This is all kinds of awesome: NASA restored and preserved the Apollo Mission Control Room!

[thewayne]

This is super cool! It was restored to Apollo 15 and subsequent mission standards, which was the final 'standard' when NASA stopped launching manned missions. That level was chosen because it was the best documented and frankly looked the coolest. The light bulbs behind the switches were painstakingly replaced with LEDs wired into a control system, the CRTs were replaced with LCDs that were messed with to look exactly like CRTs: they duplicated the IBM 360 mainframe font! They meddled with the focus, caused interference patterns, etc. The photos, and there's something like four galleries(!), look wonderful.

If you have any interest in the space program, you really ought to read this article. And if you're in the vicinity of Houston, you really ought to take the tour - it opens to the public on Monday!

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/behind-the-scenes-at-nasas-newly-restored-historic-apollo-mission-control/

Comments

[silveradept]

That's pretty neat. So as to see what got people up into space, including all the artifacts that the people were using (or smoking, which seems like an interesting detail to include for accuracy...)

[thewayne]

I thought the tobacco was taking it a bit far, the ash trays would be sufficient IMO, but the fact is those people were under a lot of stress and smoked like chimneys.  I did laugh at the quote that 'If it was pipe tobacco, it was mine, if it was cigarettes it was Bob's.'