Why are the walls of space craft covered in buttons and wires?

November 30, 2006 5:27 PM

Why are space shuttle interiors so complicated and so exposed?

Why is it that the interior of space shuttles and the like are so....exposed? Every wall seems to be covered in exposed wiring, buttons, switches etc. I wonder why this is? Are they so vital that covering them with a door or panel would hinder emergency access, or maybe NASA budgets won't stretch to a hinge and a plastic flap? It's strange that with people actually floating about bumping into stuff inside them, the guts of the ship seem to be left open to accidental damage.

Example here, wires, screens, buttons - a mess!

posted by fire&wings to technology (18 comments total)

Coverings add weight for an almost purely cosmetic reason. It's extremely expensive to lift mass into orbit, so if an item can be exposed safely there's no reason to cover it.
posted by Science! at 5:31 PM on November 30, 2006

IANAA (IANA astronaut), but I would guess that two of the reasons are: 1., to conserve weight and space and, 2. to make access and repair easier...
posted by HuronBob at 5:32 PM on November 30, 2006

Simple: Shuttle launches costs about thousands of dollars per pound. Anything that is not strictly necessary for the mission is, therefore, not sent into orbit.
posted by kindall at 5:33 PM on November 30, 2006

Perhaps in an attempt to limit weight of the space craft non-essential panels are not added? With the number of structural elements present inside the spacecraft it might be sufficient protection, or sufficient enough that a very strong panel would be needed to protect any better (ie, a thin panel could actually damage wiring/components more if it was somehow pressed against them.
posted by SirStan at 5:33 PM on November 30, 2006

Yeah weight was my immediate thought but it doesn't explain the avoidable chaos of the average space shuttle interior.
posted by fire&wings at 5:40 PM on November 30, 2006

Crack open your laptop and you'll know why. The space shuttle is basically a big computer attached to a roman candle.

On a semiotic level, submarines are designed the same way, and very much on purpose -- all the exposed wiring and tubing reminds sailors that they're in a machine, rather than a cruise ship, and that they need to be both careful and vigilant.
posted by turducken at 5:44 PM on November 30, 2006

I'm pretty sure that picture is actually from the space station. The clutter there is also caused by years and years of supplies, experiments, trash, computers building up and not being efficiently disposed of. For the ISS the clutter is also compounded by a small group of people living there for a long time and getting it just the way they like it, and are used to using it.
posted by Science! at 5:46 PM on November 30, 2006

Because spacecraft are not like cars or sci-fi spaceships. They're made to be field serviceable and have lots of redundancy. That means lots of easy to get to components. Engineers ready to tackle all the issues that come up per flight. etc.

Its like the opposite of a mass-manufactured car. Its like a lego kit where everything is modular and exposed because if it wasnt the ship (or station) would not be as useful, safe, or cheap.
posted by damn dirty ape at 5:58 PM on November 30, 2006

Because spacecraft are not like cars or sci-fi spaceships.

Also, spacecraft are flown by astronauts, who are supposed to know a thing or two about what to touch and what not to touch.
posted by frogan at 6:53 PM on November 30, 2006

You should see my toy server at home. It's on a base shelf (no case) with wires running everywhere. When I (rarely) restart it I have to find a penny and manually jump the power connector on the motherboard.

Point is... when geeks build things on their own, aesthetics rarely come into play. It's easier to just leave everything open, and if you have to rig something later... well, that's a couple fewer screws you have to worry about losing.

That pictures looks like many of the eletrical engineering labs I've been in. No surprise, since that's basically what the shuttle/station is.
posted by sbutler at 6:58 PM on November 30, 2006

That pictures looks like many of the eletrical engineering labs I've been in. No surprise, since that's basically what the shuttle/station is.

Yep, but smaller and with more people/square foot. Compound this with the fact that the space station doesn't have "winter downtime" to clean out the lab. I've heard that astronauts are endlessly busy.
posted by muddgirl at 7:14 PM on November 30, 2006

They're not just astronauts, either. Most of them are highly-trained engineers with deep respect for sensitive wires and circuits and such. A good friend of mine works on shuttles, and her favorite joke is to lunge at a button while saying "WHAT'S THIS DO?" The other guys never think that's funny, apparently.
posted by MrMoonPie at 7:22 PM on November 30, 2006 [2 favorites]

If you want to examine these issues more thoroughly, I would suggest you read Section 8-12 of NASA's Man-Systems Integration Standards Volume I. It should give you a really good idea of the way they approach the design and construction of their manned vehicles and stations. Section 12 probably speaks to your question most directly.
posted by shoesfullofdust at 7:49 PM on November 30, 2006 [1 favorite]

That's definitely the space station, not the space shuttle. The interior of the space shuttle is, in fact, very clean and uncluttered. There's a place for everything, and everything in is its place. Every item has to be stowed securely otherwise it would be a missile during launch or re-entry.
posted by randomstriker at 7:58 PM on November 30, 2006

Because it was designed by engineers, not the guys at apple. I'm surprised it's not made of LEGO and Mechano. It's also very manual for safety reasons. They could take every switch and wire and button, and get rid of them all and put one touch screen to run the entire shuttle/station. But if something broke, they would all die.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:43 PM on November 30, 2006

If you're trying to fix some vital subsystem in zero gravity and you have five minutes before your space vehicle runs out of air/burns up on reentry/collides with a satellite/etc, the last thing you want is all the access covers you removed to be floating around getting in the way.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:27 AM on December 1, 2006

As already stated:

1) Weight considerations. Prettification costs extra money to launch into orbit.

2) To be easy to get to for maintenance and repair/replacement, if necessary.

As blue_beetle said, the systems could be made much more automated and 'modern', but when one component shorts out, you don't want to have to disassemble the entire bulkhead to get at the thing. As well as the Apollo 13 sort of situation... having lots of extra wires and mechanisms available to take from nonessential systems would make it quicker and easier to jury-rig fix something important that stopped working.

There's various articles online about how super-bug-free and redundant NASA makes the software for our spacecraft, since getting a BSOD (or equivalent error) during critical circumstances is going to kill everyone. It's a similar mindset for the physical hardware as well, as seen in shoesfullofdust's links.
posted by SenshiNeko at 5:23 PM on December 1, 2006

Stuff also floats around in zero G. Wires that would lay flat against something or all hang the same way are going to be all over the place in the absence of gravity.
posted by Mitheral at 12:52 AM on October 28, 2007