CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., April 23— The eight-minute climb to orbit will be as tense and dangerous as always. But this time, the seven astronauts aboard space shuttle Atlantis have a technological edge.

After nearly 100 launchings and 20 years, the cockpit's outdated mechanical gauges and four monochromatic screens are gone, replaced by 11 color screens and vivid images.

In a launching emergency where every millisecond counts, the new cockpit could mean the difference between life and death, said Andrew Allen, a former astronaut who works for United Space Alliance, a shuttle contractor.

Dave King, the NASA launching director, said, ''Any time you can provide a crew with more data, the right data at the right time, they can make better decisions.''

The cockpit, patterned after those in Boeing 777's, makes its debut aboard Atlantis on Monday.

Liftoff is scheduled for 4:15 p.m. Atlantis' destination is the International Space Station, which is in urgent need of new batteries and a lift to a higher orbit.

The cockpit cost NASA about $200 million to develop. Honeywell Space Systems designed the liquid crystal, flat-panel cockpit displays to mimic the gauges of the 1960's and 70's, tapes, dials and cathode ray tubes.

Warnings appear on the screens in vivid red. Before, warnings showed up bright green, against the normal green of everything else.

Columbia is next in line for the new cockpit, followed by Discovery and Endeavour in the next two years at a cost of almost $9 million each.