There are just two known examples in private hands, and Curious Marc’s intrepid crew are trying to revive the remains of a damaged one (below in comments).
This is a photo of mine, an artifact in the Future Ventures 🚀 Space Collection.
Originally designed to be three different panel instruments, the astronauts, many of which were pilots, lobbied for an all-in-one device similar to the artificial horizon indicator in airplanes.
Mine is an early unit, Serial Number 11. The red, black, and white “8 ball” was used to define the relative position of the spacecraft in three-dimensional space. This FDAI has its original glass interface with three white bars over the top, which showed the error in each axis, from the desired value, by the displacement of the right and bottom of the ‘8 Ball,’ and also has its three rate needles on the sides of the display.
The pitch attitude is represented by the large semi-circles (horizontal relative to the numbers on the ball). The yaw attitude is represented by the small circles (vertical relative to the numbers on the ball). The semicircle immediately under the ‘wing’ is the current pitch angle. Two red circles centered at yaw 0 and 180 degree poles indicate where the inertial guidance gimbals are in danger of locking (gimbals from two axes aligning with each other) causing loss of attitude reference.
Curious Marc’s opening video, taking apart this handmade analog artifact.
Leave a Reply