I read far too far into the article before I realized it was the mobile site. :) In the mid 1980's I went on a tour of JPL in Pasadena and actually saw the co

I read far too far into the article before I realized it was the mobile site. :) In the mid 1980's I went on a tour of JPL in Pasadena and actually saw the computers that were (at the time) in charge of recording and storing the telemetry data. I'm vague on the exact details, but apparently the computers were donated from the US Army and were field models (early "portable" computers) and they operated on 48V DC power. So not only were the computers themselves large fridge sized units, they had near matching transformers that were fairly unreliable. I recall reading that in the mid 90s NASA replaced all the mission control systems for the space shuttle with a single Sun Workstation, so I assume that JPL also at some point replaced the downlink computers for V'ger. My hat is off to these many fine people who stuck it out with jobs that were probably long periods of drudgery interspersed with moments of sheer terror.