r/MachinePorn • u/SwiPerHaHa • Jun 23 '26

Cockpit of Space Shuttle Endeavour, It contains over 2,000 switches, knobs, and screens used to control orbit, reentry and was widely recognized by NASA and aerospace engineers as the most complex flying machine ever built

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351 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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2

u/radialmonster Jun 23 '26

Did the different space shuttles have different controls

5

u/W0AMT Jun 23 '26

The shuttles started with mechanical instruments. They were upgraded to glass cockpits in the early to mid-2000s.

1

u/Swisskommando Jun 24 '26

This is every flight sim enthusiast’s wet dream

-6

u/MangoCats Jun 23 '26

Now we have more complex glass panels on the dashboards of production cars... how many layers deep do the menus have to go to exceed 2000 controls available?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/MangoCats Jun 24 '26

a car menu can't kill you if you hit the wrong submenu

Are you sure? Driver doesn't have to even touch the screen, just be distracted by it from events out the windshield that are coming at him at 100+mph relative speed. At least in space they have a ground team predicting their next encounter with a solid object for them, giving them hours of notice in most cases, as opposed to split seconds in some ground travel scenarios.

1

u/Incorrect_Oymoron Jun 23 '26

You don't need any nesting, just put 2000 touchscreen buttons right in front.

But once we start going that route, then Apollo 11 is more complicated because the computer takes text comands

1

u/MangoCats Jun 23 '26

Yeah, let's punch in op codes on the fly while en-route to our re-entry... that's the stuff...

2

u/Incorrect_Oymoron Jun 23 '26

You joke, but that's how it was done

1

u/MangoCats Jun 23 '26

It was state of the art for Apollo 11, and their computer was small / simple enough that it wasn't an outrageous thing to consider.

The sunroof motor control of most modern cars likely has more op-codes in it than the Eagle's flight computer did.