One of the great things about teaching at Practical Aeronautics is that I sometimes get a chance to see some pretty interesting things. Recently, I was teaching the aeronautics portion of the Teaching Science and Technology, Inc course “Foundations of Aerospace” at NASA-Johnson Space Center. It was my first time at NASA-JSC and I have to say, for a kid who followed all the Gemini and Apollo missions (I was a tad young to have clear memories of the Mercury missions), it was quite a privilege to be there.
Over lunch, one of my students, Zac Colovos, was kind enough to take me to see the Mission Control Centers (MCC) for International Space Station (ISS) and Apollo. I took a couple of pictures from the vantage point of the observation room above and behind the MCCs.
The ISS MCC was live. I saw all the stations for the controllers and on the front wall were massive floor to ceiling video and data feeds. The ISS was over eastern Canada when I was in there. The place is manned 24/7, but not all stations are manned all the time, e.g., the Russian desk was vacant because there is no Russian capsule bound for the ISS. It looked very quiet, but very focused. And it was very impressive.
The Apollo MCC was restored to look like it did when Apollo 11 landed on the moon and I have to say it made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. It was very a very exacting and thorough restoration, down to binders of actual checklists, those old gray Government-issue chairs, old-fashioned headsets, the first-generation monitors, and Government-issue glass ashtrays with actual cigarettes and ashes in them. I was told that NASA has a countdown that can be run and the whole set up comes alive.
Many thanks to Zac for a great tour!
By: John Wissler