Back in 1996 I was part of the first class as the, now closed, Mountain View Space Camp. I was 11. When time came for the shuttle simulations, I volunteered to be pilot. After a quick 10 minute tutorial over what every button did in the deck we were off.
We were able to get out into orbit with the help of Mission Control, but on the way back it was just us in the deck.
If anyone is interested, the X-Plane flight simulator has several space shuttle situations, such as full re-entry. X-Plane strives to be very realistic, and re-entry is very challenging.
I also went to the Mountain View Space Camp in 1996 or 1997. It was the most amazing experience for a young space enthusiast. I was able to convince my dad to shell out the money for a flight suit, which I wore every single day while I was there. :)
The absolute highlight of the trip was being pilot on the simulated Space Shuttle mission. For anyone who hasn't seen it, their replica of the front end of the Space Shuttle was 1:1 or nearly 1:1. It felt like I imagined it would feel like being in the real thing. Being 12 never felt so good.
I still have my flight suit, patches, and the big book you got at the end.
Edit: Some other fun things I remember about Space Camp: "Buzz" Aldrin spoke at our graduation ceremony (though Wikipedia doesn't seem to know this). We got to try an MMU (manned maneuvering unit). We learned about hydroponics and growing plants out of soil. There were even rumors spreading around camp that some boys were sneaking into the girls' dorms at night. It was truly a nerdy 12-year-old boy's dream come true.
Truly amazing. What's even more amazing is how ancient the technology inside one of mankind's most incredible inventions looks compared to what we know today.
It reminds me of a visit to one of Israel's Air Force bases where I got to see the F-16's up close. I couldn't believe it when we were told that pilots upon receiving coordinates, had to open up a notebook beside them and actually look it up to know where to go because their navigation system was so old. The F-16I had a lot of improvements in this area that no longer required manual lookup by the pilot.
I'd like to note that the shuttle fleet received a "glass cockpit" upgrade (around 1997-1998), replacing many mechanical indicators with multi-function displays. Here's a link to a (small) side-by-side comparison:
Prior to the upgrade, the space shuttle looked dated compared to commercial airliners flying at the time. It's debatable whether the shuttles looked more ancient then or now.
Couple of years ago flew on an MD-80/DC-10 that had what looked like the original 1970's-era instrumentation. It did look pretty ancient. Wonder how many pilots are even qualified to fly on that, or if the qualifications are different.
The same plane was leaking fuel out of the wing throughout the flight. Not really confidence-inspiring.
There's a few parts of that anecdote which confuse me as a pilot. The first one is two vastly different aircraft separated by a slash as if to indicate that they are equivalent. The second is an air crew that completed a flight, while leaking fuel, without declaring emergency and putting it down. Lastly, someone actually observing fuel leaking from the aircraft and thinking "meh, it's just old," rather than alerting the air crew.
(Put another way, I have doubts that you were observing a fuel leak. Those are generally pretty easy to notice -- "why are we consuming two thousand extra pounds of fuel per hour?")
Almost all pilots today still learn to fly on the old "steam" gauges, not on glass, and many glass cockpits still have the basic analog gauges as a backup.
Re: how old the tech is - about ten years ago NASA was buying old computing equipment in bulk to scavenge the 8086 chips, which were used for shuttle support gear:
My guess would be that during launch and reentry the astronauts are wearing pressure suits that include a backpack, are custom fitted and probably provide padding. In orbit theres no need for padding on the seats.
^ Too late for me to edit this, I should have said fully pressurised. The LES, the suit used on shuttle missions up to the late 90s, was partially pressurised.
I was talking to a stunt pilot recently, and asked him about that (the stunt plane on display had pretty much the same amount of padding). Apparently the padding (at least for them) compresses when you're under a high number of G's, and it causes you to move the joystick.
Does anyone happen to know the contractors involved with the primary computers in the Shuttles? I was told they used a newer iteration of the Boeing ACUs similar to what used to be in the B-52Hs for their Offensive Avionics System. Did they sit on a MIL-STD-1553 bus variant? Any truth to that?
We were able to get out into orbit with the help of Mission Control, but on the way back it was just us in the deck.
We burned up on re-entry.