Touring NASA's Space Shuttle Cockpit Trainer

An anonymous reader writes: Now that the space shuttles have been retired, NASA has been shutting down and cleaning out all of the equipment dedicated to keeping them in service. One such tool was the Crew Compartment Trainer II, a full-size replica of a space shuttle cockpit. Astronauts trained on it to become familiar with the operation of many onboard systems. Just before it was removed, Ars got a chance to tour it, and took a ton of pictures in the process. Quoting: "The forward windows are surprisingly small, and visibility dead ahead is limited to a very narrow section of the window. Both the pilot and commander have fighter-style HUDs (heads-up displays), which are used mainly during landing to keep them lined up and on target with the runway. ... Bloomfield walked me through a few procedures, and it was fascinating how complex the shuttles were in some areas and how primitive they were in others. The on-board computers of course received numerous updates throughout the vehicles' lives, but even in their final iteration they wouldn't have won any speed awards."

Sell it to google for the staff to play in.

[dwywit]

Secret technology aside, wouldn't it make a great toy?

Fix the Icons Covering the Titles

[Kunedog]

Are they touring the Space Shuttle Cock? Really?

CCT-1 @ NMUSAF

[Plumber, Programmer,]

If you read the article and find yourself thinking, "I wish I could see that in person," then you need to visit the National Museum of the USAF, which has CCT-1: http://www.nationalmuseum.af.m... [af.mil]

Time for

[Ol Olsoc]

My plug for the Atlantis exhibit at KSC.

If you are at all engineering minded, you will be completely blown away by it. I was rendered completely speechless for 30 seconds, and I saw people with tears in their eyes - I knew who the engineers were in the group. Even then, it's a glorius exhibit for all.

Do not miss this, just don't

Velcro?

[Whiteox]

My memory of Apollo 1 was that the fire had to do with teflon and not velcro. Am I mistaken?

FTA "In spite of how it burned in the Apollo 1 fire, velcro isn’t a significant fire hazard. The space shuttle kept its cabin pressurized to an Earth-normal 14.7 psia with a mix of about 80 percent nitrogen and 20 percent oxygen, and under those conditions velcro is not flammable"

Re:

[Brett Buck]

YEs, you are mistaken. The velcro was supposed to be limited to small patches with some separation as to prevent fire from propagating from one patch to the next if it caught fire. But it was so useful that they more-or-less carpeted the interior with it.

Teflon was implicated in the initiation of the fire, since it cold-flows and can cause shorts, and start the fire. Once it gets going, particularly in nearly 17 psia pure oxygen (vice the in-flight 5 psia), the velcro practically explo

Re:

[Whiteox]

Thanks for the clarification!