Anyone who has seen the simulator room at the ISDC’s training facility generally finds it pretty impressive. It’s not an exact replica of what we expect things will be like aboard Endeavour, but it has been designed as an immersive environment and seems real enough!

What everyone has seen so far is the phase one tactical simulator which contains a subset of vessel systems focussed on tactical functions. An exact copy of this simulator was to be built alongside so that two crews could compete as different vessels within the mission scenarios.

A couple of things have changed our thinking on that. Firstly, the remote simulators just released have proven to be extremely capable, which means that a second crew can successfully operate remotely against a crew in the sim room itself. Secondly, we had consistent feedback from the recent open day that crew would like to get exposure to additional systems sooner.

So for phase two we’ve decided to go ahead with an expansion (rather than a duplication) of the existing simulator. When completed the phase two simulator will include an additional station for science functions, making it ready to handle more complex mission simulations. There will still be room to expand further as new systems become available.

The current phase one simulator will continue to be available for the next few weeks as components are fabricated for the expansion, so you’ll still be able to log sim hours.