Project Apollo Digest: Mission Control Center & MCC Computers ~ 1967 NASA

more at http://quickfound.net/

Overview of the Apollo program Mission Control Center at the Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center), at Clear Lake City, near Houston, Texas.

Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_C._Kraft_Jr._Mission_Control_Center

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

NASA's Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center (MCC-H, initially called Integrated Mission Control Center, or IMCC), also known by its radio callsign, Houston, is the facility at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, that manages flight control for America's human space program, currently involving astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The center is in Building 30 at the Johnson Space Center which is named after Christopher C. Kraft Jr., a retired NASA engineer and manager who was instrumental in establishing the agency's Mission Control operation, and was the first Flight Director. Prime contractor for systems integration at Houston was Philco Corp., selected by NASA in January 1963.

The MCC currently houses one operational control room in Building 30 from which flight controllers command, monitor, and plan operations for the ISS...

Located in Building 30 at the Johnson Space Center (known as the Manned Spacecraft Center until 1973), the Houston MCC was first used in June 1965 for Gemini 4. It housed two primary rooms known as Mission Operation Control Rooms (MOCR, pronounced "moh-ker"). These two rooms controlled all Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and Space Shuttle flights up to 1998. Each consisted of a four-tier auditorium, dominated by a large map screen, which, with the exception of Apollo lunar flights, had a Mercator projection of the Earth, with locations of tracking stations, and a three-orbit "sine wave" track of the spacecraft in flight. Each MOCR tier was specialized, staffed by various controllers responsible for a specific spacecraft system.

MOCR 1, housed on the second floor of Building 30, was used for Apollo 5, Apollo 7, the Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (Saturn IB) missions.

MOCR 2 was used for all other Gemini and Apollo (Saturn V) flights (except Gemini 3) and was located on the third floor. As the flight control room for Apollo 11, the first manned moon landing, MOCR 2 was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985. It was last used in 1992 as the flight control room for STS-53 and was subsequently converted back almost entirely to its Apollo-era configuration...

After the move from the Cape MCC to the Houston MCC in 1965, the new MOCRs, which were larger and more sophisticated than the single Cape MCC, consisted of four rows, with the first row, later known as "the Trench" (a term coined by Apollo-era RETRO controller John Llewellyn, which, according to Flight Director Eugene Kranz, reminded him of the firing range during his years as a USAF officer). It was occupied by the BOOSTER, RETRO, FIDO, and GUIDO controllers. During Gemini, the BOOSTER position was handled by both an engineer from Martin Marietta and an astronaut, while all missions from Apollo 7 used engineers from the Marshall Space Flight Center. The second row, after Project Gemini, consisted of the SURGEON, EECOM, and CAPCOM. The EECOM, which replaced the ENVIRONMENTAL controller and some of the SYSTEMS controller's functions, monitored the spacecraft's electrical and environmental systems. Like the CAPCOMs during Mercury, all CAPCOMs in the Houston MCC were astronauts.

On the other side of the aisle of the second row were controllers who monitored specific parts of Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, ASTP and Space Shuttle missions...

The third row consisted of the PAO, PROCEDURES, and the FAO (flight activities officer), who coordinated with the flight schedule. The AFD (assistant flight director) and the flight director were also located on the third row.

The fourth row, like the old Cape MCC's third row, was reserved for NASA management, including the director of the Johnson Space Center, the director of flight operations, the director of flight crew operations (chief astronaut), and the Department of Defense officer...