Display Designer Yuriy Tyapchenko

Abstract

Yuriy Aleksandrovich Tyapchenko was born on March 26, 1938, in the Krasnodar region. He graduated from the Moscow Power Institute in 1961 as an electrical engineer and joined Sergey Darevskiy’s laboratory at a branch of the Flight Research Institute (LII) in Zhukovskiy near Moscow. In 1967 this laboratory formed the Specialized Experimental Design Bureau within the Institute. In 1971 the bureau split off from LII and formed a separate organization. In 1983 the bureau again merged with the Flight Research Institute branch to become part of the Scientific-Research Institute of Aviation Equipment (NII AO). In 1997 the bureau was reestablished within the NII AO as the Specialized Experimental Design Bureau of Space Technology. Tyapchenko worked at the bureau as an engineer, the head of the laboratory of onboard information display systems (IDS) design, the head of the division of design, testing, and support of IDS for piloted spacecraft, and as deputy general director/deputy chief designer (1997–2002). He participated in or supervised the development of IDS for Vostok 2, Voskhod, Voskhod 3KV-6, Soyuz 7K/T/TM, Almaz, Salyut, and Buran. He also led the work on simulators for the Soyuz 7K, Zond, and N1–L3 programs. Tyapchenko supervised the design and development of IDS for the service module of the Mir space station, for the International Space Station, and for the modernized piloted spacecraft Soyuz TMA.

May 2002

Zhukovskiy, Moscow region, Russia, with additions by e-mail

Interviewer: Slava Gerovitch.

The interview was conducted in Russian and translated by Slava Gerovitch.

Yuriy Tyapchenko’s long-term career as a designer of information display systems for Soviet piloted spacecraft has placed him at the center of debates over the role of the cosmonaut on board, the division of function between human and machine, and the ways to integrate a cosmonaut into the technological system of spacecraft. In this interview, Tyapchenko discusses factors that shaped the design of control panels and hand controllers, the input of cosmonauts in the design process, and the institutional context of Soviet information display engineering.