Apollo Flight Controller 101: Every console explained, Ars Technica

************************************************************** (Update: It’s winter break this week for many businesses, including Ars. So while staff are off enjoying some downtime (whether with family or their favorite video games), we thought we’d resurface something relevant to perhaps our favorite holiday story. Back in (**********************************************************************, the crew of Apollo 8 soared to the heavens over Christmas. Theypaved the way for humanity’s ultimate achievementthe following summer, theybrought the first officially approved holiday booze into space, and they took an image thatcontinues to capture our imaginationdecades later. Since NASA and partnersrestored the famed Mission Controlbehind that mission earlier this year, we thought we’d resurface our guide to every console in the famed control center for anyone plotting 2020 vacation plans this week. This story originally ran on October (*****************************************************************************************, 2020 and it appears unchanged below.    

Ars recently had the opportunity to spend some quality time touring the restored Apollo “Mission Control” room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. We talked withSy Liebergot, a retired NASA flight controller who took part in some of the most famous manned space flight missions of all time, including Apollo and Apollo******************************************************************************. The feature article “Going boldly: Behind the scenes at NASA’s hallowed Mission Control Center“goes in depth on what” Mission Control “did during Apollo and how it all worked, but there just wasn’t room to fit in detailed descriptions and diagrams of all of the different flight controller consoles — I’m no John Siracusa, after all!But Ars readers love space, and there was so much extra information that I couldn’t sit on it. So this is a station-by-station tour of Historical Mission Operations Control Room 2, or “MOCR 2.” As mentioned in the feature, MOCR 2 was used for almost every Gemini and Apollo flight, and in the late s was restored to its Apollo-era appearance. You can visit it if you’re in Houston, but you won’t get any closer than the glassed-in visitor gallery in the back, and that’s just not close enough. Strap yourselves in and prepare for an up-close look at the MOCR consoles, Ars style.The layoutFor most of Project Apollo, MOCR 2 had a fixed layout. Each station handled a specific, related group of functions; some watched over the spacecraft’s hardware, or its software, or its position in space, or over the crew itself. Here’s how things were laid out for most of Project Apollo: