There are a few threads running, on various aspects of space travel. So just because it’s reminded me, it’s always fascinated me how much their cockpits look like aircraft cockpits. Not surprising; just fascinating.
Here’s my 2 cents… I read that as spacecraft crockpots.
For making a stew that’s out of this world!
I think it’s true that a significant proportion of astronauts are (or traditionally have been) pilots - so maybe that is a contributory factor.
If you take Tom Wolfe’s word for it, that is the direct result of the original Mercury astronauts. Originally, the scientists were treating them not much different from experimental monkeys, and they had no controls to operate. Once they got a sense of their own importance, publicity-wise, they insisted on redesigning the capsules for actual pilots, with actual controls.
I think it’s more form following function. A cockpit looks like a cockpit because it’s a cockpit.
What I was getting at is how familiar a spacecraft looks. It’s the same with other unfamiliar aircraft. For example, I was in the cockpit of a T-34C Turbo Mentor. Granted, it’s at its heart a Bonanza with a turbine engine; but more advanced than the Cessna Skyhawk I learned to fly in. Still, I found myself thinking ‘I could fly this.’ Not that I could jump into the Shuttle and fly it. But the familiarity is interesting.
I think it’s more than “form follows function”, though certainly that plays a big role. I mean, there’s no particular advantage to laying out the instrument panel one way or another, and of course they’re not always. But they tend to similarity for the very purpose of familiarity – so there is less that pilots have to learn, and un-learn, when pilots transition from one model to another.
But really, I’m guessing, as I have no particular expertise in this area.
How well it is done is up for debate but there is certainly an advantage in how instruments and controls are laid out. Instruments that are looked at most often should be most prominent and close to the line of sight. As instruments and controls become less important and/or less frequently used they can be moved to more out of the way places. For this reason the primary flight instrument, the artificial horizon, is normally in the centre of the panel in front of the pilot, other primary instruments such as airspeed, altitude, vertical speed and direction indicator are arranged around it, engine instruments are off to the side but still easily seen, and something like a brake pressure gauge might require the pilot to move his head to read properly. They’re designed this way because it best suits the humans using it. It should come as no surprise that a spaceship cockpit also designed to be used by humans would look very similar. I’m sure the designers didn’t bother reinventing the wheel and probably just made it as similar to the aircraft cockpits the pilots were used to as they could, but if they had designed it independantly I’m equally sure they would’ve come up with something very similar.
Like Johnny says, it’s not surprising, but it is kind of cool looking at the cockpit of something deigned to go into space and feeling a familiarity with its layout.
The Penn & Teller Bullshit episode about NASA showed them sitting in a recreation of the cockpit space of a Gemini capsule. Not the instruments - just the available space to each crew member. They (the astronauts, not P & T) sat in their for up to two weeks at a time.
Yeah.
I’m a professional pilot, and I’m glad to get out of there after a few hours.
Here are some photos of the current generation of Soyuz (Союз) capsule – a bit different in layout, but still very cramped. A crew of three spends a few days in there on the way to the International Space Station.