18 ms·

Former NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz Restores Mission Control in Houston

207 points by shortlived 7y ago

NeonTiger1992 7y ago
Would love to be able to go back to when this was bustling during the Apollo missions. Just a fly on the wall watching it all unfold. Fascinating.
- bookofjoe 7y ago
  Watch the new documentary "Apollo 11" — it's all that and more.
  - chha 7y ago
    Any links or pointers to where it can be found? There are just a _few_ Apollo 11 documentaries coming out this year it seems...
    - adventured 7y ago
      Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Apollo-11-Todd-Douglas-Miller/dp/B07RDY2QF1/ https://www.amazon.com/Apollo-11-Todd-Douglas-Miller/dp/B07R... IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8760684/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8760684/ It's light on storytelling and heavy on fly on the wall presentation. The footage is pretty great. You spend a lot of time in mission control.
    - bookofjoe 7y ago
      https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/apollo-11-2019 https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/apollo-11-2019
  - avar 7y ago
    It's got some great footage, but it's really not. In intersperses shots of mission control with footage of what's going on in the mission itself in such a way that it's hard to get a good idea of what's going on in mission control. I was disappointed that in a 90 minute documentary they didn't show the three stages of the rocket launching in anything like real-time. It only took around 10 minutes until they were in Earth orbit[1]. Instead the 1st stage launch is shown in pretty much real-time, so you get a good feel for how long the 1st stage took. Then they show stage separation of the 2nd stage immediately followed by the separation of the 3rd stage around a minute later (in reality it took 6-7 minutes). You never see the 2nd stage light or do any work. 1. https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_11i_Timeline.htm https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_11i_Timeline.htm
fouronnes3 7y ago
The arstechnica article is much more detailed with many hd pictures: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/behind-the-scenes-at-nasas-newly-restored-historic-apollo-mission-control/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/behind-the-scenes-at...
- breakingcups 7y ago
  Great pictures, but to get the best resolution you need navigate to photo manually and use the download button. For those who want all the pictures, I've put them in one archive here: https://we.tl/t-NSdjUDxwCn https://we.tl/t-NSdjUDxwCn
celias 7y ago
Houston We Have a Podcast has an episode about the restoration https://www.nasa.gov/johnson/HWHAP/restoring-the-apollo-mission-control-center https://www.nasa.gov/johnson/HWHAP/restoring-the-apollo-miss...
mmsimanga 7y ago
Every time I see a story on mission control I always search for the ground speed check story[0]. Probably one of my favourite pieces of writing and a really cool story. Never fails to lift my mood. I particularly like how he describes how air traffic controllers voices are modeled on the Housten Centre voice. [0] https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041 https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-10791270...
- ElCapitanMarkla 7y ago
  I've read that a few times but had to read it again since you posted it. It's a fantastic little piece of writing
- Shivetya 7y ago
  you pretty much have to assume the rest of ground control picked up on it too and the person handling the request was for a few days special himself too.
spodek 7y ago
I've watched a few videos of Gene Kranz lately. Inspiring leadership of a different sort than seen today. Very effective, especially in the Apollo missions. Plenty of them are online: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gene+kranz&oq=&gs_l= https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gene+kranz&oq=&...
- sokoloff 7y ago
  He gave the keynote at Surge 2013 which was excellent. Excerpts are online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKQK9BK2I_o&feature=youtu.be&t=462 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKQK9BK2I_o&feature=youtu.be...
ataturk 7y ago
While interesting, it sort of bugs me that we're more interested in "restoring" past, way out of date tech that had a purpose and was used up for that purpose and that we really just aren't moving forwards. Not that Apollo stuff isn't cool. It's just...I dunno...we seem stuck on past glories. I don't think we need anymore WWII movies either.
miobrien 7y ago
For anyone interested in hearing more about the moon landing, check out this BBC podcast: 13 Minutes to the Moon. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2/episodes/downloads https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2/episodes/downloads I’m on episode 3. So far there have been interviews with Steve Bales (guidance), Gene Kranz (flight director), etc. (It was recommended by someone else in another thread. Thanks to whoever that was!)
- jonny_eh 7y ago
  Includes interviews with Margaret Hamilton (she coined the term Software Engineering) and Michael Collins (the third man on Apollo 11).
chasd00 7y ago
I was there a couple weeks ago. They had the Apollo control room blocked off to visitors for the rennovations so we saw a different one. The tours are kinda boring but you have to suffer one to get to the Saturn V. That thing is incredible, looking at the welds on the engines knowing they were done by hand blows me away. Also, seeing how large the turbo pumps are and imagining the LOX flowing at full tilt is scary. I get the feeling the term "control" is used very loosely once those engines are ignited.
- larrydag 7y ago
  I've been on the tour and I didn't think it was boring. I learned a lot of past and present space exploration. I think there are 2 or 3 different tours you can choose so return trips are recommended. I agree the Saturn V is a thing of monstrous beauty. The pictures do not do it justice. You have to stand next to it to really appreciate the magnitude of the engineering and workmanship. Also another good NASA site to tour is the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi where they test the engines to this day. I believe it's where Wernher Von Braun spent most of his time.
  - rootbear 7y ago
    I grew up in Huntsville, AL, in the 60s. Von Braun lived there and the Saturn V engines were tested there. The Stennis test stand was built for the Shuttle engines, I think. The test stand was south of Huntsville, on the banks of the Tennessee river. When they tested the F-1 we could hear it at our house on the north side of the city and it would shake the dishes in the kitchen cabinets.
    - larrydag 7y ago
      Testing at Stennis started in the 60's. I know they tested at Hunstville but I thought Huntsville is where they did the Saturn V assembly. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/stennis/pdf/428016main_FS-2010-02-00087-SSC.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/centers/stennis/pdf/428016main_FS-2010-...
      - 7y ago
cjf4 7y ago
What stands out to me about Kranz's view of technology and the future is his optimism. While it might be tempting to dismiss this as dated postwar scientific idealism (e.g. Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y."), Kranz walked the walk by successfully guiding the greatest accomplishment of the era. Kranz's inclusion of "love" adjacent to "skills" and "knowledge" is the lesson our current technological culture could stand to learn the most from.
- chkaloon 7y ago
  Well put. I especially like the reference to I.G.Y. I always loved that song.
  - defterGoose 7y ago
    "Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision"
- driverdan 7y ago
  > Kranz walked the walk by successfully guiding the greatest accomplishment of the era. The greatest human accomplishment ever.
  - sizzzzlerz 7y ago
    I don’t know about that. Magellan’s 1519 circumnavigation around what was then unknown parts is also worthy that title.
    - tomjakubowski 7y ago
      "Unknown parts" to Magellan and his peers, it's worth emphasizing.
    - harlanlewis 7y ago
      Only commenting on this because "unknown" feels a bit off, especially in the context of greatest human achievements. Much of the Polynesian Triangle and Indian Ocean trade routes were established hundreds and in some areas thousands of years prior to Magellan. Tierra del Fuego (Straight of Magellan) had been inhabited by nomadic seafarers for thousands of years. Magellan's personal circumnavigation requires including his previous voyages to the Malay peninsula via India. Circumnavigation a mere ~30 years after Portugal first reached the Cape of Good Hope is extraordinary. Full stop. But tweaking perspective shows how reaching the Indian Ocean pulled back the curtain on an already developed world, where interconnected maritime trade included both China and Mozambique. The 1300s scholar Ibn Battuta of Tangier visited Beijing, Timbuktu, Singapore, Kenya, and Constantinople within 30 years. Technology and motivations unique to Europeans stitched together routes across the world and did it in a way that enabled others to quickly follow, but there were precious few places visited that someone else didn't already traverse and call home.
noir-york 7y ago
"The room also brought back memories for Kranz of a shared sense of purpose. "That group of people united in pursuit of a cause, and basically the result was greater than the sum of the parts. There was a chemistry that was formed," Kranz said." The Cold War undoubtedly helped, though my impression (I am not American) is that there was a greater sense of social cohesion back then (that did not include minorities). Assuming social cohesion is a public good, i.e., public policy should help bring it about without having to engineer a cold war, how would a society go about it? National service?
- justin66 7y ago
  > The Cold War undoubtedly helped, though my impression (I am not American) is that there was a greater sense of social cohesion back then (that did not include minorities). Not to be dismissive, but... no. You're talking about the time of the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam war. When you hear Americans talk about how utterly divided these times are, keep in mind that, on the whole, we have no sense of history and the attention span of a gnat.
  - noir-york 7y ago
    Got a point there; a I forgot that this was also the time of the Vietnam war / Civil Rights.
  - mturmon 7y ago
    Just as an example, Gil Scott-Heron's critique: https://genius.com/Gil-scott-heron-whitey-on-the-moon-annotated https://genius.com/Gil-scott-heron-whitey-on-the-moon-annota..., or: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Greater sense of social cohesion is often when dissenting views were more successfully hidden, quashed or marginalised. Depends whether you read the news or the history book. Read some biographies of comedians, actors or other non-military types who got drafted, or the lower rank military whether special forces, simple squaddie or aircrew in whichever era. You'll get a very different picture. Usually the far more interesting picture than that from politicians, general or admiral, but much less sense of purpose showing. Perhaps something can achieve that, but I suspect it needs to be as clear, obvious and existential for all as the historical moments. Even then it won't be nearly as cohesive as history makes you think.
totally 7y ago
Kranz wrote a book about his experience in mission control which is a good read: https://www.amazon.com/Failure-Not-Option-Mission-Control/dp/1439148813 https://www.amazon.com/Failure-Not-Option-Mission-Control/dp...
cat199 7y ago
> Now Kranz, 85, has completed another undertaking: the reopening of Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. This article seems to imply that no mission control has been active in Houston since 1992, which is not true - what has been reopened (really, renovated for tours) is the 'historic', older mission control center used during the apollo missions (MOCR2). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_C._Kraft_Jr._Mission_Control_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_C._Kraft_Jr._Missi...
rbanffy 7y ago
I'm very curious about the LCD panels that replaced the CRTs in the consoles. The information displays seem very nice for the time period and I'd love to see any information on the original typography used. As I understand, most screens are a static physical overlay over computer generated numbers on a CRT, captured from that CRT by a camera and then broadcast to the control consoles. My guess is that it was done like that because the computer didn't have a character buffer and had to do beam racing to draw one line (or column, like the IBM 2260) at a time and doing that saved memory for the labels. https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/misc-screen-1440x960.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/misc-... We can see two distinct fonts, and I assume the wide one is from the stencil and the narrow one computer-generated, but the wide also has some telltale signs of computer fonts if you look at the "A"s.
- Animats 7y ago
  The original system was NTSC monochrome video. The screens were all multiplexed as analog cable channels, and any display could access any screen. Note the "TV Channel" number display to the upper right of the screen. Other locations on site also had a cable connection and could view all the screens. The system was built by Ford Aerospace. The same system was used at NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain, and at the Blue Cube in Sunnyvale, the USAF control center for their satellites. Into the mid 1980s, which was kind of embarrassing. Setups where any station can view any screen are common in command and control. Everybody can view the screen where the action is without hovering over the person controlling that station.
  - Animats 7y ago
    The USAF really, really wanted large screen displays, and funded extensive efforts to build them. Pre-computer, they had big manual plotting boards. Big ones, the size of theater screens, with people on lifts updating them. There was the Iconarama, essentially an Etch-A-Sketch hooked to a projector. There was a scheme which drew on movie film with a CRT, developed the film in about 30 seconds, projected the film, and discarded it. This was updated very slowly except during crises. There was Eidophor, used for at least one screen at Apollo mission control. That's a good TV projection system, but high maintenance, involving oil films in vacuum.[1] It's the only early system with serious light output. Everything else was dim. In my aerospace days, I once came across a USAF study with a history of all the strange large screen displays the USAF had tried. For the Iconarama it said "it is recommended that further systems of this type not be procured." By the 1980s, projection TV tubes finally had enough light output to do large screen displays. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor
barking 7y ago
In 1995 when Apollo 13 the movie came out, it felt like a very long time after the actual events. The same length of time again has almost elapsed but 1995 seems not that long ago. In 1995 I thought the real Gene Krantz, an old man so I'm amazed by how well he looks today.
cubano 7y ago
I worked as a summer hire at KSC in 1987, and one of the things that stuck out most in that experience was when they took all of us summer hires on a full tour of the facility. We got to walk besides the Crawler-Transporter 2 as it was moving to the launch pad...that was awesome. Touring the VAB and taking a ride to the top...amazing view. Same for the actual launch pad and them describing why the lightning arrestors had to be aligned perfectly to the N-S magnetic poles (to maximize dissipation, of course). The saddest part of the tour is when we went to the KSC version of the Apollo control room and it was in total disrepair (this was 1988 remember). I remember thinking "what a shame this looks like this..I don't get it", but this was the time between the first Challenger explosion and overall, the place wasn't at its best. I think it's amazing that Gene led the restoration of the Johnson control room...I just hope that people don't forget to do the same at KSC.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ryanmarsh 7y ago
I saw this as a child (full of wonder) in the 1980's. It was still in active use during the shuttle missions. I've always wanted my children to see it and now that can.
post_break 7y ago
I have a friend who works at nasa. He took us into this room a about 7 years ago and it was depressing. People were literally stealing stuff attached to the control boards. Glad to see it restored.
augustusseizure 7y ago
A couple weeks ago someone posted a link to a real time re-creation of the apollo 11 mission. It's amazing watching videos of everyone in that room, listening to the chatter on all the radio channels, and seeing pictures scroll by from the moon, all in real-time. It does an amazing job bringing you behind the curtains, almost like you're a part of the actual mission. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20193118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20193118
ChuckMcM 7y ago
This is pretty cool, does anyone know if there are online archives of drawings for the various stations at mission control houston?
MR4D 7y ago
Kranz was the Steve Jobs of his time for NASA. Would be great to have another one someday at NASA.
kapilvt 7y ago
Gene is awesome. I had a chance to watch him speak at SurgeCon 2013, there's lots of lessons from dealing various mission crisis events that are still applicable today to operation teams. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKQK9BK2I_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKQK9BK2I_o [update] gene actually starts talking about 7:32m into that vid
peter303 7y ago
I was saddened visiting various NASA space travel museums. They mostly bask in accomplishments decades ago- moon landing, shuttle.
- grahar64 7y ago
  The moon landing is an accomplishment that should be basked in for generations.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

207 points by shortlived 7y ago

NeonTiger1992 7y ago

Would love to be able to go back to when this was bustling during the Apollo missions. Just a fly on the wall watching it all unfold. Fascinating.

bookofjoe 7y ago
Watch the new documentary "Apollo 11" — it's all that and more.
- chha 7y ago
  Any links or pointers to where it can be found? There are just a _few_ Apollo 11 documentaries coming out this year it seems...
  - adventured 7y ago
    Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Apollo-11-Todd-Douglas-Miller/dp/B07RDY2QF1/ https://www.amazon.com/Apollo-11-Todd-Douglas-Miller/dp/B07R... IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8760684/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8760684/ It's light on storytelling and heavy on fly on the wall presentation. The footage is pretty great. You spend a lot of time in mission control.
  - bookofjoe 7y ago
    https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/apollo-11-2019 https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/apollo-11-2019
- avar 7y ago
  It's got some great footage, but it's really not. In intersperses shots of mission control with footage of what's going on in the mission itself in such a way that it's hard to get a good idea of what's going on in mission control. I was disappointed that in a 90 minute documentary they didn't show the three stages of the rocket launching in anything like real-time. It only took around 10 minutes until they were in Earth orbit[1]. Instead the 1st stage launch is shown in pretty much real-time, so you get a good feel for how long the 1st stage took. Then they show stage separation of the 2nd stage immediately followed by the separation of the 3rd stage around a minute later (in reality it took 6-7 minutes). You never see the 2nd stage light or do any work. 1. https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_11i_Timeline.htm https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_11i_Timeline.htm

fouronnes3 7y ago

The arstechnica article is much more detailed with many hd pictures: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/behind-the-scenes-at-nasas-newly-restored-historic-apollo-mission-control/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/behind-the-scenes-at...

breakingcups 7y ago
Great pictures, but to get the best resolution you need navigate to photo manually and use the download button. For those who want all the pictures, I've put them in one archive here: https://we.tl/t-NSdjUDxwCn https://we.tl/t-NSdjUDxwCn

celias 7y ago

Houston We Have a Podcast has an episode about the restoration https://www.nasa.gov/johnson/HWHAP/restoring-the-apollo-mission-control-center https://www.nasa.gov/johnson/HWHAP/restoring-the-apollo-miss...

mmsimanga 7y ago

Every time I see a story on mission control I always search for the ground speed check story[0]. Probably one of my favourite pieces of writing and a really cool story. Never fails to lift my mood. I particularly like how he describes how air traffic controllers voices are modeled on the Housten Centre voice. [0] https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041 https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-10791270...

ElCapitanMarkla 7y ago
I've read that a few times but had to read it again since you posted it. It's a fantastic little piece of writing
Shivetya 7y ago
you pretty much have to assume the rest of ground control picked up on it too and the person handling the request was for a few days special himself too.

spodek 7y ago

I've watched a few videos of Gene Kranz lately. Inspiring leadership of a different sort than seen today. Very effective, especially in the Apollo missions. Plenty of them are online: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gene+kranz&oq=&gs_l= https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gene+kranz&oq=&...

sokoloff 7y ago
He gave the keynote at Surge 2013 which was excellent. Excerpts are online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKQK9BK2I_o&feature=youtu.be&t=462 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKQK9BK2I_o&feature=youtu.be...

ataturk 7y ago

While interesting, it sort of bugs me that we're more interested in "restoring" past, way out of date tech that had a purpose and was used up for that purpose and that we really just aren't moving forwards. Not that Apollo stuff isn't cool. It's just...I dunno...we seem stuck on past glories. I don't think we need anymore WWII movies either.

miobrien 7y ago

For anyone interested in hearing more about the moon landing, check out this BBC podcast: 13 Minutes to the Moon. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2/episodes/downloads https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2/episodes/downloads I’m on episode 3. So far there have been interviews with Steve Bales (guidance), Gene Kranz (flight director), etc. (It was recommended by someone else in another thread. Thanks to whoever that was!)

jonny_eh 7y ago
Includes interviews with Margaret Hamilton (she coined the term Software Engineering) and Michael Collins (the third man on Apollo 11).

chasd00 7y ago

I was there a couple weeks ago. They had the Apollo control room blocked off to visitors for the rennovations so we saw a different one. The tours are kinda boring but you have to suffer one to get to the Saturn V. That thing is incredible, looking at the welds on the engines knowing they were done by hand blows me away. Also, seeing how large the turbo pumps are and imagining the LOX flowing at full tilt is scary. I get the feeling the term "control" is used very loosely once those engines are ignited.

larrydag 7y ago
I've been on the tour and I didn't think it was boring. I learned a lot of past and present space exploration. I think there are 2 or 3 different tours you can choose so return trips are recommended. I agree the Saturn V is a thing of monstrous beauty. The pictures do not do it justice. You have to stand next to it to really appreciate the magnitude of the engineering and workmanship. Also another good NASA site to tour is the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi where they test the engines to this day. I believe it's where Wernher Von Braun spent most of his time.
- rootbear 7y ago
  I grew up in Huntsville, AL, in the 60s. Von Braun lived there and the Saturn V engines were tested there. The Stennis test stand was built for the Shuttle engines, I think. The test stand was south of Huntsville, on the banks of the Tennessee river. When they tested the F-1 we could hear it at our house on the north side of the city and it would shake the dishes in the kitchen cabinets.
  - larrydag 7y ago
    Testing at Stennis started in the 60's. I know they tested at Hunstville but I thought Huntsville is where they did the Saturn V assembly. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/stennis/pdf/428016main_FS-2010-02-00087-SSC.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/centers/stennis/pdf/428016main_FS-2010-...
    - 7y ago

cjf4 7y ago

What stands out to me about Kranz's view of technology and the future is his optimism. While it might be tempting to dismiss this as dated postwar scientific idealism (e.g. Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y."), Kranz walked the walk by successfully guiding the greatest accomplishment of the era. Kranz's inclusion of "love" adjacent to "skills" and "knowledge" is the lesson our current technological culture could stand to learn the most from.

chkaloon 7y ago
Well put. I especially like the reference to I.G.Y. I always loved that song.
- defterGoose 7y ago
  "Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision"
driverdan 7y ago
> Kranz walked the walk by successfully guiding the greatest accomplishment of the era. The greatest human accomplishment ever.
- sizzzzlerz 7y ago
  I don’t know about that. Magellan’s 1519 circumnavigation around what was then unknown parts is also worthy that title.
  - tomjakubowski 7y ago
    "Unknown parts" to Magellan and his peers, it's worth emphasizing.
  - harlanlewis 7y ago
    Only commenting on this because "unknown" feels a bit off, especially in the context of greatest human achievements. Much of the Polynesian Triangle and Indian Ocean trade routes were established hundreds and in some areas thousands of years prior to Magellan. Tierra del Fuego (Straight of Magellan) had been inhabited by nomadic seafarers for thousands of years. Magellan's personal circumnavigation requires including his previous voyages to the Malay peninsula via India. Circumnavigation a mere ~30 years after Portugal first reached the Cape of Good Hope is extraordinary. Full stop. But tweaking perspective shows how reaching the Indian Ocean pulled back the curtain on an already developed world, where interconnected maritime trade included both China and Mozambique. The 1300s scholar Ibn Battuta of Tangier visited Beijing, Timbuktu, Singapore, Kenya, and Constantinople within 30 years. Technology and motivations unique to Europeans stitched together routes across the world and did it in a way that enabled others to quickly follow, but there were precious few places visited that someone else didn't already traverse and call home.

noir-york 7y ago

"The room also brought back memories for Kranz of a shared sense of purpose. "That group of people united in pursuit of a cause, and basically the result was greater than the sum of the parts. There was a chemistry that was formed," Kranz said." The Cold War undoubtedly helped, though my impression (I am not American) is that there was a greater sense of social cohesion back then (that did not include minorities). Assuming social cohesion is a public good, i.e., public policy should help bring it about without having to engineer a cold war, how would a society go about it? National service?

justin66 7y ago
> The Cold War undoubtedly helped, though my impression (I am not American) is that there was a greater sense of social cohesion back then (that did not include minorities). Not to be dismissive, but... no. You're talking about the time of the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam war. When you hear Americans talk about how utterly divided these times are, keep in mind that, on the whole, we have no sense of history and the attention span of a gnat.
- noir-york 7y ago
  Got a point there; a I forgot that this was also the time of the Vietnam war / Civil Rights.
- mturmon 7y ago
  Just as an example, Gil Scott-Heron's critique: https://genius.com/Gil-scott-heron-whitey-on-the-moon-annotated https://genius.com/Gil-scott-heron-whitey-on-the-moon-annota..., or: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Greater sense of social cohesion is often when dissenting views were more successfully hidden, quashed or marginalised. Depends whether you read the news or the history book. Read some biographies of comedians, actors or other non-military types who got drafted, or the lower rank military whether special forces, simple squaddie or aircrew in whichever era. You'll get a very different picture. Usually the far more interesting picture than that from politicians, general or admiral, but much less sense of purpose showing. Perhaps something can achieve that, but I suspect it needs to be as clear, obvious and existential for all as the historical moments. Even then it won't be nearly as cohesive as history makes you think.

totally 7y ago

Kranz wrote a book about his experience in mission control which is a good read: https://www.amazon.com/Failure-Not-Option-Mission-Control/dp/1439148813 https://www.amazon.com/Failure-Not-Option-Mission-Control/dp...

cat199 7y ago

> Now Kranz, 85, has completed another undertaking: the reopening of Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. This article seems to imply that no mission control has been active in Houston since 1992, which is not true - what has been reopened (really, renovated for tours) is the 'historic', older mission control center used during the apollo missions (MOCR2). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_C._Kraft_Jr._Mission_Control_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_C._Kraft_Jr._Missi...

rbanffy 7y ago

I'm very curious about the LCD panels that replaced the CRTs in the consoles. The information displays seem very nice for the time period and I'd love to see any information on the original typography used. As I understand, most screens are a static physical overlay over computer generated numbers on a CRT, captured from that CRT by a camera and then broadcast to the control consoles. My guess is that it was done like that because the computer didn't have a character buffer and had to do beam racing to draw one line (or column, like the IBM 2260) at a time and doing that saved memory for the labels. https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/misc-screen-1440x960.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/misc-... We can see two distinct fonts, and I assume the wide one is from the stencil and the narrow one computer-generated, but the wide also has some telltale signs of computer fonts if you look at the "A"s.

Animats 7y ago
The original system was NTSC monochrome video. The screens were all multiplexed as analog cable channels, and any display could access any screen. Note the "TV Channel" number display to the upper right of the screen. Other locations on site also had a cable connection and could view all the screens. The system was built by Ford Aerospace. The same system was used at NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain, and at the Blue Cube in Sunnyvale, the USAF control center for their satellites. Into the mid 1980s, which was kind of embarrassing. Setups where any station can view any screen are common in command and control. Everybody can view the screen where the action is without hovering over the person controlling that station.
- Animats 7y ago
  The USAF really, really wanted large screen displays, and funded extensive efforts to build them. Pre-computer, they had big manual plotting boards. Big ones, the size of theater screens, with people on lifts updating them. There was the Iconarama, essentially an Etch-A-Sketch hooked to a projector. There was a scheme which drew on movie film with a CRT, developed the film in about 30 seconds, projected the film, and discarded it. This was updated very slowly except during crises. There was Eidophor, used for at least one screen at Apollo mission control. That's a good TV projection system, but high maintenance, involving oil films in vacuum.[1] It's the only early system with serious light output. Everything else was dim. In my aerospace days, I once came across a USAF study with a history of all the strange large screen displays the USAF had tried. For the Iconarama it said "it is recommended that further systems of this type not be procured." By the 1980s, projection TV tubes finally had enough light output to do large screen displays. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor

barking 7y ago

In 1995 when Apollo 13 the movie came out, it felt like a very long time after the actual events. The same length of time again has almost elapsed but 1995 seems not that long ago. In 1995 I thought the real Gene Krantz, an old man so I'm amazed by how well he looks today.

cubano 7y ago

I worked as a summer hire at KSC in 1987, and one of the things that stuck out most in that experience was when they took all of us summer hires on a full tour of the facility. We got to walk besides the Crawler-Transporter 2 as it was moving to the launch pad...that was awesome. Touring the VAB and taking a ride to the top...amazing view. Same for the actual launch pad and them describing why the lightning arrestors had to be aligned perfectly to the N-S magnetic poles (to maximize dissipation, of course). The saddest part of the tour is when we went to the KSC version of the Apollo control room and it was in total disrepair (this was 1988 remember). I remember thinking "what a shame this looks like this..I don't get it", but this was the time between the first Challenger explosion and overall, the place wasn't at its best. I think it's amazing that Gene led the restoration of the Johnson control room...I just hope that people don't forget to do the same at KSC.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ryanmarsh 7y ago

I saw this as a child (full of wonder) in the 1980's. It was still in active use during the shuttle missions. I've always wanted my children to see it and now that can.

post_break 7y ago

I have a friend who works at nasa. He took us into this room a about 7 years ago and it was depressing. People were literally stealing stuff attached to the control boards. Glad to see it restored.

augustusseizure 7y ago

A couple weeks ago someone posted a link to a real time re-creation of the apollo 11 mission. It's amazing watching videos of everyone in that room, listening to the chatter on all the radio channels, and seeing pictures scroll by from the moon, all in real-time. It does an amazing job bringing you behind the curtains, almost like you're a part of the actual mission. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20193118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20193118

ChuckMcM 7y ago

This is pretty cool, does anyone know if there are online archives of drawings for the various stations at mission control houston?

MR4D 7y ago

Kranz was the Steve Jobs of his time for NASA. Would be great to have another one someday at NASA.

kapilvt 7y ago

Gene is awesome. I had a chance to watch him speak at SurgeCon 2013, there's lots of lessons from dealing various mission crisis events that are still applicable today to operation teams. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKQK9BK2I_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKQK9BK2I_o [update] gene actually starts talking about 7:32m into that vid

peter303 7y ago

I was saddened visiting various NASA space travel museums. They mostly bask in accomplishments decades ago- moon landing, shuttle.

grahar64 7y ago
The moon landing is an accomplishment that should be basked in for generations.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]