This thesis used virtual reality techniques to investigate how differences in visual vertical direction of two docked spacecraft affect the ability of a person in one module to mentally visualize the relative orientation of the other module, and spatial relationships of surfaces in it. Spacecraft and space station modules are typically connected differently in space from the way they would be in training simulators on Earth. The local visual vertical is the direction that appears to be "up" as defined by panel and rack orientation, labeling, and placement. In space, the local visual verticals of adjacent modules are not always consistently aligned and astronauts say they find it hard to orient themselves within those configurations. We investigated how relative module orientation determines performance in a spatial memory and visualization task. An experiment compared six different attachment configurations of two modules. Subjects (n = 20) wearing a color stereo head mounted display first learned the interiors of two modules separately. They then learned six flight configurations sequentially. In each configuration, subjects located in the first module were shown one "cue" wall in that module, so they could determine their orientation, and were then asked to visualize, place and orient a "target" wall within a wireframe view of the adjacent second module.
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