A few nice space images I found:

Pima Air & Space pano

Image by Karol Franks
The Pima Air & Space Museum features a display of nearly 300 aircraft spread out over 80 acres on a campus occupying 127 acres. Located in Tucson, Arizona, it is one of the world’s largest, non-government funded aerospace museums.

In the right center of the image is the Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" strategic bomber built by Convair and operated solely by the United States Air Force (USAF) from 1949 to 1959. The B-36 was the largest mass-produced piston engine aircraft ever made. It had the longest wingspan of any combat aircraft ever built (230 ft, 70.1 m), although there have been larger military transports. It is awesome to see in person. View the larger image to see details.

Fascination: Space II

Image by broombesoom
Perception
For getting a feeling for space you have to change your position. Dancer have a great feeling for space. You have to move. Blind people have a feeling for space as well by using their powers of perception

Ibeyi – River – Choreo
m.youtube.com/watch?v=E9OuBZh-mMs

Mir Space Station Command Control Console and Monitor

Image by jurvetson
There were two Mir Space Stations. One burned up on reentry, ending its space odyssey in 2001.

The second was used for astronaut training in Russia. This control console and monitor comes from the one that survived, and was used by every astronaut and cosmonaut that visited Mir.

I hosted just such an astronaut for lunch this week and a tour of the space collection at work. See photo with Ed Lu below. He remembers this panel well, and helped me label some of the buttons (see mouse-over notes above. If you trained on this, or can help label the others, please do. Some of the translations are still pretty cryptic).

Ed described the overall control panel as a hardwired master backup for all critical space station functions. As with Soyuz, they mainly used the backup system on mission because it was easier to get to and everything was in one place. The right panel of 12 white keys is the “Very Important Command Panel”, a memorable moniker. It has buttons for controlling the engines and orbital correction, life support and thermal management.

The squares with writing are pushbuttons, and the rectangles have two small light bulbs for display.

And from Heritage: “The command generation keys have mutual mechanical inhibits. These keys are used to issue activation and deactivation commands.

In the lower area are two data displays of twelve white buttons each.

The corresponding panel light verifies successful execution of the command. There is a wiring harness coming from the back of this unit with six multi-pin connectors.”