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Behind the Scenes At NASA's Mission Control Center
willith writes "I was recently given the opportunity to spend several hours on the floor of Historic Mission Operations Control Room #2, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. MOCR2 was used to control almost manned Gemini and Apollo mission, including Apollo 11 & 13. More, my tour guide was none other than famous Apollo mission controller Sy Liebergot, one of the fellows behind the solution that saved Apollo 13. I go in-depth on the role of the flight controller during Apollo, and focus on how and why Mission Control functioned, and I spend a lot of time talking about the consoles and how they worked. The feature includes a ton of anecdotes and stories from Mr. Liebergot about mission control in general, and about what he did during Apollo 12 & 13 specifically. I also put together a supplemental report that goes through each and every station and describes their Apollo-era layout."
He designed the P-Tube controller boards, any time we're involved with tourist he shows those boards off.
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Which Apollo Missions didn't happen in that room? I thought that Gemini flights were hosted somewhere else, but I could see why they'd want to practice for Apollo through the Gemini flights in that room. Definitely explains the Gemini patches on the wall. Was it retooled after Gemini? I remember hearing that NASA offered it to the Apollo 13 Movie, but that they built a set instead that was so realistic that NASA employees on an advisory role would find themselves looking for the elevator that existed at the real one on their way out. I'm glad that the control room has been well preserved.
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This is wonderful information -- I'm so glad to finally know it all. Thank you for the thorough documentation! I grew up at 1927 Richvale Lane, just a short bike ride from building 30. We were the first 25 houses there when it was all pastures, wild animals and bayous, and the Manned Spacecraft Center was brand new. My dad worked on Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and then shuttle. We had dinners with the guys who worked there, as well as with the astronauts and their families. Of course, I was just a kid and thought is was all cool but no big deal. In retrospect, I can now see how magical it was. Everyone in the entire community was working together for something so optimistic and positive during a pretty lousy time otherwise, with assassinations, the war, and violent protests and riots.
But we were immune to it because everyone was 100% focused on getting a man to the moon and returning him safely to earth before the end of the decade. I guess that's why I like startups so much -- it's the same focus on a single objective with everyone pulling together. We don't change the world as the 100,000 engineers did on the 60s, but it's all we have left these days.
Krantz's book, "Failure is not an Option", covers much of this material, with more information about the people at those consoles and what they did.
Those Philco-Ford console systems showed up in a number of other places, including NORAD HQ in Cheyenne Mountain and the USAF Satellite Control Center in Sunnyvale. Those screens are TV screens on a cable TV system, with a TV tuner in the console. All video generation is elsewhere. Anyone on the system could tune in anyone's screen. Military command and control centers are often set up with that capability even today. It makes coordinated teamwork possible without people having to physically hang around the console where the action is.