Prototype 02 had a 5-inch LCD. It worked, it was cheap, and nobody in the studio looked at it twice. A satellite pass is a short, quiet event; the screen that tells you about it has to be something you notice from across a dark room without it lighting the whole room up.

What a tube does that a panel doesn’t

A monochrome CRT with green P31 phosphor glows only where there is something to say. Black is truly black, the lines have a soft bloom, and the afterglow of the radar sweep is physics rather than an animation we had to design. At night, at arm’s length, it reads better than any panel we tested.

Is it sensible?

The tube we use is a modern production part made for test equipment, and at the brightness we run it, a nightly routine should give it many years of life. It sits behind a laminated glass face in a sealed, shielded chassis built to the same safety standards as any desk appliance.

It costs us more per set than a panel would. We decided the thing you look at should be the best part of the object.