Recently I received a 360 degree panorama video of the space shuttle Discovery crew cabin flight deck that I forwarded to the folks on my address list. Most notable to me were the hundreds of dials and switches on the control panels. That led me to ask this question: How in the hell did our astronauts ever learn to deal with all those dials and switches?
One of my neighbors is a retired Air Force officer who was assigned to work with NASA. Here is how he responded to my question:
You'll probably be amused to hear the story of "DISPLAYS And CONTROLS #9".
Sometime in the late ’70s I represented the Air Force at a meeting. The meeting lasted a week in Downey, California. We had a small crowd to review the Shuttle's knobs and switches as shown in the video.
The meeting was typically like this:
There would be a big view graph projected on the screen of the Shuttle control panels, and one switch would be circled with a black marker. An engineer would stand up with a stack of view graphs that explained what THAT switch did, how it was marked, and why it was marked the way it was marked.
After 30 or 40 minutes, the guy would leave with a stack of notes about what NASA and the Air Force and the astronauts didn't like and wanted changed. The guy would be sweating and looked very drained by the experience.
Then another engineer would come in with a stack of view graphs, and a large graph that had a circle marked around the switch NRXT TO the previous one! This went on for a full week.
You had to remind me of that meeting.
__________
OK, so how in the hell did our astronauts ever learn how to deal with all those dials and switches?
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