Mir Space Station Command Control Console and Monitor

17 responses to “Mir Space Station Command Control Console and Monitor”

1. 

   jurvetson

   Mar 11, 2012 at 7:58 pm

   Ed Lu has spent over 200 days in space:
   

   The 256×256 monitor, on top, is so low-res that you can see the pixels clearly. The screen would display a matrix of values, like the DSKY used on Apollo. The matrix harkens back to an earlier design, based on even more primitive technology. There used to be a set of row and column buttons that would energize a relay. So with 10 buttons on a side, 100 possible electro-mechanical relays could be activated. On Soyuz, for example, E-3 would turn the engine on.

   Connectors at bottom:
   

   And behind the monitor screen:
   

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2. 

   solerena

   Mar 12, 2012 at 1:07 am

   i guess they used a lot of abbreviations too, kinda like Intel… or Intel took it from Russian revolution to start with.. and i could understand tsifri myself (numbers)and the ones above: otkaz, sboy, soobtshenie

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3. 

   scleroplex

   Mar 12, 2012 at 1:45 am

   tough!

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4. 

   BillS49

   Mar 12, 2012 at 2:19 am

   Facinating – thanks for sharing

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5. 

   seatonsnet

   Mar 12, 2012 at 4:06 pm

   What chaos theory mavens call the "butterfly effect", something that used to be a rather amusing idea with which to tease our neurons, has become the central mechanism of our lives.

   Simplifying this system, making it more robust, stepping back and making a cool evaluation of what we really need and what we should be willing to go through to achieve it should be the major serious conversation of our societies. We must bend every effort to discovering the art or even perhaps the science of what the French call "le petit bonheur", the "small happiness", the accumulated pleasure taken in the smallest things, which, as far as life has taught me up till now, is the philosopher’s stone of the alchemy of savoir vivre.

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6. 

   Chucil

   Mar 12, 2012 at 7:49 pm

   Having famously said "Welcome to space. Have a safe journey" to Shenzhou 5, it could be possible to expect a control panel with Chinese numbering,一二三. Also reminds me of the story of Hsue-Shen Tsien, the "Father of Chinese Rocketry".

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7. 

   jurvetson

   Mar 12, 2012 at 8:33 pm

   I am not familiar with that history, but Ed Lu shared one interesting tidbit from the early space program in China: While the U.S. adopted reentry heat shield technology from the ICBM warhead development (leading to the AVCOAT honeycomb on Apollo), the Chinese went with something much simpler — wood! The wood chars on reentry but shields the capsule from heat.

   It reminds me of the story of the fancy space pen that you will fins at the NASA gift shops, with a pressured ink canister customized to write upside down and in zero g. The Russians? Just use a pencil.

   [http://www.flickr.com/photos/48331433@N05] – And here is a relevant passage from Ed’s NASA Letters:

   "We each have electronic displays in front of us that we can use to call up a variety of different computer displays so we can issue commands or look at status displays from the onboard sensors. Spacecraft are a bit like humans in that there are leftover characteristics from old designs that have remained but no longer serve a purpose, like your appendix or your tonsils. In the case of the Soyuz, even though there are new electronic displays, the commands are still sent using a matrix of commands where you specify the row and column number. This is simply a holdover from the previous Soyuz design, which had mechanical switches arranged in rows and columns. Now, on the high tech computer display, there is a picture of the old mechanical design, which you use to issue commands! The same is true of the new electronic displays in the Space Shuttle — we have recreated pictures of the old displays on our new advanced displays. In both cases the engineers realized that it was simpler and more reliable to make gradual changes, rather than to do a complete redesign. It’s kind of like biological evolution, but for spacecraft. "

   P.S. Thanks to Eerik Suurmaa in Estonia for some of the translations just added above.

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8. 

   Chucil

   Mar 13, 2012 at 5:46 am

   Thank you for sharing the interesting wood and pencil stories. If someone needs something in rocketry, he can find it in Lowe’s? 🙂
   Iris Chang wrote a book about Tsien Hsue-shen called "Thread Of The Silkworm". I was thinking of that book.

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9. 

   JeffSech

   Mar 14, 2012 at 6:49 am

   “The command generation keys have mutual mechanical inhibits." Wow. I guess that’s the control panel analog of using a pencil.

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10. 

    jurvetson

    Mar 14, 2012 at 6:19 pm

    And the control panel analog of using a pen? Well Buzz Aldrin had to use his pen to arm the LM Ascent Engine to get off the moon (see bottom of this comment).

    P.S. another fun Russian space story from Ed Lu: The laser rangefinder computer on Soyuz was an artillery unit retrofit, called a BVK or "Large Military Computer". The rangefinder would feed in a value, and then another value, and the "computer" would calculate the speed by comparing the delta in distance to elapsed time on a clock. "It took a 1 ft. square computer to just do that simple calculator math."

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11. 

    SpikenzieLabs

    Apr 18, 2012 at 1:29 am

    I’d really like to press some of them buttons…

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12. 

    M.R.Kirk

    Jun 23, 2012 at 10:40 pm

    There were actually three Mir Space stations built. the third core module was purchased from the Russians in 1997 by Tommy Bartlett. it is now on display at the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory at Wisconsin Dells, WI. I am no authority on Mir, but I enjoyed a visit to the Exploratory several years ago.

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13. 

    jurvetson

    Jun 24, 2012 at 7:38 am

    I read somewhere that the one in Wisconsin was somehow different, and that’s why it was let go. But now I can’t find that reference (on a poor internet connection).

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14. 

    M.R.Kirk

    Jun 27, 2012 at 8:50 pm

    It could be different. I wouldn’t know. It is nice to have something of space related history here in Wisconsin. They also have a Sputkik 1 that they got from Russia. I don’t know the story behind that. The other big thing we have is the Experimental Aircarft Museum and annual Experimental Aircraft Association convention.

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15. 

    jurvetson

    Jun 28, 2012 at 8:23 pm

    The Sputnik in Wisconsin is a replica model, for example.

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16. 

    chukote

    Sep 24, 2012 at 4:18 pm

    This is from gorobatco, the command must first to activate then de-activate.pehmort kom.

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17. 

    jurvetson

    Feb 10, 2014 at 7:42 pm

    Here are some photos showing this console on Mir
    

    

    And the mockup in the Energia corporate museum in Moscow
    

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