A tour group just returned from Baykonur with great photos

On Thu, 03 Aug 2006 16:33:18 -0500, Pat Flannery wrote:

Here's an equivalent shot of the Buran cockpit:
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/end7.jpg
Buran looks more like the interior of a military aircraft, ours more
like the interior of a Apollo spacecraft.

Is that photo of the orbiter, or the "flying prototype" with the
four turbojets? One thing that makes this look like a military
aircraft is the bank of gauges in front of the window. Are those
for the turbojets, and not present on the orbiter?

Dale

Why did they need 3 Etch-a-Sketches?

Dale wrote:

Is that photo of the orbiter, or the "flying prototype" with the
four turbojets? One thing that makes this look like a military
aircraft is the bank of gauges in front of the window. Are those
for the turbojets, and not present on the orbiter?



That appears to be the cockpit of the jet-powered prototype according to
the link (6TC-002) on this page:
http://www.buran.ru/htm/soi.htm
http://www.buran.ru/htm/anabst.htm
So the gauges under the system lights indicator panel might well be
related to the jet engines, as there are two sets of four identical
gauges in the center, and those probably relate to the four jet engines
(engine rpm and temperature?)
Note also they aren't shown on this drawing of the operational Buran
cockpit:
http://www.buran.ru/images/gif/soi4.gif
Which has another indicator light panel replacing them.

Dale

Why did they need 3 Etch-a-Sketches?



That's exactly what I thought of when I saw the CRT's also; they look
like something we'd have circa 1965.
I imagine the knobs are for brightness and contrast.

Pat