The Soyuz sim has been the site of most of our training in the last three months of preparation. Once each individual member of the crew has finished studying the systems of the Soyuz in detail, the crew begins a series of integrated simulation training runs. These involve detailed simulations of procedures in the launch, orbital flight, docking, undocking and re-entry phases of flight. The experts sit at a series of consoles, and dream up emergencies and off-nominal events for the crew during their training. The design of the Soyuz rocket and capsule, mainstay of the Russia manned program, has operated more-or-less unaltered for 40 years. To this day it operates without a modern computer on board. These photographs show some of the Soyuz simulators in Star City. |