Back to/from the (in)sane side (maybe) ...

Thanks to a suggestion from Castorp, which have been looking after my mental health over the past little while, I'm taking a well deserved (ahem) break from the collision madness, so that we can focus for a while on the reentry sequence ... which is long overdue. To that effect I have started to work on a GPC type component so that we could run on it the reentry program (among others). Now, the trick is that as none of the early Soviet spacecraft (until 1974) was equipped with a digital computer (on the US side, Gemini was the first manned vehicle to use one), we need this component to allow the simulation of less evolved logic system. I'm not too sure what they were using to be honest. According to the ASTP document describing the Soyuz on-board systems, they had some kind of "switching logic" .. not sure what that could be exactly ... maybe some kind of Analog computer? Anyhow, whichever piece of machinery was used to perform automatic task (in the Soviet space program, the crew had very little input on the working of the spacecraft, a striking comparison to the US projects), we should be able to simulate it. To support the development and test of that component, I have been working on adding a set of controls on the engineering panels of the 7K-OK so that we could start/stop some programs interactively and somewhat monitor their working (the right/top most group):

To get a better understanding of what this component should be offering, I have been looking into various Gemini documents and Apollo ... It is no surprise to me anymore, but still quite amazing the shear amount of information related to these project available on the web!