<story><title>Flight Deck of the Space Shuttle Endeavour</title><url>http://www.launchphotography.com/Endeavour_Flight_Deck.html</url><text>Quite an apparatus. An interesting mix of controls, from rotary buttons, linear gauges and toggle switches from the 70&apos;s, all the way to a modern glass cockpit.&lt;p&gt;The seats look like ancient torture devices.</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jonursenbach</author><text>Back in 1996 I was part of the first class as the, now closed, Mountain View Space Camp. I was 11. When time came for the shuttle simulations, I volunteered to be pilot. After a quick 10 minute tutorial over what every button did in the deck we were off.&lt;p&gt;We were able to get out into orbit with the help of Mission Control, but on the way back it was just us in the deck.&lt;p&gt;We burned up on re-entry.</text></comment>
<story><title>Flight Deck of the Space Shuttle Endeavour</title><url>http://www.launchphotography.com/Endeavour_Flight_Deck.html</url><text>Quite an apparatus. An interesting mix of controls, from rotary buttons, linear gauges and toggle switches from the 70&apos;s, all the way to a modern glass cockpit.&lt;p&gt;The seats look like ancient torture devices.</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>idank</author><text>Truly amazing. What&apos;s even more amazing is how ancient the technology inside one of mankind&apos;s most incredible inventions looks compared to what we know today.&lt;p&gt;It reminds me of a visit to one of Israel&apos;s Air Force bases where I got to see the F-16&apos;s up close. I couldn&apos;t believe it when we were told that pilots upon receiving coordinates, had to open up a notebook beside them and actually look it up to know where to go because their navigation system was so old. The F-16I had a lot of improvements in this area that no longer required manual lookup by the pilot.</text></comment>