Kennedy Space Center built a $100M attraction that puts millions of visitors inside the story of human spaceflight — through large-format, hands-on interactives around the Atlantis Space Shuttle — the last shuttle to fly. I built four of the simulator interactives that visitors lived inside.
LANDING SIMULATOR
Flying the Atlantis to a safe landing
The Landing Simulator let visitors try landing the Atlantis at the Shuttle Landing Facility. During a kickoff meeting, astronaut Jon McBride commented on an early prototype. A year later, former Atlantis astronauts played the simulator at the museum’s opening party.
EVA SIMULATOR
A virtual spacewalk with a gestural interface
A Kinect-based interactive that let visitors experience a virtual spacewalk. They could simulate a Hubble repair — using a hammer to free a jammed solar array and releasing it into space — or navigate the ISS with a power drill tool modeled after the one astronauts actually use.
The interactives don’t explain the shuttle. They let you fly it.
Exhibitions review — Kennedy Space Center
DOCKING + ROBOTIC ARM
Replica cockpits with 3D game engine environments
The Docking and Robotic Arm stations were fabricated replicas of the aft portion of the Shuttle’s flight deck. The windows were 3D camera views out into the OpenGL environment I developed — replicating exactly what a pilot would see while approaching the ISS or operating the arm.
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