The Shuttle Mission Simulator

03/01/2026

Long-time SMS engineer and manager Carl Brainerd visited the GNS:

"On February 9 I visited the Pima Air & S**ce Museum in Tucson. They have a LOT of interesting aircraft there, but I especially wanted to see their exhibit of the SMS GNS Crew Station that they got from Wings of Dreams. I've included a couple of photos of it. They have the forward and aft sections separated by 8' or so, and both are exhibited behind floor-to-ceiling glass barriers. They have some signage explaining what it is and where it came from, but ther lighting is so dim that it was difficult to read and I didn't bother to photograph it. As you'll see in the pictures, the front cockpit lighting is mostly red instead of white. This may be an artifact of the base being used as a movie prop for filming the movie "Moonfall". Maybe the movie guys did it. I must say I didn't care much for the red lighting, and again the dim lighting made it all just seem too dark.

As you can see in the photo of the front of the Crew Station, the movie guys placed fake thermal tiles all over the exterior. I thought they actually looked pretty good, though, even if fake.

The MDUs looked like they had actual "live" video displayed on them, although the only real "live" or dynamic part was a little blinking text on one display. I deduced that they must have replaced the MDU displays with off-the-shelf LED replacements in order to put any sort of display on the screens. Since I was curious about this, I sent them an inquiry about it. I got a nice reply from their Director of Collections. He confirmed that the MDU displays had been replaced by commercial displays bought on eBay."

08/21/2025

Photographer Eric Johnston recently toured the Stafford Air & S**ce Museum, and took a video nearly 40 minutes long. Starting at about 22:00 you can see the Fixed Base Simulator. It does look a bit worse for wear, in that all of the MEDS display units have been removed (no clue where they ended up).

I made screen shots from the video, you can watch the whole thing at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLueM5HGooA.

07/24/2025

As Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, Chief Engineer aboard the original Star Trek Enterprise, James Doohan inspired generations of aspiring engineers. His influence extended far beyond television when he visited NASA’s Johnson S**ce Center and sat in the simulator’s commanding seat, guided by astronaut Mario Runco. This iconic moment symbolized how science fiction fueled real‑world exploration. Doohan was a trained actor with roots in theater before joining Star Trek. He appeared in all three seasons of the series and in six original cast films. Though not a musician, geek culture often refers to his creation of the Klingon guttural language for the franchise, a linguistic legacy expanded in later years. Doohan’s awards include fan‑based lifetime achievement honors and recognition from NASA for his cultural inspiration. His lasting impact lies less in accolades and more in how countless scientists and engineers cite Scotty’s character as a career catalyst.

09/09/2024

I have gathered all the STE Land comics I could find, consolidated them into one giant pdf, and uploaded them to the Internet Archive.

Download the file for over 2100 cartoons about daily life in the SMS as seen by the late Danny Sims.

Now all we need is for some dedicated person(s) to go through them and provide an index.

https://archive.org/download/the-maybe-complete-ste-land/The_Maybe_Complete_STE-Land.pdf

12/13/2023

Carl made a video about the MB restoration:

This video shows, in narrated slideshow format, a description of one of the S**ce Shuttle flight simulators (called the Motion Base) used at the Johnson S**c...

10/17/2023

This is from around 1985. Sent to me by a friend who worked in SMS software back then. I don't remember ever seeing this patch.

08/01/2023

That time when Barbie flew the SMS for training so often that she got upgraded to flying Atlantis for real on STS-38 back in 1989.

As it turns out, the two Barbie dolls that recently went on display at the Smithsonian are not the first to have flown into space, contrary to how they are described in the exhibit. Another Barbie made the trip 32 years earlier aboard a classified mission.

05/01/2023

A treasure trove of early SMS photos posted by Tom Connell on the Former Singer Linkers page

06/01/2022

Motion Base Dedication Event on 6/4 at the Lone Star Flight Museum!

04/13/2022

The Motion Base has finally got a forever home at the Lone Star Flight Museum.

A NASA space shuttle simulator that was used to prepare astronauts for the motion of the vehicle in flight has moved again, this time to enter its permanent new home. The Shuttle Mission Simulator-Motion Base arrived at the Lone Star Flight Museum.