ElI5 Why was the shuttle’s insturmentation (layout, technology, etc) so similar to that of your everyday A340 even when the two are vastly different?

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ElI5 Why was the shuttle’s insturmentation (layout, technology, etc) so similar to that of your everyday A340 even when the two are vastly different?

In: Engineering

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The pilot/co-pilot/flight engineer model is well known, well-tested, and still highly applicable. It still has to be flown (mostly for landing; takeoff is largely automated).

The details of each knob or switch may be different but the larger use case is quite similar.

**edit:** also, nearly all of the shuttle commanders and pilots were Air Force or Navy pilots. They already had thousands of hours of experience in that arrangement.

Anonymous 0 Comments

They were both planes, in the broadest sense. There’s a certain set of information that’s relevant to flying any plane, so if the information is the same it makes sense to choose a UI layout that’s known to pilots (many astronauts start out as jet pilots) already.

And there’s also a limited amount of layouts for “we have to fit a hell of a lot of flip switches onto a panel”.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Most of the instrumentation is only used bringing in the shuttle to land and that landing is similar to landing a really heavy glider so requires a pilot and a pilot layout to land safely.