A simulator used to train the very first space shuttle crew is now on display at the Lone...
The Space Shuttle Motion Base Simulator is slowly moved down a runway at Ellington Field to its new home, Tuesday, April 12, 2022, at the Lone Star Flight Museum in Houston.A simulator used to train the very first space shuttle crew is now on display at the Lone Star Flight Museum.
The motion-based simulator trekked from a NASA hangar at Ellington Field to the museum’s Heritage Hangar on Tuesday, precisely 41 years after NASA astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen launched on the space shuttle’s maiden voyage. Their mission, STS-1, was dubbed thebecause it wasn’t prefaced by an uncrewed flight. The shuttle’s very first launch had people onboard.
The simulator is a full-scale replica of a space shuttle orbiter’s forward flight deck. It has motion systems that mimic the shuttle’s movements and windows that provide simulated views of the shuttle’s flight. Retired NASA astronaut Bonnie J. Dunbar, who is an aerospace engineering professor at Texas A&M University, worked with a team of volunteers to restore the simulator. They spent roughly 5,000 hours on the project.
In its previous life, the simulator supported astronaut training for 35 years. It was built in 1976 and used for the first time on Jan. 9, 1979, to prepare Young and Crippen for their mission that launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on April 12, 1981. The astronauts spent two days in Earth’s orbit before landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
The final space shuttle mission occurred in 2011. But with the simulator’s arrival at the Lone Star Flight Museum, the public can experience this human spaceflight program that spanned 30 years and sent 355 individuals into space. Museum visitors can get inside the simulator and hear audio from an actual shuttle flight coming in to land, though they won’t be able to sit in the cockpit and “fly” the shuttle.
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