Titan Crew Vehicle Flight Control Station This is an on-going series. See Mars terraforming image links below. I owe credit to Hlynkacg for his inspiring questions –Greg’s knowledge of the real engineering issues involved and his perceptive question’s (i.e. –in this case regarding how the vehicle design would accommodate the shifting directions of acceleration/deceleration forces in the Crew Vehicle through the different phases of flight, entry, and landing on Titan’s surface) lent me motivation to create this specific set of models and thus, this image. The Titan crew landing craft is spherical in design with the entry-heat-shield opposite the landing & take-off thrusters – the vehicle performs (one) 180 degree roll after aerobraking. This means the direction of gravity (in the form of deceleration during atmospheric braking) will shift 180 degrees relative to the direction of gravity induced by the landing/take-off thrust (or indeed relative to the force of gravity on Titan’s surface). This requires the crew’s entry-deceleration/launch crash couches need be gimble mounted in order to permit them to roll through this change in orientation. In the case of flight control stations this requires that vehicle controls also need to rotate in order to permit pilot access during all phases of flight. The design presented some challenge – this, and the next several posts, will detail the design I have worked out. Here I’ve depicted the Titan Crew Vehicle Flight Control Station. This design differs from my design of the Callisto Mission Command Deck in that I have isolated Flight Control from workstations specific to other phases of the mission cycle. I’ve used Davo’s Modular Command Chair as the basic component of the system -- exported as a Wavefront object -- and mounted it on a gimbaled support system of my own design -- to permit the 180 degree rotational transition from aero braking to descent profile. The flight controls are independently mounted on a suspension that can rotate with the command chair and slide forward (note the track system visible on the deck between the chairs) for ease of access. The entire set, wall panels, the in-wall rack-mounted system control components (inspired by the look of Naval and Air Force modular rack-mounted systems), was constructed in Bryce 6.5. Figures are DAZ M4 and DAZ V4 exported into Bryce. As always thank you for your interest, thoughtful comments, and encouragement.