Behind the Scenes Tour at NASA's Johnson Space Center Part 1: Mission Control

[toddrjohnson]

I was almost 7 years old when Neil Armstrong first step foot on the moon in July 1969. As a child, I followed the entire space program, cutting out newspaper and magazine articles and putting them in a scrapbook. I was a geeky kid interested in science and science fiction, so the space program was right up my alley.

When Neil Armstrong radioed, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." I was living in Eastern Ohio. I never imagined that I would one day live just a few miles from the Apollo Mission Control Center in the Johnson Space Center (JSC) or that two of my children would attend the elementary school that is just down the street from JSC.

Despite living so close JSC I never visited until this Friday--49 years after that first moonwalk. My son, Matija (@matijal) is visiting from Slovenia this summer and asked to see NASA. As fortune would have it, one of my neighbors works there and offered to take us on a behind the scenes tour. At least as behind the scenes as visitors can get. Many areas are, of course, accessible only to those who have a valid need to be in them.

Mission Control Center

Whenever I hear about Mission Control, I think of one control center, but there are actually several different mission control centers in the building. This makes sense since there can be many missions operating or training at one time. During our tour we saw three Mission Control Centers: the International Space Station, the original Apollo, and Orion (for the upcoming Mars missions).

Here's our neighbor Chad taking us into the main entrance to the Mission Control Center. From left to right are my daughters (Aryanna and Aaralyn), Chad, and my son, Matija:

This plaque from 1981 is inside the limited area:

International Space Station Mission Control Center

We first entered the observer seating area for the International Space Station Mission Control Center. This is an active control center, though we didn't see any interaction with the astronauts while we were there. If you look at the monitors in the upper left of the photo, Chad thought that the second from the left was a feed from the SpaceX mission control center.

Here you can see how the observation room is set up above Mission Control. All of the mission controls have these rooms. Groups of 80 or so tourists stream through them throughout the day. When we arrived, a group was just going out of this room as we were entering. If you think about it, the transparency here is really amazing.

Apollo Mission Control Center

The original Apollo Mission Control Center is undergoing renovation. The consoles at the front have been removed for restoration, leaving only those in the rear. If you watch old footage taken from this site, you will see that many of the staff and observers were smoking. You can still see evidence of this from smoke stains on the backs of chairs in the observer room. Each chair in the observer room has an ashtray attached to its back so that the person sitting behind it could smoke. Although NASA wants to keep the center as original as possible, because so many visitors come through the observation room, they replaced the ceiling tiles, which were stained yellow from cigarette smoke.

Some believe that the filming of some of the scenes for the Apollo 13 movie was done here, but because the cameras at the time were too big to fit in the aisle, the producers built an exact copy in a Hollywood studio and filmed the scenes there.

Orion Mission Control Center

Orion is the spacecraft under development by NASA to take astronauts to Mars. The White Flight Control Room was renovated for the Orion missions. Although the first crewed flight of Orion is not scheduled until 2021, on the day we were visiting, staff were conducting a training session in the room.

Space Shuttle Cockpits

On the first floor of Mission Control, visitors can see and touch the front and rear cockpit controls from the space shuttle. The controls are robust, physical toggles and buttons. Some of the more critical toggle switches must be pulled out before they can be flipped to ensure that they are not accidentally switched.

This is the front cockpit:

Here is Chad explaining that the rear cockpit was used to control the robotic arm. The operator could look out the two small windows as he or she controlled the arm.

Todd

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Comments

[fionasfavourites]

Wow! @toddrjohnson, I remember listening to the radio broadcast of the moonlanding. I was 6 years old, living in East London, South Africa. What an amazing experience. Thanks for sharing it with us, especially all those photographs. A memory for you and your children to treasure for ever!

[toddrjohnson]

Thanks for commenting. It might be interesting to compare memories of a number of us who remember this event.

[fionasfavourites]

That would, indeed, especially from different parts of the world. We did not have TV in South Africa until 1976, so it was all on the radio - very crackly, as I recall. Sitting on the floor in our lounge. The entire family, all four of us, glued to it in wrapt attention. I've never forgotten. For years, Neil Armstrong was my hero.

[curie]

Hi toddrjohnson,

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[foxyspirit]

Even though its 49 years later that you got to visit, I bet you felt like a kid all over again.
I would be doing the same as your kids and touching all the buttons and switches. Must have been an exciting experience :)

[toddrjohnson]

It was actually a very emotional experience for me. My children had fun and even said it was much better than their school field trips. However, for me it brought back a lot of memories of the excitement I felt as a little boy growing up and actually seeing the human race get closer to the kinds of adventures I saw in Star Trek. And Yes, I did fiddle with all those knobs! I mentioned watching the moon landing with our guide and he said he was born several years after the landing. That made me the only person on our little tour who actually lived through that time. It is difficult for me to think that it has been so long.

[foxyspirit]

Time flies by so fast it is unreal. What seems like last year is now 5 years ago. And a lot can happen in between. I totally get what you are saying.

[devkapoor423]

Thanks for sharing this post on Steemit. I had a keen desire to see inside area of NASA. I searched many YouTube videos but there was something missing and that was real experience of a common man who was not a part of this..
But you really tried to explain a lot of about NASA.. and congrats to you for being a NASA neighbor.. I hope you will share your real experience again with us..

Posted using Partiko Android

[toddrjohnson]

Thanks for visiting. I will be posting at least two more parts soon.

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[emperorhassy]

@toddrjohnson, this is a beautiful exposition on NASA. It's very entertaining and educative.

Thanks!

[cryptoespacio]

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[randomwanderings]

Hi @toddrjohnson,

Loved going on the behind the scenes tour with you. It is great to see places like this that many will never get to on their own. A great look at a piece of space history.

This post was nominated by a @curie curator to be featured in an upcoming Author Showcase that will be posted Early Saturday (U.S. time) on the @curie blog.(About 24-28 hours from now.)

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[roselifecoach]

This is actually very amazing, we can only see it in documentary, never ever imagine to see the real thing!