NASA’s New Orion Spaceship Will Fly With An Ancient Skeuomorphic UI

NASA has designed its new spaceship to have control panels that look like that of replicas from the Gemini mission back in the 1960’s.

Their reasoning behind this to help astronauts to adapt easily to new digital influences, if the interface is recognisable and familiar as an object it helps make it almost immediately obvious how it works.

However, critics are arguing that skeuomorphic is not innovative and it therefore put constraints on the a computers full capability.

NASA calls the UI a ‘glass’ interface, as the manual controls are simulated on computer screens and given that the control panels are not innovative and operated by the touch there is reasoning behind this such as floating objects floating in space and knocking against the control screen and setting off an undesired action and also due to the controls often being operated by fingers covered in spacesuit gloves.

To operate the glass interfaces virtual buttons and switches, astronauts must rely on a series of edge buttons, which help them to quickly scroll through screens.

In the past the weight of all the buttons and switches added up and now the crew is now able to fly a lot lighter as the number of manual buttons have been reduced to 60 with remaining controls cut down to three screens.