Thanks, once again, for one of your superb posts Gary. It boggles the mind how complex these systems were, and how well managed the manuals and documentation had to be. I remember when I worked for IBM in the early 80's that manuals for mid-range systems up to mainframes were similar in their design and general approach. What looks ominously complex for a single person to understand from top to bottom was very neatly broken down into linked manageable chunks using a systematic technique called "mapping" - or flowcharts. You just had to master one segment at a time, and didn't really need to know the whole animal as such. What I learned to love was the nomenclature, or IBM-Speak. It is nearly identical to NASA-Speak in many respects. Everything was reduced to acronyms, and I mean everything. Calling a "fan" a fan wasn't on - it was called an "A.M.D" - short for "air movement device" - longer than the proper term. LOL Great stuff.
I think that in space you'd probably need to however. You had to analyse and react to problems almost instinctively or possibly not make it back. What amazingly intelligent human beings we sent out there.