than getting a job in the timber industry driving a six-legged forest walker would convince me to sell my copy of MechWarrior 2 =).
    • What's sad? This was constructed for a legitimate educational use. The sad thing is that a work of art like this is stuck in a storeroom somewhere, instead of being used and appreciated by another school, or a Science Museum somewhere.
    • This guy should give it to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. Their simulator they have there....well....sucks.

    • Re:This kind of thing is just sad... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eil ( 82413 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @07:20PM (#4115545) Homepage Journal

      Way to follow a link or two there, tough guy.

      The auction page quite clearly states that he recieved a grant to build it for a public school that he teaches at. He did not just throw it together in his garage so he could play "make-believe." This simulator was used for 6 years in the school where the students ran 3-hour long missions and learned a thing or two about the space shuttle and space in general.

      If I were a student at this school when I was a kid I would have been grateful in the extreme to be able to play around with a simulator of this quality. Who knows how many kids got to experience this sim along with a knowledgeable teacher and decided that they might be interested in persuing a space-related career?

      Seems to me that the creator of this thing, a public school teacher, set out to influence the lives of his students in a positive way. Odds are very good that he succeeded. With the kind of attitude that you display, you will never be that lucky.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • I don't understand what quoting the ebay page proves. I'm fully aware that most people will never get a chance to fly a space shuttle. But I'm also aware of the fact that just one experience like this for the right kind of kid could start him onto the path to becoming the next Neil Armstrong. Your original post had the pessimistic tone of, "boy, what a loser this guy is building a shuttle sim for no good reason then selling it off on ebay." My point was merely that there certainly was a good reason, one that you seemingly didn't even bother looking into before jumping into bitch mode.

          Seems like he got a government grant to build a fantasy toy for himself (see quote from ebay) that the students also used and he's now trying to sell it for $15K.

          How do you reason that he built it all for himself and got the government to pay for it? A project like this is a labour of love no matter how much money is involved. If I ever had the opportunity to do something this cool (and then share it with others) I'd jump at it in a second.

          Granted, I'd never pay $15k for the thing (would much rather enjoy building one myself, actually) and it would be awful nice of him to donate it to another school, but it is well within his right to sell it to someone else who could do something useful with it. It would be a waste of my time to complain about his ethical standards.

          FWIW, working in the underpaid, underappreciated public school system and undertaking the huge task of constructing something of this magnitude, $15k is barely a door prize. I'd wager that over the last 9 years, he's spent a fair chunk of his own money and time maintaining and upgrading the sim but there's no proof of that either way.
    • I'd love to fly on the space shuttle, but its not going to happen and I'm not going to waste my time building expensive sets so that I can play "make-believe.
      Or spend lots of money on a computer and internet connection and waste time posting on a website to play "I have a make-believe life". Having a beer with buddies or even sitting with your girlfriend is better than typing some stuff into a pretend community to a bunch of nerds.

  • Not a real simulator (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jsimon12 ( 207119 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @06:15PM (#4115093) Homepage
    Looking at these images [ev1.net] it doesn't look like the switchs, buttons and toggles actually control anything. So it is more like a mockup with TV's and lots of switchs that don't do anything (other then maybe lightup). Hardly worth 15,000 dollars for something that just looks intersting but serves no actual function.

    • Re:Not a real simulator (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Omerna ( 241397 )
      If all the switches do is light-up that's probably a fairly accurate representation of the space shuttle's cockpit. Afterall, unless you build the ENTIRE SHUTTLE there's not much they can do now is there?
      • I wouldn't entierly agree with that, there have been previous posts of users who have made fighter cockpits with functional switchs and instrumentation, linked to a computer simulator. Guess I would just expect something a little more then a lightup cockpit mockup for 15,000.
  • I also love Slashdot linked sites that have hit counters. Let's you see how bad a Slashdotting the site can take. Obviously, eBay is unaffected by a paltry Slashdotting.

    Unfortunately for this guy, his Special Shuttle Web Page couldn't handle 17,000 hits and it's completely slashdotted.
  • The parts are already packed. But he'll charge you $350 for packing anyhow.

    And he wants to charge shipping on it as well.

    I suppose with an opening bid of 15k, a couple hundred extra gets to be chump change for the buyer. Assuming anyone ever bids on it.
  • There was a Space Shuttle simulator [the-underdogs.org] for DOS that came out back in 1992... As I remember, it replicated the functionality of most switches in the cockpit well. Perhaps it might be possible to combine the two?

    As an aside, I remember switching the "jettison external fuel tank" switch on only a few seconds after takeoff... Not recommended if you want to survive!
  • The guy who made that mech in his back yard - find the link yourself... should buy this and build it into a mech as the cockpit.

    then all he would have to do is work on getting the controls to actually move the thing around.

  • Overkill (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @06:27PM (#4115151) Journal
    I also had switch guards fabricated by a local metalworking shop. On the shuttle, their purpose is to keep the weightless, floating astronauts from accidentally bumping an important switch. In my simulator, they weren't really necessary, but I was going for total realism...

    This is overkill, especially if it was taxpayer's money. Perhaps it was a fixed-priced contract and the extra's were on him, I don't know. Otherwise, just use erector-set L-joints or something.

    Also, I have seen turn-knobs roughly similar to the grey ones he talks about at Radio Shack. He went and made *custom* turn-knobs.

    If such "extra's" were out of his pocket, fine. However, as a tax-payer I would have a fit if I found out all the custom stuff that was made when close-enough ones were available off-the-shelf.

    He must be an ex-military contractor.
    • However, as a tax-payer I would have a fit if I found out all the custom stuff that was made when close-enough ones were available off-the-shelf.
      You can relax. Most of the knobs and switches, etc, in the crewstation are standard aviation parts.
      even the GPC (General Purpose Computer) that does the navigation and reads the kabillion sensors all over the inside of the shuttle was an IBM-off-the-shelf model with software customized for space flight.

  • What's his game? (Score:5, Informative)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @06:29PM (#4115165)
    What is this guy up to? When you look at the pictures and the price, it seems like a really cool simulator/mockup. But, digging a little deeper and looking at the list of items that are *actually* being auctioned off, there are a lot of things missing.

    Not included are a few panels, headphones, TV sets, *the actual framework* that all this mounts on. One wonders why. Basically all your getting for $15,000 is some very nice looking skins. They're non functional and a lot of assembly/construction will be required.

    But, what is he going to do with things like the framework? It sounds to me like he is dissatisfied with version 1.0 and is dumping the skins so that he can start version 2.0. Sorry pal, for $15,000 I expect the entire rig, as well as some support for putting it back together after shipping.
  • This is just the thing for a fledgling Chinese space program, doncha think? Actually, I'm surprised the man can't find a museum or some sort of park where he could rent this thing out. Not for actual missions, but still...

    • Fledgling Chinese space program? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      fledgling Chinese space program

      Haven't the Chinese had rockets for several centuries? What's the friggin' holdup over there?

  • Better Use for it: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mortonda ( 5175 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @06:42PM (#4115258)
    A place like the Kansas Cosmosphere might be a btter place for this thing. A truly wonderful place, despite /.'s fear of Kansas.

  • Hrrmmm... (Score:4, Funny)

    by mrbill ( 4993 ) <mrbill@mrbill.net> on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @07:03PM (#4115429) Homepage
    Maybe Lance Bass from N'Sync can afford this, since he doesnt seem to be able to pay his bill to the Russians on time... He can sit in the chair and make rocket noises...
  • I think there was some water damage on a few of those panels... are we sure that these weren't retrieved from a Florida beach and cleaned up a little?

  • As I write this, the counter is showing 24,719 hits--and no bids.

    That has got to be one of the highest hit counts I've EVER seen on eBay. How frustrating to it must be to have that many hits and no bids.

    I have to think the guy was unwise to set the starting bid so high, though. I wonder why he didn't set a lower bid and put in a $15,000 reserve? Then he would at least have been able to get a reading on its market value. (Although eBay does charge a reserve fee if the item doesn't sell...)
  • What a bunch of losers some of you are!

    I went to this school in the mid-90's, and participated in this program. Let me tell you, this was the coolest thing I'd ever done - and nothing I've done since comes close.

    We trained for five or six weeks, learning all the shuttle's systems and how they worked. We also trained in the simulator for several days, practicing the procedures over and over. We even landed the shuttle with some kind of computer sim.

    It makes me mad to see some of your criticism. It's easy to criticize someone else's efforts, but I don't imagine any of you ever began to accomplish something as impressive as this.

    If there were more dedicated teachers like this one, there would be a lot less of you jerks sitting in front of your computers all day in your momma's basement.

  • From a guy that works on the Real(!) simulator (Score:4, Informative)

    by JetScootr ( 319545 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @08:29PM (#4115869) Journal
    The simulator shown is incredibly authentic, but I think there are actually TWO such non-Nasa sims. I saw one about 15 years ago at a mall that was having a "air and space hobby" show.
    The sim shown is what we call "Pre-MEDS". MEDS was an update to the cockpit (Multifunction Electronic Display System) to update the shuttle to semi-modern "glass cockpit", that is, use computer monitors instead of actual gauges.
    Also, there were two original simulators used to develop procedures and do leading-edge-of-wing math modeling in the early 80's and I understood that those two simulators (real NASA sims!) were sold to private individuals or companies (as scrap, as far as Nasa was concerned). I may be wrong about that.
    PS: I've worked at Nasa's shuttle astronaut training center since 1979.
  • I helped to install network cabling in the very school this simulator used to reside in a few years back... Although I never saw it running, it appeared to be a well crafted simulator. I've seen the one at space camp as well, and it was surprisingly close. I'm fairly certain most of the buttons and switches were wired to something, with several computers running the simulator. The room it was in had just about enough room to get in and out of the cockpit, the rest covered in equipment. My first reaction was disbelief that a school actually had something this cool. I can't believe the school ditched this... perhaps the local Children's Museum would be interested in it as a sort of local, mini-space camp. Either way, I think it was awesome that someone went to all this trouble to build something like this for his school. Regardless of how he's selling it off on e-bay, this guy is authentic about his description of the way he built it and the way it was used in the past.
  • Apparently there's some minimal computer interface, but most of the controls don't do anything. No indication of whether you can actually use it as a flight sim, but since the entire software provided fits on two floppies, probably not.

    The ideal would be for somebody to get this thing who wants to put enough computer support behind it that you can fly simulated missions. There are some open source flight sims you could use as a base for future work.

    • Yeah but for 15k I should be able to put it all together as is and make it work. Not spend another 5-10k on equipment and another 10+k (time cost) on coding or setting up the framework.

      if im gonna spend all that time I might as well use the 150 pics he has on his site and build my own.

      However im not interested in it enough to do either.
  • I remember seeing the ebay auction for the captain's chair from the original Star Trek series a few weeks ago (which sold for way more than my house costs). Has anyone tried to reproduce any of the captain's chairs from any of the movies or TV shows and put pictures/details on the web? Just curious.

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