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Newly restored Apollo Mission Control

4K views 18 replies 18 participants last post by  Reverend123! 
#1 · (Edited)
Attended the employee's preview of the newly restored Apollo Mission Operations Control Room used for Apollo 11 and many others before and after. The restoration is fabulous and the attention to historical detail is amazing. My pictures don't do it justice. The presentation is amazing and really takes you back to July 20, 1969. There's a presentation from Gene Kranz setting the stage (last few minutes before LM touchdown on the surface) and then the displays and audio take you through the landing in realtime. The displays follow along and you hear not only comm between Earth and Eagle, but between the controllers themselves. Very interesting!

Notice the ashtrays and the vintage cigarette packs, the vintage coffee mugs and even the vintage disposable coffee cups that you don't even see anymore. There's a vintage RC Cola can at one of the stations. The carpet, chairs, viewing room, wall paper and other things are all as they were back then. Even though the displays now use LEDs and are computer controlled, they even made the LEDs "fuzzy" to match the proper font and lack of crispness of the displays back then.

If you're ever in the Houston area, definitely go see it. Even if you've seen it in the past, that was nothing like now. I can't recommend this enough!

Apollo MOCR-1 by Russ, on Flickr

Apollo MOCR-2 by Russ, on Flickr

Apollo MOCR-3 by Russ, on Flickr

Apollo MOCR-4 by Russ, on Flickr

Apollo MOCR-5 by Russ, on Flickr

Apollo MOCR-6 by Russ, on Flickr

Apollo MOCR-7 by Russ, on Flickr

Apollo MOCR-8 by Russ, on Flickr

Apollo MOCR-9 by Russ, on Flickr

Apollo MOCR-10 by Russ, on Flickr

Apollo MOCR-11 by Russ, on Flickr

Apollo MOCR-12 by Russ, on Flickr

Apollo MOCR-13 by Russ, on Flickr

Apollo MOCR-14 by Russ, on Flickr


BTW, there was a beautiful Aqua Terra in the group with me. The guy wearing it didn't seem like a WIS though, so I didn't say anything to him.
 
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#6 ·
Awesome photos, thanks for sharing.

I visited Johnson for the first time back in February but took the other tour (I believe it was the Astronaut training center tour). I'll have to make a trip back the next time I'm in Houston for work to do the control room tour.

The Saturn V was definitely the highlight though.
 
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#7 ·
This restoration work was done in the Spaceworks division of the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, KS. Same guys who built the EVA suits for the Apollo 13 film, and did the restoration of the Liberty 7 capsule.
The CEO of the Cosmosphere gave a talk at the University here in Wichita, with a lot of very interesting information about the utter attention to detail which that project was given.
And of course...he was wearing a Speedy 😁 !
 
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#8 ·
This restoration work was done in the Spaceworks division of the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, KS. Same guys who built the EVA suits for the Apollo 13 film, and did the restoration of the Liberty 7 capsule.
The CEO of the Cosmosphere gave a talk at the University here in Wichita, with a lot of very interesting information about the utter attention to detail which that project was given.
And of course...he was wearing a Speedy �� !
They did a great job, as they have done many times previously.
 
#13 ·
Thanks for the photos and bringing back memories of being glued to the TV during the moon missions maybe our leaders will recognize the importance of this once more and the space program will return with a magnitude of this proportion, a lot of technology was made available to the average person because of it.
 
#17 ·
I remember those dark green steel garbage cans from grammar school in the 70's. Every classroom had one next to the teacher's desk. The teacher's desks were always airforce surplus. The heavy steel with the round corners and rubber top. Usually dark green also. My father smoked Kents in the 70's, then switched to True Blue in the 80's. Died of lung cancer in the 90's.
 
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