I was 7 years old in July, 1969, and watched everything that was ever broadcast about the Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972. This place is on my 'bucket list' of places I would like to visit. Thank you to all those involved with bringing this important piece of history back to life!
Visited about 2015 on the regular tour but only spent about 15 min there. Would love to have been left alone for a few hours and just allowed to sit and imagine.
Was lucky to go on a private tour of the entire complex with Story Musgrave (look him up...AMAZING astronaut...was part of the first Hubble repair crew) a few years back (before this restoration). Sat in the Shuttle simulator, walked the floor with the full size ISS, and got to go into Apollo Mission Control...not the viewing area but literally on the floor. Couldn’t touch anything but stood 1 foot away from each console. It was one of the best days I’ve ever had! Story had stories about everything...so amazing!
I was 15, sitting on our screen porch in a North suburb of Pgh, PA. When they landed I stepped out the door and could look at the moon while watching it on a 10 inch black and white RCA tv. I was awe struck and knew I was living a moment of incredibly important history. This is one of the clearest and most powerful memories I have.
I was in this room recently and I can say they did a wonderful job. I almost cried when the room lit up. Truly a masterpiece of restoration. Side note I met Gene Kranz and Ed for Gene’s book signing. Gene was the most gracious man I ever met and Ed was hilarious. When my wife and I met Ed he’s was playing jokes on us the whole tour.
I didn't realize that the room has been preserved. Having lived through those times, it make me very happy that it is being valued. Gene Kranz is still one of my heroes as are all those (then) young men who did amazing things.
Back in 2005 while touring JSFC, our group was lead to Bldg. 30 and upstairs into the Apollo mission control viewing gallery and the tour guide asked us all to be seated. I took my seat and watched the presentation and continued on the centers tour. Years later, I found out that I had sat in the same seat that Queen Elizabeth sat in which was forbidden to be seated in.... (The night cleaning crew neglected to replace the "DO NOT SIT HERE" sign.) I found this out on a return visit to the center and building 30 and saw that placard sitting on the seat cushion.
The restoration of Mission Control is worth every cent spent to make it happen. I was 12 years old and grounded at home because I broke the rules. We sat in front of our TV to witness live the landing and first step on the moon. Our windows rattled as we all shouted at the top of our voices as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon. I remember my street being void of people as this was aired live. We even had a few neighbors in our living room creating a standing room only, yet you could hear a pin drop!! I am emotional as I watch this video, this takes me back to my twelfth year!! Thank You!
@3:42 NOT ALL of them. There are actual consoles at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors center and there is one actual console at the Museum of Science and Industry next to the actual Apollo 8 Capsule, located in Chicago, IL.
Those "uncomfortable" old office chairs were actually quite comfortable, in fact much more so than many new office chairs available today. I spent quite a few years sitting in them before the company I worked for eventually was forced to replace them when OSHA required 5 legs on office chairs rather than 4. Those old plastic coffee cups with the burlap inside used to be everywhere. You could buy a set of 6 at the supermarket for 99 cents. Those weren't nearly as tacky as some of the variations that you could find in tourist traps that had little glittery fish and mermaids inside them.
We had some of those same chairs at the company I worked for until we got bought out. Lady that owned the company had an old IBM Selectric type writer that she still used until she passed in 2012. I am sitting at an old steel desk that I got at a city auction 30 years ago. It's '60"s vintage. Built like a tank!
Fun Fact, the original large screens in mission control were actually metal coated glass not screens. Behind the glass plates was the projection room, know as the bat cave. It contained huge xenon lamp projectors as its light source. the actual images where pre cut like photo etching, where as the trace lines for the mission progress where scribed using diamond tipped scribes behind the plates. These scribes were linked to XYZ plotters which used converted data from the telemetry computers, these would scrape away a line of coating allowing light to shine through. Mind blowing.
That projector, TV projector, was made by Eidophor and distributed by Philips. At that time, to my knowledge there were 2 of those machines in North America, one in NASA the other at CCTC in Montreal. Both color. And the xenon lamp was a 2.5Kw needing a very heavy wheel carried power supply. Very few people knew how to operate it. I was one of them.
You described the plotters as three dimensional "XYZ" plotters. I'm assuming that the Z axis sometimes lifted the pen up off of the metal coated glass so as to interrupt the trace lines while the diamond tipped scribes were relocated elsewhere on the image. Then they would re-contact the glass again and start tracing a new line somewhere else. This would be required because if not you would get extraneous, unwanted trace lines going all over the image.
@@joevignolor4u949 tbh I'm not doing the video justice, but yeah they would remove if movement to another area was required, alot was used for telemetry, some of the panels were also pre etched ua-cam.com/video/N2v4kH_PsN8/v-deo.html have a look, she explains it a hell of alot better than I do :)
And that is what should still be there. That is the history. Replacing that equipment that folks don't see with modern digital projectors is crap, its not authentic, and its not restored. I wouldn't pay two cents to go see a Disneyfied so called restoration. Look, the people AT NASA itself on campus didn't care, right. They let it go into disrepair so why should anyone else care. In fact, we should remember how they treated everything the next time they need cash!
Room was converted for shuttle and all those consoles sat in storage. Then when they dismantled the shuttle program everything was repaired and put back. I wonder what they did with all the shuttle stuff. There's another video of the flight computer being restored some guy bought it from a government sale and didn't know what it was.
On this date I had my 17th birthday I can never forget this day and then 4 days later Tranquility Base here The Eagle has landed. I am glad that this has been preserved when people hundreds of years from now see this they will know who, what and why. Thanks to the space program of the United States and President Kennedy for setting the pace.
The Mission Control Room will always be my cathedral. I remember July 20, 1969, and all the other days of Apollo missions as though they were yesterday. Thank you so much for preserving this place. It needs to kept forever.
My parents got me out of bed to watch this in the UK. I was 5 1/2 years old and still remember it (although I was mostly bored at the time). Great job everybody x
I was privileged to get a private tour of this room about 10 years ago. One of the most remarkable memories is how clearly it still smelled like cigar smoke.
My dad worrked on some of the Apollo tracking ships,the stories he used to tell me about them were amazing.I remember see a documentary about the early Mercury project and the started the program showing the old control room,the consoles had the instrumentation removed with the wires hanging out of the holes.These guys are doing the right thing!
Grooooßartig - in consideration of this so unique achievement, not only for the USA but the entire world, I assumed this room to be a holy grail already.
The P-tube canisters are how the space between the two front rows of consoles got the nickname "the trench". Apparently the empty canisters tended to accumulate up there in front and someone observed that when a bunch of the empty canisters ended up on the floor it looked like the trench around a piece of field artillery that had become full of expended artillery shells.
@@zrebbesh Awesome! I love that kind of attention to detail, which is also why I (although I do understand the reasoning) i’m a little disappointed that the console CRT monitors were replaced with flat panels instead..
@@BoHolbo They didn't replace those CRTs with flat screens. The CRTs are bolted inside those big green cabinets. The flat surfaces are just windows that the operators looked through to see them. Big thick security windows.... they had massive paranoia about access to machinery, it seems.
Fabulous. I bow with respect towards the people who lived that moment in 1969 and towards those who passionately preserve all this as previously as it should. You all represent mankind at its best. Regards.
I was a little boy 9 years old sitting in the UK watching the landing . I am so proud of the teams hard work and commitment to saving Mission Control for future generations. I too am now getting very worn and I could use a make over! Bless you all Thank you for doing this. I will never see it in person sadly but I remember all the Apollo missions vividly. I went on to serve as an aircraft engineer in the Royal Air Force a lot of that inspired by NASA and mans desire to 'REACH FOR THE STARS'. Bless all the astronauts and controllers - whether still with us or departed. The closing words should go to another wonderful man John F Kennedy " We choose to go to the Moon...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"
My respect to Americans who lead the way in preserving history. This is a piece of restoration that has a connection world wide and in my case, viewing the moon landing when I was 15, as a school student in Sydney, Australia.
Its worthy to note that they actually built TWO identical Lunar Excursion Modules or LEMs for that mission. One went to NASA to be sent to the moon, the other was in a hanger in Grumman in Bethpage, NY. Anyone who worked on the LEM stayed at the plant when the LEM was in operation. When the mission was over, they lushed the duplicate LEM out into the parking lot, spray painted camo green and left there. I used to see it every day when I would go to & from my HS. They used the NASA guppy to come pick it up and they flew out at night under cover of darkness. I lived 1/4 mile from end of the runway and when the Guppy came in to land, it looked way to low and thought it was going to crash. My best friends father was in charge of wiring for the LEM and was very proud that day. When he cam home after the mission he looked very tired from the many long hours at the plant.
We've been to museums all over the country, including Cape Canaveral and the Air and Space Museum in DC. The Cosmosphere in Hutcherson is up there with all of them. We found it by accident by talking to a proud Kansas farm as we traveled cross country. Definitely worth the stop.
Was at the Cape with the kids, quite a few years ago now I guess, and they've done a similar restoration of the firing room for LC39. Watching their reenactment of the Apollo 8 launch, with all the consoles lit up and data flowing down the screens... goosebumps and tears :D Apollo was one of the greatest undertakings in human history.
Don't forget their scientific slide rules (a must for every high school math student up until the late 70's) which were used to complete fast and accurate mathematical equations. As evidenced in Apollo 13 when you can see the controllers sitting in front of their monitors and checking their calculations with their scientific slide rules.
Awesome preservation efforts, though wondering why didn't they use CRT tubes instead of obvious LED/LCD screens (5:41), when they even went to lenghts getting authentic ashtrays.
Hard to find these days and require more time to set up, keep running and unlikely to be any more in a few years of these being on 12 hours a day, that and harder to integrate into the video distribution system.
Probably the main concern was the amount of maintenance that generation of equipment would require. Also operating expenses - not only would you have to power that many CRT monitors, but you'd also have to spend money to remove all that heat from the room. I'm betting they also changed all of the incandescent lamps to LEDs for a similar reason.
This is pretty cool! Currently reading the Gene Kranz book, Failure is not an Option, and this gives some insight to mission control back during the days of the Apollo moon landing. Was 5 years old when Neil and Buzz walked in 1969 and still remember that historic moment.
That is spectacular without any doubt, but almost nobody (except for Fran Blanche recently) talk about the "Bat cave", the other large room behind the big screens full of highly complex projectors, personnel and a big mainframe computer. Building 30 was not just that room.
This isn't ancient history. We need to covet our breakthroughs and razors edge technological advancements. We are what is remembered, not what is forgotten.
seems like today many people dont know this recent history, especially ww2... people have either no clue or have a very black and white way of thinking about how different sides really worked, its scary to see this development... i once heard a woman who said the vikings were 80 years ago
A group of people that were extremely stressed in close proximity create a war bond. A bond so close it may cut deeper than a significant other. Thank you great men and women that made all this possible!
I actually got to tour the Apollo floor in 2009, one day after the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. I was sent down there by the then commander of Stratcom who was a former astronaut. It was an awesome experience being able to walk amongst the consoles, especially for the 40th anniversary.
Looks like those "One Plane Readout" digit projection displays are so rare to find and/or expensive these days that they had to settle with cutout prints in place of them.
The first time I visited NASA was the early 80's. It was really laid back you could pretty much still walk around without anyone stopping you. The areas had been changed for the shuttle missions but you could still recognize stuff left over from the Apollo missions. That was the main reason I visited it. I have one of those grey swivel chairs. They made thousands of them. That was back when they used quality materials.
Was there in the early eighties......I vividly remember it like I was there yesterday. What surprised me was the rooms size, In real life it's not as large as it appears thru film and pictures.
They did a great job on the restoration. Only complaint is that they didn't preserve the CRTs, but replaced them with LCDs which look incredibly out of place
@Brent Baader Thank you for putting this video out there for us all to see! I have a question that my curiosity has demanded that I get an answer to: In the documentary, I noticed that the CRT monitors in some of the consoles had been replaced with LCD panels. Do you know of any “intense” arguments about the choice to not find replacement CRT’s? (I would be surprised if there weren’t. 😄) I know from personal experience, that using an LCD panel to exactly replicate the look and behavior of a CRT monitor, can be a real nightmare. Even in a professional setting and a decent budget. I had the “honor” of being given such a task at work in the early 2000’s. Even WITHOUT the critical eye of the impossible-to-please artists who had hired the services of the rental company I worked for. It was maddening at times, but I still loved the challenge of figuring out how to solve a problem, that no one had faced before. It can be VERY stressful, but you have the added benefit of gaining new skills. Unless you end up losing your mind, of course! 😁
This is a living museum exhibit, all the kit needs to work day after day and CRT's would be a maintenance headache. prob the same reason all the console indicator lights are LED with ramp up and down curves in their programming to resemble filament lamps.
@@dougle03 Not my problem! if you cant maintain a restoration the correct way then don't start it. Same with old cars. Waste of time. Its a fake Disneyfied fake. I cant believe anyone approved this crap and I certainly hope we didn't pay for it. NASA has stolen enough!
@@paiddj3397 Where are they going to get a plentiful supply of a CRT tubes that no one makes anymore....? The original tubes needed constant maintenance when new, they were the best available, but even so.
Where is the software shown in those Ford Philco Consoles??? I've seen a couple TV documentaries about Apollo Spacecraft Computer, but nothing about the Mission Control hardware and software. Also, from what I've seen, it seems that these consoles were not computer terminals (in the sense of displaying characters and having a minimum of computing power) but TV screens retransmitting screens filmed somewhere else, maybe an IBM mainframe in the basement.
You are right, they weren't terminals in the sense we understand. You can divide one of those consoles up into several parts: 1) The telephone 2) The headset system 3) The blinkenlights 4) The CRT screen 5) Maybe other stuff, depending on the console There were no "brains" in the console. That was all elsewhere. 1) The phone system was a normal PBX phone system, with one or more pair of wires from the phone running off to a PBX rack and normal phone switching someplace. 2) The headset system usually had a bunch of push buttons that could connect the headset to one of several circuits. I'm not clear on whether this switching was done locally on each console or whether the switches went off the the console control computer that then switched audio relays to switch channels for the console (and light the lights in the button to show which channel was selected). 3) The blinkenlights, mist of which also had pushbuttons, were controlled as peripherals from an IBM 360/65 (if I remember correctly) computer in another room. I believe I recall that it was one of three computers that worked together to generate the displays and update the button lights, as well as send signals outside the building in some cases. In those days there was no standard "PIO" interface from a computer to things like lights and relays. IBM was happy to build such specialized things if you could pay for the engineering, and NASA could. So there were racks and racks of interface cards between the switches and computer inputs, and more racks between computer outputs and relays to drive the lights. There were miles of wire between those consoles and the peripheral rack cabinets in an adjacent room. 4) The CRTs were NTSC B&W televisions, with signals routed to them on coax cables. Most (I suspect all) consoles had switches to select which video source would be displayed. This video switching could have been local, but I suspect that like all other switches and blinkenlights it was controlled by the 360. Computer graphics weren't great in that era (they were darn poor), so for most of the things that displayed charts, the computer generated numbers on a CRT projector screen in another room, and then a video camera took a picture of that screen. The graphics, such as a graph scale, was done by a static transparency projected onto the same screen used by the TV projector. The computer could turn the graphics overlay on and off, and could I think scroll through a reel of different overlays, so you could do more than one thing on one projector if you needed to.
@@nmarcel The simple answer is that I'd virtually guarantee that it has been lost. After all, the software for the Apollo Guidance Computer for this mission is lost, and had to be reconstructed by "best guess" estimate from several other versions. And that was a whole lot simpler piece of software. The complicated answer is, well, complicated. The guys back then weren't working on creating a theme park museum exhibit. They were working on a series of Apollo launches, each one different. Each mission had different experiments on board. Each capsule and Saturn missile was different, incorporating fixes and improvements learned on the previous launches. As a result the Mission Control room, and the ten or so rooms around it that you never saw on TV, and all the controlling software was different on every mission. As soon as one mission ended, the Philco guys were in the room, ripping apart consoles, putting in new lights, taking out old ones, changing legends, adding complete new consoles, maybe decommissioning a console that monitored a previous experiment that wasn't on the next mission. So it wasn't just "the Apollo Mission Control software". It was unique for every mission. Sometimes it was patched during the mission when a bug was found or they needed to do a procedure change because something failed in the capsule. The software was stored on magnetic tape reels back then. Probably quite a lot of them. I wouldn't be surprised if the software load for the mission control computers for one mission ran to 20 or more reels of tape. That takes up a lot of space, and costs a lot of money in tape and storage space. Now, there was probably an archive copy made every now and then, maybe of each mission. But tape was designed to have a 20 year lifespan, and it has been a whole lot longer than that by now. So it might not even be readable, IF someone could find the tapes. And since it was always changing, finding the *exact* version to match that mission could very well be impossible, because it might not have been archived. Remember, they were in a continuous process, and this was just one step. It wasn't a step that was as important to them as it is to us now, at least not for the same reasons. It was "OK, good, that worked. Now we know we can run the next mission as planned. Start doing it!" Remember that to reconstruct the consoles and the lights and legends on them, they had to go from grainy movie footage and memories of old guys. They couldn't just pull out the plans for each console that showed exactly what was there. Because things were always changing. Maybe those plans exist somewhere, or maybe not. But they couldn't find them, or at least didn't find them. So the chances of finding not only the many reels of software, being able to read them correctly, being able to recreate the software environment including the operating system version (with any special IBM patches), and all the rest, is pretty unlikely. Unfortunately.
I'm disappointed they didn't use the original or equivalent CRT monitors, all this talk about details and authenticity but they changed the screens for lcds. i'm sure they have good reasons (likely burn in or wear on the crts) but I feel the og crts would be cooler.
Most were not working. After Apollo, they modified several counsels for the early Space Shuttle flights -- and some of the CRT monitors were lost. What is significant, they talked to all of the controllers to know exactly with the video output would look like -- and use flat screen monitors. But thanks for your feedback, I will address all this when I finish the full half hour program.
@@savingamericana Also what about the big screen system, I'm guessing these are not multiple layers of xenon lamp slide projection with diamond tip stylus' to real time engrave the graphs of trajectory as the missions progress. Or the oil filled Eidophor projectors. Without all the hidden technology all we really have is a thin veneer of apearance without the depth that really was mission control
@@savingamericana The question, though, is are the consoles operational as if the could use a mission, say as a backup? They said they used the consoles through the early '90s.
@@clemsonbloke I suppose they could be used, if you wanted to wire them into a computer, since the consoles in mission control had no local processing ability. Each screen was basically a CCTV feed of information composited from a few sources, although the switches, phones, and communications loops were done on-console.
@@clemsonbloke Look at SpaceX, all laptops now, no longer a need for hugely expensive custom consoles. And if they could have used laptops back in the 60's, they deffo would have done!
there are a lot of people who dont get the credit they deserve just as much as buzz and neil because without them buzz and neil couldnt even fly an airplane without an engineer to design one to fly or a rocket to take off from earth or one to get off the moon to get back home.
I am really expressed what they had done. All this Apollo stuff is so long ago, the last man has left the moon so many years before I was born and for over 50 years noone has come back.
Are there any detailed videos about the actual electronics used to bring those panels to life? Did they use flat screen LED panels to mimick the CRT screens, for example?
You can see in the rebuilding them using a flat screen in one of the consoles. Also you can tell from the images of the lit consoles that those are flat screen monitors and not CRTs. The images on CRTs danced around a bit, and at close range (like sitting in front of them) you could see the scan lines. The new monitors appear to be considerably higher resolution. I suspect also they completely rewired all of the indicators, probably as static lights. There would have been literally miles of wire in those 3" and 4" conduits running off to the computer peripheral room next door to racks and racks of lamp drivers. It looked like they were running networking cable in some of the images, which didn't exist in the 1960s. Probably there are local lamp driver boards in each console now. I don't really fault them for any of this. Keeping CRTs working was a BIG job back in that era when you could order replacements in carload quantities. It would be virtually impossible now, and CRTs don't really last all that long in static image service; they tend to burn. Within a few months the place would look awful. Likewise the IBM 360/65 is long gone, and keeping one of those working, even without the custom IO driver hardware for the consoles would be prohibitive, and also pointless, since nobody would see it on a museum tour. Having some Arduino's flashing console lights in a random (or maybe pre-recorded) pattern is Good Enough for a museum display.
@@lwilton The displays were CCTV images - the buttons selected different channels. A lot of the displays were composites of film slides and mechanical animation rather than computer generated. An Arduino or Raspberry Pi would have more processing power than the computers connected to the display generation system.
@@lwilton I think they are using Arduino/ESP based button lamp drivers now, these are synchronized up for coordinated playback during the replay sequences. A couple of ESP 8266 MCU's oddly have more power than the nearby IBM had back in the day...
Yes, unfortunately the flat screens spoil the illusion for me, as do the modern projectors. One of the people in the video talk about not "Disney-fying" things, but it looks like the realities of what can still be found made them cut a large number of corners. Of course, if they put ONE monochrome CRT in there, they would have had to put the scores of them that were originally there, or the fakes would stand out like sore thumbs. And THEN they would have to provide both the power and the air conditioning to make it all work and feel right. It could be done, but they were more concerned about getting the nicotine-stained wallpaper colors right than getting the hardware right. Another thing I'm quite sure they did not replicate was the sound of hundreds of cooling fans that kept all this equipment from melting down. But of course you can't see that in the films, and any audio recordings have had these sounds removed ("cleaned up") digitally. You can never go home.
Not to denigrate this effort or, certainly not his room, but perhaps everyone should understand the full history of "MOCR-2". This video, and many like it implies that following the Apollo Program, this room was sort of "abandonded" and left to decay...that wasn't the case at all. MOCR-2 was converted into a Shuttle Flight Control Control Room and served in this function all the way through STS-53 into 1992. It was at that point where it was shut down and "converted" to the Apollo era Flight Control Room...unfortunately, due to a lack of resources and attention, it sat that way until this project was undertaken in 2018. Thanks to Gene Kranz and his team of retired controllers, the room has been converted to the pristine 1969 version that it is currently represented today when not only Apollo 11 landed on the moon, but when the program operated virtually all the Apollo missions out of it, i.e. here was the site where EECOM John Aaron saved the Apollo 12 launch, where all of the Apollo 13 drama insued and where all of the important Apollo 15, 16 and 17 science mission transmissions occurred. Yes, it is absolutely GREAT! that this room is being converted to the proper era and time, but, please folks, let's not forget that OTHER important and historic events occurred here!!
But that's wrong, too. A slide rule was every bit as personal as your smart phone is today. Nobody would have just left one lying there on his console.
I know. I wonder what the problem is? Last I knew, p-tube systems were used well into the 80's, such as in bank drive thru lanes. And I know that a hospital here still uses them in 2021.
@@SweetBearCub Yeah, I think they're just glorifying the efforts of the people who did the restoration. There are SO many shortcuts I can see just from what is visible in the video, I'm sure the guiding principle was "make it look like the pictures."
You know, you can say a lot of things about Americans. What I am saying here is: You guys are fucking nuts! But I am seriously happy you are, because this is awesome. Not just the room, but the very state. The ashtrays. The mugs. What the fuck, guys?!?! What a great piece of work. What a great piece of history!!!!!!
IBM System 360-75 OS/360 from IBM and running FORTRAN apps for sure and possible COBOL apps In the late 1980s i did work for a lot of large companies replacing IBM System 360's with IBM PC Servers..pretty amazing the changes in about 20 years
Admiro lo que han hecho !! realmente maravilloso !! pero reemplazar los tubos CTR y display´s por LCD o led´s me parece un error, si los CTR´s originales se estropearon, con el poderío tecnológico de EEUU, simplemente los fabrican nuevos, igual a los antiguos originales, los tubos parpadeantes son el corazón de la época. Gustavo desde Buenos Aires , Argentina.
I really don't get the crt's being replaced by modern lcd monitors. During the whole video, people are talking about the details that are so importand to preserve. That everything has to be exactly as it was back in the day. About the patina etc. So how on earth would you replace those crt's with lcd's??? I really don't get it.
crt's die. also they used proprietary video feed from cameras that where pointed at numeral computer monitors with screen overlays that were long gone. if they didnt replace the crts they just couldnt turn them on. they probably have them in storage.
It is very noticeable, but really difficult to make right. Either it is lcd or they have to be turned off. One day a nerd with too much money may produce an lcd or something that bulges like a cathode ray tube. And flickers.
@@typograf62 I'm sure that's possible, but you must remember the flicker we remember was largely an artifact of the systems used to record the scenes of activity in Mission Control--pictures of pictures--and would not have been nearly as pronounced when viewed directly.
@@jackdedert2945 Some of it. I noticed on old tv's, that the flicker is very noticable when the crt is in the outer "rim" of my vision. The recording artifact usually appears as a rolling grey bar.
@@typograf62 And they're not even BEGINNING to re-create the SOUNDS of that place. That many CRT monitors in one room? The squeal would be drowned out only by the hundreds of cooling fans that kept it from spontaneously igniting. If they made it sound realistic, nobody today would be able to stand being in there for more than a minute or two.
1:08 actually it began some years before in nazi Germany but amazing never the less and amasing effort to restore, i wish the other side would do the same
It’s hard to believe, in the early 70th people dreamed about a moon base within a decade and 50 years later NASA doesn’t even have a rocket or spaceship to send some astronauts back to the moon. Quite sad.
Did you ever see 2001: A Space Odyssey? In the scene when Dave Bowman ends up in a room that was made for him to live out his days, there were books, but when he opened them, all of the pages were blank. That's the impression I get from this film. Everything looks authentic, as long as you don't look too hard. Hm. Maybe that wasn't in 2001 - maybe it was a Twilight Zone episode...
I suspect that the main computers were scrapped decades ago. There were no computers inside the control room itself, nor in any of the consoles. The computers were far too big, each one of the (I think) three of them took up almost as much space as that whole control room. Somewhere near that control room there would have been another room with all of the racks of lamp drivers to drive the lights on the consoles. That may still be there gathering dust, at least partially. Since it wasn't anything that anyone saw on TV there wouldn't be much point in preserving it.
@@lwilton And even if they HAD saved any of the computers, this would have been useless. For the most part they used standard models of computers, such as System/360 series, which wouldn't help at all unless they also had the original software. And since you mention lamp drivers, remember that many of the lights would have been colored lights. The color came from color filters over incandescent bulbs or a colored coating over the bulbs themselves, which would have either cracked and disintegrated, or faded to the point where you couldn't tell what the original color was.
@@BrightBlueJim I was watching as they showed someone refurbishing one of those indicators, and it looked to me that he was using incandescent lamps in them. I suppose that they might have gotten LED lamps in the funny button base, but those lamps were pretty small, and as I say, they still looked like incandescents to me in the quick clip, though I could well be wrong. Getting the color right isn't really a problem. I believe that the lamps, rather than being color dipped, actually had small rubber-like push-on domes fitted over them of the correct red/yellow/green color. Again, it looked like I saw some of those in this clip. Even if those aren't still available from Allied or Digikey, they are something that could be fabricated pretty easily these days. Even if the lamps were themselves colored it wouldn't be a problem. You can still (amazingly!) get theatrical "lamp dip", which is a colored liquid that, you guessed it, you dip a lamp in and then let it dry to give it a color. The problem with this stuff is that it will both brown and crack with heat over an extended run time, resulting in basically a yellow-white light. That was well known in the days that you could get colored small indicator lights, and why most people went with a colored filter of some sort rather than a colored coating on the lamps themselves. For indicators that don't have to show more than one color (most of them) you can get theatrical "gel", which is a colored sheet filter medium, in any color you can imagine, and they could cut small rectangles of it and put it behind the legends in the indicators. Since these were obviously people familiar with theatrical techniques, I'd be a little surprised if they didn't do this in a number of cases.
The computers that drove the displays were not actually in the room with the consoles, they were multiple room sized IBM System/360 mainframes and support equipment, in the "Real Time Computing Complex" building. Their data was displayed on these consoles.
That was a FANTASTIC read guys .. I had forgotten all about this video and was happy to watch it again ! As to the lights and switches there is a guy on UA-cam that I watch called "curious mark" he and his fellow nerds have been doing a whole series on the apollo system and DEFINITELY worth a watch ! They show you a lot about how the various typs of switches that they used and would say that 90% of vf them still work ! They are all white bulbs with a coloured gel over the front of the switch As I said go see his channel if you like anything vintage electronic or space related you wont do better !!
Did they go to ALL that immense trouble of getting it back to original , even down to cigarette stained carpet and exact coffee mugs etc , and replaced the screens with modern LCD’s???? WTF??
CRTs break down fast in static image use (burn in and more), and there really isn't a ready supply of museum-quality replacements in 2021. Even back in the day, NASA ordered replacements by the pallet, and keeping them running was a big job.
@@mustangrt8866 They absolutely did. The consoles themselves are original, but none of the electronics has survived. I would bet good money, all of those indicator lights have LEDs in them, too.
I was 7 years old in July, 1969, and watched everything that was ever broadcast about the Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972. This place is on my 'bucket list' of places I would like to visit. Thank you to all those involved with bringing this important piece of history back to life!
Visited about 2015 on the regular tour but only spent about 15 min there. Would love to have been left alone for a few hours and just allowed to sit and imagine.
Was lucky to go on a private tour of the entire complex with Story Musgrave (look him up...AMAZING astronaut...was part of the first Hubble repair crew) a few years back (before this restoration). Sat in the Shuttle simulator, walked the floor with the full size ISS, and got to go into Apollo Mission Control...not the viewing area but literally on the floor. Couldn’t touch anything but stood 1 foot away from each console. It was one of the best days I’ve ever had! Story had stories about everything...so amazing!
so did I ;-) 6 years old, back then and in black and white ...
@@TheHornoxx I was six years old too. Watching from Chicago, IL with my Pop. I'm 58 now and live in Wisconsin .
I was 15, sitting on our screen porch in a North suburb of Pgh, PA. When they landed I stepped out the door and could look at the moon while watching it on a 10 inch black and white RCA tv. I was awe struck and knew I was living a moment of incredibly important history. This is one of the clearest and most powerful memories I have.
Next they have to pump cigarette smoke through the HVAC system to replicate the 60’s-70’s atmosphere
Few butts on the floor and in the parking lot. I remember that.
I'm pretty sure the smell will stay without special considerations :D
I was in this room recently and I can say they did a wonderful job. I almost cried when the room lit up. Truly a masterpiece of restoration.
Side note I met Gene Kranz and Ed for Gene’s book signing. Gene was the most gracious man I ever met and Ed was hilarious. When my wife and I met Ed he’s was playing jokes on us the whole tour.
Gene*
I didn't realize that the room has been preserved. Having lived through those times, it make me very happy that it is being valued. Gene Kranz is still one of my heroes as are all those (then) young men who did amazing things.
Back in 2005 while touring JSFC, our group was lead to Bldg. 30 and upstairs into the Apollo mission control viewing gallery and the tour guide asked us all to be seated. I took my seat and watched the presentation and continued on the centers tour. Years later, I found out that I had sat in the same seat that Queen Elizabeth sat in which was forbidden to be seated in.... (The night cleaning crew neglected to replace the "DO NOT SIT HERE" sign.)
I found this out on a return visit to the center and building 30 and saw that placard sitting on the seat cushion.
You butt kissed the queen, this is fact now.
@@gu4xinim 🤣😬🤫
The restoration of Mission Control is worth every cent spent to make it happen. I was 12 years old and grounded at home because I broke the rules. We sat in front of our TV to witness live the landing and first step on the moon. Our windows rattled as we all shouted at the top of our voices as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon. I remember my street being void of people as this was aired live. We even had a few neighbors in our living room creating a standing room only, yet you could hear a pin drop!! I am emotional as I watch this video, this takes me back to my twelfth year!! Thank You!
@3:42 NOT ALL of them. There are actual consoles at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors center and there is one actual console at the Museum of Science and Industry next to the actual Apollo 8 Capsule, located in Chicago, IL.
Those "uncomfortable" old office chairs were actually quite comfortable, in fact much more so than many new office chairs available today. I spent quite a few years sitting in them before the company I worked for eventually was forced to replace them when OSHA required 5 legs on office chairs rather than 4.
Those old plastic coffee cups with the burlap inside used to be everywhere. You could buy a set of 6 at the supermarket for 99 cents. Those weren't nearly as tacky as some of the variations that you could find in tourist traps that had little glittery fish and mermaids inside them.
We had some of those same chairs at the company I worked for until we got bought out. Lady that owned the company had an old IBM Selectric type writer that she still used until she passed in 2012. I am sitting at an old steel desk that I got at a city auction 30 years ago. It's '60"s vintage. Built like a tank!
Fun Fact, the original large screens in mission control were actually metal coated glass not screens. Behind the glass plates was the projection room, know as the bat cave. It contained huge xenon lamp projectors as its light source. the actual images where pre cut like photo etching, where as the trace lines for the mission progress where scribed using diamond tipped scribes behind the plates. These scribes were linked to XYZ plotters which used converted data from the telemetry computers, these would scrape away a line of coating allowing light to shine through. Mind blowing.
That projector, TV projector, was made by Eidophor and distributed by Philips. At that time, to my knowledge there were 2 of those machines in North America, one in NASA the other at CCTC in Montreal. Both color. And the xenon lamp was a 2.5Kw needing a very heavy wheel carried power supply. Very few people knew how to operate it. I was one of them.
@@ramirofernandez2327 thats awesome. I got the information on the plotters i got from an I.e.e engineer channel fran blanche
You described the plotters as three dimensional "XYZ" plotters. I'm assuming that the Z axis sometimes lifted the pen up off of the metal coated glass so as to interrupt the trace lines while the diamond tipped scribes were relocated elsewhere on the image. Then they would re-contact the glass again and start tracing a new line somewhere else. This would be required because if not you would get extraneous, unwanted trace lines going all over the image.
@@joevignolor4u949 tbh I'm not doing the video justice, but yeah they would remove if movement to another area was required, alot was used for telemetry, some of the panels were also pre etched ua-cam.com/video/N2v4kH_PsN8/v-deo.html have a look, she explains it a hell of alot better than I do :)
And that is what should still be there. That is the history. Replacing that equipment that folks don't see with modern digital projectors is crap, its not authentic, and its not restored. I wouldn't pay two cents to go see a Disneyfied so called restoration.
Look, the people AT NASA itself on campus didn't care, right. They let it go into disrepair so why should anyone else care. In fact, we should remember how they treated everything the next time they need cash!
Is that room on the national register of historic places? If not, it certainly should be!
It is. It was added in 1985.
@D It it had already been converted for shuttle before then I believe
Room was converted for shuttle and all those consoles sat in storage. Then when they dismantled the shuttle program everything was repaired and put back. I wonder what they did with all the shuttle stuff. There's another video of the flight computer being restored some guy bought it from a government sale and didn't know what it was.
I always get a lump in my throat when I watch the old videos of the Apollo Moon landings.........
the amount of effort putting into this just makes me so happy almost looked like nothing happened after the the 70s
On this date I had my 17th birthday I can never forget this day and then 4 days later Tranquility Base here The Eagle has landed. I am glad that this has been preserved when people hundreds of years from now see this they will know who, what and why. Thanks to the space program of the United States and President Kennedy for setting the pace.
The Mission Control Room will always be my cathedral. I remember July 20, 1969, and all the other days of Apollo missions as though they were yesterday. Thank you so much for preserving this place. It needs to kept forever.
This is inspirational, fantastic work by all involved. Thank you for preserving a piece of history
The restoration team in Kansas and Houston did a fantastic job. Glad you enjoyed the video.
@@savingamericana Great video Brent....thanks for posting.
My parents got me out of bed to watch this in the UK. I was 5 1/2 years old and still remember it (although I was mostly bored at the time). Great job everybody x
I was 9. My parents got me up as well :)
You both had fine parents!
Me too, I was 7, i remember my dad saying 'remember this, they'll be talking about it in 50 years time'
Indeed they are.
I was privileged to get a private tour of this room about 10 years ago. One of the most remarkable memories is how clearly it still smelled like cigar smoke.
My dad worrked on some of the Apollo tracking ships,the stories he used to tell me about them were amazing.I remember see a documentary about the early Mercury project and the started the program showing the old control room,the consoles had the instrumentation removed with the wires hanging out of the holes.These guys are doing the right thing!
These guys rescued the 60's and we're still smiling today.
Grooooßartig - in consideration of this so unique achievement, not only for the USA but the entire world, I assumed this room to be a holy grail already.
It is so refreshing to see that quality and attention to detail is still important to true professionals!
The P-tube canisters are how the space between the two front rows of consoles got the nickname "the trench". Apparently the empty canisters tended to accumulate up there in front and someone observed that when a bunch of the empty canisters ended up on the floor it looked like the trench around a piece of field artillery that had become full of expended artillery shells.
Seems odd that the system could not be restored to work, my bank has this type of system for the drive-in ATM's here in Phoenix as of today 8/13/2021!
They really should put a bunch of cigarette butts in the ash trays.
Or pipes
They did. Seriously, you gotta go see it.
Exactly what I was thinking! 😄
@@zrebbesh Awesome!
I love that kind of attention to detail, which is also why I (although I do understand the reasoning) i’m a little disappointed that the console CRT monitors were replaced with flat panels instead..
@@BoHolbo They didn't replace those CRTs with flat screens. The CRTs are bolted inside those big green cabinets. The flat surfaces are just windows that the operators looked through to see them. Big thick security windows.... they had massive paranoia about access to machinery, it seems.
Fabulous. I bow with respect towards the people who lived that moment in 1969 and towards those who passionately preserve all this as previously as it should. You all represent mankind at its best. Regards.
Absolutely outstanding!
The folks that did the restoration deserve an applause.
Beautiful work.
My respect and gratitude to you all.
👏👏👏👏👏
R.I.P. Glynn Lunney. Thank you for your years of service at NASA and Rockwell.
Is Gene the only Apollo Flight Director left?
Gerry Griffin, milt hefner etc@@AceOfTestPilots
I was a little boy 9 years old sitting in the UK watching the landing . I am so proud of the teams hard work and commitment to saving Mission Control for future generations. I too am now getting very worn and I could use a make over! Bless you all Thank you for doing this. I will never see it in person sadly but I remember all the Apollo missions vividly. I went on to serve as an aircraft engineer in the Royal Air Force a lot of that inspired by NASA and mans desire to 'REACH FOR THE STARS'. Bless all the astronauts and controllers - whether still with us or departed.
The closing words should go to another wonderful man John F Kennedy
" We choose to go to the Moon...We
choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not
because they are easy, but because they are hard"
My respect to Americans who lead the way in preserving history. This is a piece of restoration that has a connection world wide and in my case, viewing the moon landing when I was 15, as a school student in Sydney, Australia.
Its worthy to note that they actually built TWO identical Lunar Excursion Modules or LEMs for that mission. One went to NASA to be sent to the moon, the other was in a hanger in Grumman in Bethpage, NY. Anyone who worked on the LEM stayed at the plant when the LEM was in operation. When the mission was over, they lushed the duplicate LEM out into the parking lot, spray painted camo green and left there. I used to see it every day when I would go to & from my HS. They used the NASA guppy to come pick it up and they flew out at night under cover of darkness. I lived 1/4 mile from end of the runway and when the Guppy came in to land, it looked way to low and thought it was going to crash. My best friends father was in charge of wiring for the LEM and was very proud that day. When he cam home after the mission he looked very tired from the many long hours at the plant.
One of the most historic places in human history. Historic preservation is a noble mission, and this is the top of the heap.
We've been to museums all over the country, including Cape Canaveral and the Air and Space Museum in DC. The Cosmosphere in Hutcherson is up there with all of them. We found it by accident by talking to a proud Kansas farm as we traveled cross country. Definitely worth the stop.
Was at the Cape with the kids, quite a few years ago now I guess, and they've done a similar restoration of the firing room for LC39. Watching their reenactment of the Apollo 8 launch, with all the consoles lit up and data flowing down the screens... goosebumps and tears :D Apollo was one of the greatest undertakings in human history.
Don't forget their scientific slide rules (a must for every high school math student up until the late 70's) which were used to complete fast and accurate mathematical equations. As evidenced in Apollo 13 when you can see the controllers sitting in front of their monitors and checking their calculations with their scientific slide rules.
Greatest achievement ever... the world smartest getting together toward one goal... utter badasses...
Wow! I wish I'll have the chance to go visit Johnson Space Center. A childhood dream.
Awesome preservation efforts, though wondering why didn't they use CRT tubes instead of obvious LED/LCD screens (5:41), when they even went to lenghts getting authentic ashtrays.
Hard to find these days and require more time to set up, keep running and unlikely to be any more in a few years of these being on 12 hours a day, that and harder to integrate into the video distribution system.
Probably the main concern was the amount of maintenance that generation of equipment would require. Also operating expenses - not only would you have to power that many CRT monitors, but you'd also have to spend money to remove all that heat from the room. I'm betting they also changed all of the incandescent lamps to LEDs for a similar reason.
@@BrightBlueJim Yes indeed. The exhibit has to be sustainable commercially. It's the reality of the world we now live in.
i'm glad they restored all of it its a part of space history
This is pretty cool! Currently reading the Gene Kranz book, Failure is not an Option, and this gives some insight to mission control back during the days of the Apollo moon landing. Was 5 years old when Neil and Buzz walked in 1969 and still remember that historic moment.
I hope they save all those mainframe computer and printers too. That would be great to see too. Great work and video! Thanks for sharing
Incredibly important work. Thank you!
That is spectacular without any doubt, but almost nobody (except for Fran Blanche recently) talk about the "Bat cave", the other large room behind the big screens full of highly complex projectors, personnel and a big mainframe computer.
Building 30 was not just that room.
@The Lavian I corrected the name of Fran, my bad! Thank you Lavian ;-)
This is one of the most enjoyed things I've watched on UA-cam. I remember that day.
That was so amazing to see. Thank you so much to all who were involved!
This isn't ancient history. We need to covet our breakthroughs and razors edge technological advancements. We are what is remembered, not what is forgotten.
seems like today many people dont know this recent history, especially ww2... people have either no clue or have a very black and white way of thinking about how different sides really worked, its scary to see this development... i once heard a woman who said the vikings were 80 years ago
@Brent Polk It's still history.
Is it just me or did they swap the CRTs out. Where’s the fun without a bajillion volts in the cabinet?
The P-tube system is just a simple pneumatic system. Why wouldn’t they be able to get that going?
A group of people that were extremely stressed in close proximity create a war bond. A bond so close it may cut deeper than a significant other. Thank you great men and women that made all this possible!
I actually got to tour the Apollo floor in 2009, one day after the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. I was sent down there by the then commander of Stratcom who was a former astronaut. It was an awesome experience being able to walk amongst the consoles, especially for the 40th anniversary.
Did they use the restored Mission control in the series "For All Mankind"? Very much a series worth watching!
Yeah this room looks exactly like the one in that show, I’d say.
Looks like those "One Plane Readout" digit projection displays are so rare to find and/or expensive these days that they had to settle with cutout prints in place of them.
SO GLAD THIS WAS DONE. MY FIRST JOB OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL WAS TO A NASA CONTRACTOR..............1966. WOW!!!
Of course, this has to be preserved. It's kind of baffling that anyone didn't think so.
The same group who didn't think to save the original data tapes of the Apollo 11 mission.
Amazing workmanship
Great bunch of pros
This made me cry. Thank you.
Glad to see this happen.
The first time I visited NASA was the early 80's. It was really laid back you could pretty much still walk around without anyone stopping you. The areas had been changed for the shuttle missions but you could still recognize stuff left over from the Apollo missions. That was the main reason I visited it. I have one of those grey swivel chairs. They made thousands of them. That was back when they used quality materials.
Was there in the early eighties......I vividly remember it like I was there yesterday. What surprised me was the rooms size, In real life it's not as large as it appears thru film and pictures.
They did a great job on the restoration. Only complaint is that they didn't preserve the CRTs, but replaced them with LCDs which look incredibly out of place
@Brent Baader Thank you for putting this video out there for us all to see!
I have a question that my curiosity has demanded that I get an answer to:
In the documentary, I noticed that the CRT monitors in some of the consoles had been replaced with LCD panels.
Do you know of any “intense” arguments about the choice to not find replacement CRT’s? (I would be surprised if there weren’t. 😄)
I know from personal experience, that using an LCD panel to exactly replicate the look and behavior of a CRT monitor, can be a real nightmare. Even in a professional setting and a decent budget. I had the “honor” of being given such a task at work in the early 2000’s. Even WITHOUT the critical eye of the impossible-to-please artists who had hired the services of the rental company I worked for.
It was maddening at times, but I still loved the challenge of figuring out how to solve a problem, that no one had faced before. It can be VERY stressful, but you have the added benefit of gaining new skills. Unless you end up losing your mind, of course! 😁
This is a living museum exhibit, all the kit needs to work day after day and CRT's would be a maintenance headache. prob the same reason all the console indicator lights are LED with ramp up and down curves in their programming to resemble filament lamps.
@@dougle03 Not my problem! if you cant maintain a restoration the correct way then don't start it. Same with old cars. Waste of time. Its a fake Disneyfied fake. I cant believe anyone approved this crap and I certainly hope we didn't pay for it. NASA has stolen enough!
@@paiddj3397 Where are they going to get a plentiful supply of a CRT tubes that no one makes anymore....? The original tubes needed constant maintenance when new, they were the best available, but even so.
OUTSTANDING!
Wonderful beyond words. I hope I can see it one day.
Where is the software shown in those Ford Philco Consoles??? I've seen a couple TV documentaries about Apollo Spacecraft Computer, but nothing about the Mission Control hardware and software. Also, from what I've seen, it seems that these consoles were not computer terminals (in the sense of displaying characters and having a minimum of computing power) but TV screens retransmitting screens filmed somewhere else, maybe an IBM mainframe in the basement.
The terminals were attached to IBM 360/75 and Univac 1230 computers.
You are right, they weren't terminals in the sense we understand.
You can divide one of those consoles up into several parts:
1) The telephone
2) The headset system
3) The blinkenlights
4) The CRT screen
5) Maybe other stuff, depending on the console
There were no "brains" in the console. That was all elsewhere.
1) The phone system was a normal PBX phone system, with one or more pair of wires from the phone running off to a PBX rack and normal phone switching someplace.
2) The headset system usually had a bunch of push buttons that could connect the headset to one of several circuits. I'm not clear on whether this switching was done locally on each console or whether the switches went off the the console control computer that then switched audio relays to switch channels for the console (and light the lights in the button to show which channel was selected).
3) The blinkenlights, mist of which also had pushbuttons, were controlled as peripherals from an IBM 360/65 (if I remember correctly) computer in another room. I believe I recall that it was one of three computers that worked together to generate the displays and update the button lights, as well as send signals outside the building in some cases.
In those days there was no standard "PIO" interface from a computer to things like lights and relays. IBM was happy to build such specialized things if you could pay for the engineering, and NASA could. So there were racks and racks of interface cards between the switches and computer inputs, and more racks between computer outputs and relays to drive the lights. There were miles of wire between those consoles and the peripheral rack cabinets in an adjacent room.
4) The CRTs were NTSC B&W televisions, with signals routed to them on coax cables. Most (I suspect all) consoles had switches to select which video source would be displayed. This video switching could have been local, but I suspect that like all other switches and blinkenlights it was controlled by the 360.
Computer graphics weren't great in that era (they were darn poor), so for most of the things that displayed charts, the computer generated numbers on a CRT projector screen in another room, and then a video camera took a picture of that screen. The graphics, such as a graph scale, was done by a static transparency projected onto the same screen used by the TV projector. The computer could turn the graphics overlay on and off, and could I think scroll through a reel of different overlays, so you could do more than one thing on one projector if you needed to.
@@lwilton Ok, and what about the Software (the source code) running in the mainframes and displayed on those screens? I hope that was not lost.
@@nmarcel The simple answer is that I'd virtually guarantee that it has been lost. After all, the software for the Apollo Guidance Computer for this mission is lost, and had to be reconstructed by "best guess" estimate from several other versions. And that was a whole lot simpler piece of software.
The complicated answer is, well, complicated.
The guys back then weren't working on creating a theme park museum exhibit. They were working on a series of Apollo launches, each one different. Each mission had different experiments on board. Each capsule and Saturn missile was different, incorporating fixes and improvements learned on the previous launches.
As a result the Mission Control room, and the ten or so rooms around it that you never saw on TV, and all the controlling software was different on every mission. As soon as one mission ended, the Philco guys were in the room, ripping apart consoles, putting in new lights, taking out old ones, changing legends, adding complete new consoles, maybe decommissioning a console that monitored a previous experiment that wasn't on the next mission.
So it wasn't just "the Apollo Mission Control software". It was unique for every mission. Sometimes it was patched during the mission when a bug was found or they needed to do a procedure change because something failed in the capsule.
The software was stored on magnetic tape reels back then. Probably quite a lot of them. I wouldn't be surprised if the software load for the mission control computers for one mission ran to 20 or more reels of tape. That takes up a lot of space, and costs a lot of money in tape and storage space. Now, there was probably an archive copy made every now and then, maybe of each mission. But tape was designed to have a 20 year lifespan, and it has been a whole lot longer than that by now. So it might not even be readable, IF someone could find the tapes. And since it was always changing, finding the *exact* version to match that mission could very well be impossible, because it might not have been archived. Remember, they were in a continuous process, and this was just one step. It wasn't a step that was as important to them as it is to us now, at least not for the same reasons. It was "OK, good, that worked. Now we know we can run the next mission as planned. Start doing it!"
Remember that to reconstruct the consoles and the lights and legends on them, they had to go from grainy movie footage and memories of old guys. They couldn't just pull out the plans for each console that showed exactly what was there. Because things were always changing. Maybe those plans exist somewhere, or maybe not. But they couldn't find them, or at least didn't find them. So the chances of finding not only the many reels of software, being able to read them correctly, being able to recreate the software environment including the operating system version (with any special IBM patches), and all the rest, is pretty unlikely. Unfortunately.
@@lwilton I see. Thanks for the detailed response.
I'm disappointed they didn't use the original or equivalent CRT monitors, all this talk about details and authenticity but they changed the screens for lcds.
i'm sure they have good reasons (likely burn in or wear on the crts) but I feel the og crts would be cooler.
Most were not working. After Apollo, they modified several counsels for the early Space Shuttle flights -- and some of the CRT monitors were lost. What is significant, they talked to all of the controllers to know exactly with the video output would look like -- and use flat screen monitors. But thanks for your feedback, I will address all this when I finish the full half hour program.
@@savingamericana Also what about the big screen system, I'm guessing these are not multiple layers of xenon lamp slide projection with diamond tip stylus' to real time engrave the graphs of trajectory as the missions progress. Or the oil filled Eidophor projectors. Without all the hidden technology all we really have is a thin veneer of apearance without the depth that really was mission control
@@savingamericana The question, though, is are the consoles operational as if the could use a mission, say as a backup? They said they used the consoles through the early '90s.
@@clemsonbloke I suppose they could be used, if you wanted to wire them into a computer, since the consoles in mission control had no local processing ability. Each screen was basically a CCTV feed of information composited from a few sources, although the switches, phones, and communications loops were done on-console.
@@clemsonbloke Look at SpaceX, all laptops now, no longer a need for hugely expensive custom consoles. And if they could have used laptops back in the 60's, they deffo would have done!
Remarkable task and remarkable video. So happy to have watched this.
What a great project.
Terrific! Cathedral...that’s the right word.
there are a lot of people who dont get the credit they deserve just as much as buzz and neil because without them buzz and neil couldnt even fly an airplane without an engineer to design one to fly or a rocket to take off from earth or one to get off the moon to get back home.
Inspiring, endearing. Remember watching Apollo-11 land craning my neck gawking @ the B&W TV i/t school quadrangle.
Beautiful! The whole US of A should be frozen, embalmed and put into a museum.
I am really expressed what they had done. All this Apollo stuff is so long ago, the last man has left the moon so many years before I was born and for over 50 years noone has come back.
NASA plans on going back to the moon by 2024
very true..last one was Apollo 17 Dec 19, 1972
Love the AC/DC shirt!
Are there any detailed videos about the actual electronics used to bring those panels to life? Did they use flat screen LED panels to mimick the CRT screens, for example?
You can see in the rebuilding them using a flat screen in one of the consoles. Also you can tell from the images of the lit consoles that those are flat screen monitors and not CRTs. The images on CRTs danced around a bit, and at close range (like sitting in front of them) you could see the scan lines. The new monitors appear to be considerably higher resolution.
I suspect also they completely rewired all of the indicators, probably as static lights. There would have been literally miles of wire in those 3" and 4" conduits running off to the computer peripheral room next door to racks and racks of lamp drivers. It looked like they were running networking cable in some of the images, which didn't exist in the 1960s. Probably there are local lamp driver boards in each console now.
I don't really fault them for any of this. Keeping CRTs working was a BIG job back in that era when you could order replacements in carload quantities. It would be virtually impossible now, and CRTs don't really last all that long in static image service; they tend to burn. Within a few months the place would look awful. Likewise the IBM 360/65 is long gone, and keeping one of those working, even without the custom IO driver hardware for the consoles would be prohibitive, and also pointless, since nobody would see it on a museum tour. Having some Arduino's flashing console lights in a random (or maybe pre-recorded) pattern is Good Enough for a museum display.
@@lwilton The displays were CCTV images - the buttons selected different channels. A lot of the displays were composites of film slides and mechanical animation rather than computer generated. An Arduino or Raspberry Pi would have more processing power than the computers connected to the display generation system.
@@lwilton I think they are using Arduino/ESP based button lamp drivers now, these are synchronized up for coordinated playback during the replay sequences. A couple of ESP 8266 MCU's oddly have more power than the nearby IBM had back in the day...
Yes, unfortunately the flat screens spoil the illusion for me, as do the modern projectors. One of the people in the video talk about not "Disney-fying" things, but it looks like the realities of what can still be found made them cut a large number of corners. Of course, if they put ONE monochrome CRT in there, they would have had to put the scores of them that were originally there, or the fakes would stand out like sore thumbs. And THEN they would have to provide both the power and the air conditioning to make it all work and feel right. It could be done, but they were more concerned about getting the nicotine-stained wallpaper colors right than getting the hardware right. Another thing I'm quite sure they did not replicate was the sound of hundreds of cooling fans that kept all this equipment from melting down. But of course you can't see that in the films, and any audio recordings have had these sounds removed ("cleaned up") digitally.
You can never go home.
There's software that can make a LCD look like a CRT even down to wobbling of the sync and frame edges
ive been there! very amazing place
Not to denigrate this effort or, certainly not his room, but perhaps everyone should understand the full history of "MOCR-2". This video, and many like it implies that following the Apollo Program, this room was sort of "abandonded" and left to decay...that wasn't the case at all. MOCR-2 was converted into a Shuttle Flight Control Control Room and served in this function all the way through STS-53 into 1992. It was at that point where it was shut down and "converted" to the Apollo era Flight Control Room...unfortunately, due to a lack of resources and attention, it sat that way until this project was undertaken in 2018. Thanks to Gene Kranz and his team of retired controllers, the room has been converted to the pristine 1969 version that it is currently represented today when not only Apollo 11 landed on the moon, but when the program operated virtually all the Apollo missions out of it, i.e. here was the site where EECOM John Aaron saved the Apollo 12 launch, where all of the Apollo 13 drama insued and where all of the important Apollo 15, 16 and 17 science mission transmissions occurred. Yes, it is absolutely GREAT! that this room is being converted to the proper era and time, but, please folks, let's not forget that OTHER important and historic events occurred here!!
Are they replacing CRT monitors with LCD panels??!?!?
🤯 SMOKING? 😵 I wasn't smoking back then! 😤
Just wanted to make a comment about the missing slide rules, but @14:44 there they are
But that's wrong, too. A slide rule was every bit as personal as your smart phone is today. Nobody would have just left one lying there on his console.
Pity they cant get those p-tubes working again. Not sure what the problem was there.
That's surprising. P-tube (pneumatic tube systems) are still made and used in a lot of places.
I know. I wonder what the problem is? Last I knew, p-tube systems were used well into the 80's, such as in bank drive thru lanes. And I know that a hospital here still uses them in 2021.
@@SweetBearCub My bank uses them at the drive-up to this day.
@@SweetBearCub Yeah, I think they're just glorifying the efforts of the people who did the restoration. There are SO many shortcuts I can see just from what is visible in the video, I'm sure the guiding principle was "make it look like the pictures."
That’s the KSP on ultimate level
Is there a website or mailing list where I can get updates on this? I'd love to see the full-length version when it comes out.
Copy the title of this video and use it as a search term on google and/or bing.
You know, you can say a lot of things about Americans. What I am saying here is: You guys are fucking nuts! But I am seriously happy you are, because this is awesome. Not just the room, but the very state. The ashtrays. The mugs. What the fuck, guys?!?! What a great piece of work. What a great piece of history!!!!!!
Just 8 years later, I was born. July 20th 1977.
I've always wondering what kind of operating system used those computers in mission control room
IBM System 360-75 OS/360 from IBM and running FORTRAN apps for sure and possible COBOL apps
In the late 1980s i did work for a lot of large companies replacing IBM System 360's with IBM PC Servers..pretty amazing the changes in about 20 years
why not using old crt monitors and old projectors?
Admiro lo que han hecho !! realmente maravilloso !! pero reemplazar los tubos CTR y display´s por LCD o led´s me parece un error, si los CTR´s originales se estropearon, con el poderío tecnológico de EEUU, simplemente los fabrican nuevos, igual a los antiguos originales, los tubos parpadeantes son el corazón de la época. Gustavo desde Buenos Aires , Argentina.
Rest In Peace Michael Collins
Looks like they changed all the original electronics from the consoles?!? :(
And now leave it there... Forever!
this is realy great to see . but some of the instalers/workers look like they had wawwwaaayyy too much coffee :)
Get curiousmarc and his team in there!
I really don't get the crt's being replaced by modern lcd monitors. During the whole video, people are talking about the details that are so importand to preserve. That everything has to be exactly as it was back in the day. About the patina etc. So how on earth would you replace those crt's with lcd's??? I really don't get it.
crt's die. also they used proprietary video feed from cameras that where pointed at numeral computer monitors with screen overlays that were long gone. if they didnt replace the crts they just couldnt turn them on. they probably have them in storage.
It is very noticeable, but really difficult to make right. Either it is lcd or they have to be turned off. One day a nerd with too much money may produce an lcd or something that bulges like a cathode ray tube. And flickers.
@@typograf62 I'm sure that's possible, but you must remember the flicker we remember was largely an artifact of the systems used to record the scenes of activity in Mission Control--pictures of pictures--and would not have been nearly as pronounced when viewed directly.
@@jackdedert2945 Some of it. I noticed on old tv's, that the flicker is very noticable when the crt is in the outer "rim" of my vision. The recording artifact usually appears as a rolling grey bar.
@@typograf62 And they're not even BEGINNING to re-create the SOUNDS of that place. That many CRT monitors in one room? The squeal would be drowned out only by the hundreds of cooling fans that kept it from spontaneously igniting. If they made it sound realistic, nobody today would be able to stand being in there for more than a minute or two.
What did it cost and who paid for it?
1:08 actually it began some years before in nazi Germany but amazing never the less and amasing effort to restore, i wish the other side would do the same
"i wish the other side would do the same"
Other side?
It’s hard to believe, in the early 70th people dreamed about a moon base within a decade and 50 years later NASA doesn’t even have a rocket or spaceship to send some astronauts back to the moon. Quite sad.
If its exactly as it was in July 1969 for the Apollo 11 Landing then where are all the small US flags each controller had?
Did you ever see 2001: A Space Odyssey? In the scene when Dave Bowman ends up in a room that was made for him to live out his days, there were books, but when he opened them, all of the pages were blank. That's the impression I get from this film. Everything looks authentic, as long as you don't look too hard.
Hm. Maybe that wasn't in 2001 - maybe it was a Twilight Zone episode...
TRULY A FANTASTIC JOB GUYS!!
I wonder if they were able to save any of the computers?
I suspect that the main computers were scrapped decades ago. There were no computers inside the control room itself, nor in any of the consoles. The computers were far too big, each one of the (I think) three of them took up almost as much space as that whole control room. Somewhere near that control room there would have been another room with all of the racks of lamp drivers to drive the lights on the consoles. That may still be there gathering dust, at least partially. Since it wasn't anything that anyone saw on TV there wouldn't be much point in preserving it.
@@lwilton And even if they HAD saved any of the computers, this would have been useless. For the most part they used standard models of computers, such as System/360 series, which wouldn't help at all unless they also had the original software.
And since you mention lamp drivers, remember that many of the lights would have been colored lights. The color came from color filters over incandescent bulbs or a colored coating over the bulbs themselves, which would have either cracked and disintegrated, or faded to the point where you couldn't tell what the original color was.
@@BrightBlueJim I was watching as they showed someone refurbishing one of those indicators, and it looked to me that he was using incandescent lamps in them. I suppose that they might have gotten LED lamps in the funny button base, but those lamps were pretty small, and as I say, they still looked like incandescents to me in the quick clip, though I could well be wrong.
Getting the color right isn't really a problem. I believe that the lamps, rather than being color dipped, actually had small rubber-like push-on domes fitted over them of the correct red/yellow/green color. Again, it looked like I saw some of those in this clip. Even if those aren't still available from Allied or Digikey, they are something that could be fabricated pretty easily these days.
Even if the lamps were themselves colored it wouldn't be a problem. You can still (amazingly!) get theatrical "lamp dip", which is a colored liquid that, you guessed it, you dip a lamp in and then let it dry to give it a color. The problem with this stuff is that it will both brown and crack with heat over an extended run time, resulting in basically a yellow-white light. That was well known in the days that you could get colored small indicator lights, and why most people went with a colored filter of some sort rather than a colored coating on the lamps themselves.
For indicators that don't have to show more than one color (most of them) you can get theatrical "gel", which is a colored sheet filter medium, in any color you can imagine, and they could cut small rectangles of it and put it behind the legends in the indicators. Since these were obviously people familiar with theatrical techniques, I'd be a little surprised if they didn't do this in a number of cases.
The computers that drove the displays were not actually in the room with the consoles, they were multiple room sized IBM System/360 mainframes and support equipment, in the "Real Time Computing Complex" building. Their data was displayed on these consoles.
That was a FANTASTIC read guys ..
I had forgotten all about this video and was happy to watch it again !
As to the lights and switches there is a guy on UA-cam that I watch called "curious mark" he and his fellow nerds have been doing a whole series on the apollo system and DEFINITELY worth a watch !
They show you a lot about how the various typs of switches that they used and would say that 90% of vf them still work !
They are all white bulbs with a coloured gel over the front of the switch
As I said go see his channel if you like anything vintage electronic or space related you wont do better !!
Absolutely brilliant isn’t it ….
Did they go to ALL that immense trouble of getting it back to original , even down to cigarette stained carpet and exact coffee mugs etc , and replaced the screens with modern LCD’s???? WTF??
CRTs break down fast in static image use (burn in and more), and there really isn't a ready supply of museum-quality replacements in 2021. Even back in the day, NASA ordered replacements by the pallet, and keeping them running was a big job.
did they just replace everything with movie props?
@@mustangrt8866 They absolutely did. The consoles themselves are original, but none of the electronics has survived. I would bet good money, all of those indicator lights have LEDs in them, too.
Tony Raymond and I were there!!!
Fantastic! Thank you.
I believe it was an Eidophor the video projector at those times...
I believe there was one Eidophor, used only for live video; the rest used various other technologies.