The space suits, UI, design of it all feels exactly what I’ve though the future of space technology would be. Maybe not all the way there yet, but a great leap from hundreds of manual switches and raw aluminum of the shuttle era.
Having used (and been highly dissatisfied with) touch-based controls in cars I cannot imagine why touch-based controls for a spacecraft are a good idea. The ergonomics are terrible.
Switches can certainly fail, with potentially dire consequences (see the Apollo 14 abort switch failure). I would assume the number of failure modes for touch-based interface hardware are vastly more.
Touch controls are, no doubt, easily reconfigurable, which is probably great for profit margins. The idea of the human spaceflight industry applying "cost down" mentality to crew vehicles scares the heck out of me (and I'm not even flying in them). (I'm thinking about the Boeing MCAS mentality, but for spacecraft...)
Isn't this attributable to needing to focus on driving and the controls being a secondary concern? The astronauts don't seem to have much more to focus on than the screens and controls in front of them.
> a great leap from hundreds of manual switches and raw aluminum of the shuttle era.
Wonder if reliability of virtualized controls surpasses the one of dedicated hardware though.
I suspect one of the reasons Apollo computers were all built with just one type of logical chip is the ability to replace faulty parts - one just need a single type of replacement. If for some reason touchscreen malfunctions, what options are left for the crew?
> If for some reason touchscreen malfunctions, what options are left for the crew?
First, the spacecraft is I believe fully automated. While there is the ability to pilot the craft manually using onboard controls, my understanding is that is already considered a backup or unusual scenario.
As far as the touchscreens themselves, my understanding is there are four touchscreens total, and each can represent / control every aspect of the vehicle. So if a single touchscreen fails, the other 3 provide redundant access to necessary controls.
Finally, the dragon capsule does have manual (non-touchscreen) joystick controls for the critical flight controls.
So these systems have enough redundancy that a touchscreen failure should absolutely not jeopardize the flight.
I wonder if the touchscreens are made of diverse hardware types and run by different programs running on different types of CPUs. If it's all common hardware and a common code-base then one in-common hardware or software failure could still take them all down.
For redundancy, the Space Shuttle used five of the same computer (IBM AP-101). Four of them ran the same software, while the fifth ran independently-developed software in case a bug prevented the others from working.
> Finally, the dragon capsule does have manual (non-touchscreen) joystick controls for the critical flight controls.
Joysticks are better, though some convenient indication is also required (the "screen" part, not the "touch" part). I'm sure the designers saw questions like that; I'm just curious about details.
> I suspect one of the reasons Apollo computers were all built with just one type of logical chip is the ability to replace faulty parts
The Apollo Guidance Computer was built with two types of chips: a 3-input NOR gate and a core memory sense amplifier. The reason to use just one logic chip was because ICs were very new at the time and there was very little reliability information. By standardizing on a small number of components, they could procure enough to determine and maintain quality. (See Journey to the Moon chapter 12.)
