This is frankly some of the best footage I’ve ever seen of the MOCR facilities. The archive has really outdone itself this time!

What they accomplished in the 60's was absolutely astonishing. I was an engineer in the 1980's working for GE Aerospace, and we accomplished amazing things and moved the state of the art forward - but dang, with what they had to work with they solved a far larger problem with literally tons of complex equipment.

Notably, computers at the time did not have monitors to display characters, let alone diagrams like you see in some of those screens. There was an immensely complicated system in between the IBM 360s and the console screens which generated characters on persistent CRT tubes with a video camera pointed at those tubes. The consoles would then "tune" to these cameras as if they were TV channels. The static part of the diagrams would be added as a transparency slide between the CRTs and the video cameras and the retrieval and placement of the slides was automated and controlled by the computers. I wish there was more information about this part of the system.

This footage is simply astounding! 1970 High Definition. We have to thank old 35mm film for this. Very, very fascinating.

Those incandescent projected digit displays really have a unique look to them.

The Mercury Gemini and Apollo programs where indeed fascinating. But what's more impressive is the whole communication and telemetry network. Plus the mission control mainframe computers used to gather all the data and telemetry and distributing the information to each respective terminal. There is so much information out the but nobody talks about it. It's overshadowed by the main events of the launch and orbit.

Beautiful! Those old systems, with all those knobs and switches and illuminated buttons with writing on them, are works of art. I'd have a whole wall like this at home if I could.

Thank you! Finally i come to see all these switches and monitors that near. A childhood dream! The images of these rooms, seen as a 10 year old, made me to study electrical engineering.

I worked there, among other buildings at Johnson Space Center in the late 80's and early 90's and those consoles were still there. It wasn't until the mid to late 90s those obsolete consoles were replaced with shiny, for then, new tech consoles.

Fascinating video showing what the state of art was back then. Sy Liebergot, Apollo EECOM flight controller (portrayed by Ron Howard's brother Clint in "Apollo 13") spoke at 1996 Silicon Valley Engineers Week Banquet. Those handles each side of monitor (used to pull for servicing) Sy called them "security handles" which when a controller was apprehensive of the situation, he can hold on to those like the Peanuts cartoon character Linus and his security blanket. I thought it was interesting to learn there was much more in background than what we see in MOCR (this single room Mission Operations Control Room) as there were several other rooms supporting each flight controller. Sy was assisted by few other guys with identical monitors but also strip-chart recorders and lots more documentation. During this time a company called Arts & Letters produced a multi-media on CD rom (Liebergot provided consultation). What is interesting is there are two other rooms, Mission Evaluation Room (MER) managed by the legendary Don "Mad Don" Arabian. And the Spacecraft Analysis (SPAN) that acts as the go between MOCR and MER. Then there are those air tube or vacuum to send papers from MOCR to other rooms and back. One incident someone packed a bunch of sharpened new pencils but didn't properly latch the spring loaded carrier so it came undone in a tube somewhere causing entire system to be down for a few hours. This included audio tracks of Sy talking with his guys in the backroom about data going off scale after O2 tank explosion. Liebergot first thought it was PCM or "looks like we have an instrumentation problem" as spacecraft designed to not have quadruple failures. He asked about values of tank pressure and temperatures, one of the guys described values, Sy said "that doesn't make sense" which the other guy replied "I don't know but that is what the values are." When Lovell mentioned venting then things began to make sense. Off shift Liebergot went to the backroom, saw the strip-chart of O2 tank temperature, it began to climb just after Swigert turned on tank stirrer. This CD rom has image of this graph, temperature goes up and up, then straight down after sensor failed on explosion. Sy said when he first saw that strip-chart it felt his heart dropped. They could have observed the temperature increasing realtime but Sy and his other guys were looking at other values so they completely missed it. Some years ago talking with a CHP dispatcher said the traditional rows and columns of such control rooms are the worst to manage and maintain. Another person said NORAD was laid out in rows and columns to give impression Air Force have things under control, organized and managed. These days all control rooms are laid out in work station arrangements.

This is one of my favorites!

30 seconds into the video: Primary mission: Don't drool over my computer's keyboard. 40 seconds into the video: Mission failed...

I saw this System in person before it was shipped to NASA, my Father an Industrial Engineer Philco, Philco/Ford, Ford Aerospace & Communications Corporation Employee worked on the Project. They had a Family Day where all involved in the Project were allowed to bring their Families on a Sunday in to see it, before it was dissembled and shipped to Houston. I was a small Child @ that time and remember going through a maze of Tape Drives and it seemed the console took up a whole building. To think the average laptop computer produced today has more computing power is amazing.

Brilliant film. I'm glad they got the funding to restore it.

I like how they have both light and dark mode for their consoles.

Thousands of relays, incandescent lamps, mechanical switches and analog gauges. The air handlers had to be massive to keep that place comfortable. I love the plug-in modules; if a lamp burns out (I think they had redundant filaments) you just swap out the module.

Thanks a lot for posting this. I have been searching for years with little success for images of the flight controllers' screens during Apollo. I've built an Apollo mission simulator for my physics classes, and I want the student flight controllers to have the same data the real ones did, but very few sources gave me specifics.

What amazes me is the data and graphics on those CRT screens with technology from the 60s. We all now have acces to have watches which monitor body metrics, personnel mass communication, Teams or Zoom video conferencing, cars have onboard metrics and automation all derived from the moon program. Go big government investment.

Very cool footage! I was a boy at this time and completely into the Star Trek TOS bridge consoles, which must have taken some inspiration from real-life consoles like these (with some imaginative and far-sighted additions).

That is the ultimate Retro Computing Restoration!

Wow, thanks for giving us easy access to this!

Geez, so they *designed AND built* this humongous system of two control rooms and eight mainframe computers with 60.000 miles of wires within just two years?! The system's level of development is truly astonishing on its own for its time, but to design and build all this hardware and software within just two years and without any major faults is beyond words. Hats off to everyone involved!

This is so Epic! Thanks for sharing!

amazing. They did much more with such computers at 70s than now

7:30 I’m thinking a lot of the audience will have no idea how pneumatic message tubes worked ...

everything about this is so awesome!

Hard to tell this footage from that in the 90's when we were still using these consoles for shuttle flights!

2:54 - those indicators illuminating in series reminds me of Knight Rider!

Fantastic.. thank you

Thank you for this incredible footage.

Thank you for uploading. I had the chance to view a rocket launch in 2018. Memorable experience. I posted a pretty fun montage of the trip to my page.

I have never been interested in space science, but I am very interested in computers and their technology. I enjoyed watching the closeup look of the consoles. They are nice, even though they no typewriter-like keyboard. That is something I use with my computer. I still type without looking down at the keyboard.

All my life I wondered what was on those screens. And I watched the moon landing on tv, I was four years old.

Awesome !

Excellent!

Back when real engineers designed hardware and software to make it happen. Mouse click generation need not apply. Awesome historic video.

Outstanding.

Back about 20...now 30 years ago...(wow I just realized I'm old!) I worked for Astro, (Started as RCA Astro then switched to GE-Astro, Martian Marietta Astro and was Lockheed Martin when I left) Even though it was the 1990's one of my duties was the care and feeding of an old Interdata 70 computer from the mid 1970's. Paper Tape OS, Core memory and a HUGE (well physically) 80Mb disk drive. We had to raid some computer museums to find parts for these machines. (We had three) You see, when you launch a long lived satellite, it has to be supported with the equipement it was certified with. There no practical way to return the Bird to the shop, so the ground equipment has to stay the same, emulation and such, where just not trusted enough. So Instead of having the hottest, newest and most powerful computers around we had the ones that had the most reliability and road tested. Vendors want to push to the newest and latest, we had to constantly call them on that. Sometimes they would keep the same part number, but use a 'new and better' manufacturing process. And that 'new and better' part would be great for consumer devices being 'cheaper' or 'faster' or 'lighter', but would fail when we tested it.

Amazing

An extraordinary, impressive adventure

Thanks for posting. I wonder if original wire diagrams for that facility are still around.

Excelente!

I have no idea how they were able to design, build, setup all this stuff, and test it in such a short time.

I think we've used these high grade black and white monitors on our Cintel telecine machines in 80s and 90s.

"select number" "2-0-0-1" Great!

I’ve always wondered if you grab one of those handles and yank will it open up or do you have to wait until its finished the spin cycle

Brilliant

Some of these old consoles were sampled as textures for Half Life 2. There is a control console that has many of the buttons seen here and the rotary dial wheel.

Who had a computer at home with graphics on screen in 1970 ?!? amasing to see that especially know the ridiculous memory of thoses computers ! my 1985 casio watch have more memory than thoses huge machines !

Those CRT’s remember me like 2001 HAL’s interface

Fantastic video. Thank you for presenting this. Due to the constant and detailed telemetry that was used during the missions I would be interested know as to how much energy the telemetry systems utilised during the missions and how this data was transmitted back to mission control. Today, no doubt, it would be transmitted in digital format, however I presume then it was all in analogue radio transmission mode. Is this correct? Thanks once again for a fascinating video.

Would have been wicked if Ed Straker was the narrator. Amazing peace of film

Thanks C.H.A.P!

At 1:17 - re those indicator lights - I wonder if they [some] relate to the time around LM touchdown - e.g the red 'OUT DETENT' could refer to the immediate post-landing checklist item of ' ACA out of detent '

0:18 dark mode and light mode users in 1970 interesting

@6:19 , 1987-1991 Mazda RX-7 center console display.

glad I didn't have to wire that up, or program it.

Thanks for the informations👍👍👍👍🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿♥️♥️♥️

I gotta tell you, this is some serious tech porn, right here. Thank you!

They had high res bitmaps & 80 column text 10 years before the luckiest consumers could get 40x25 text with very primitive graphics.

It is amazing how 60's technology was cutting edge at that time to do all this compared to what we have today. Imagine if Nasa utilized today's current technology or what would be available in 18 months from now back then. Just think what could they accomplish back then.

They had all that?? But i still cant get service in northwest corner of the house or wifi in the shop?? 50 years later.

What happens if one of the flight controllers pushes the wrong button?

I'm just here to count the ashtrays.

How could these lighted buttons change colour from orange to green, long before LED-lights?

Does anyone here know if this video is available on DVD?

The Missile Knows Where It Is...

PLEASE JOIN US in Preserving Computer History with a small contribution to our channel. www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LCNS584PPN28E Your contribution greatly helps us continue to bring you educational, historical, vintage computing topics. Thank you! ~ Computer History Archives Project

So, how did these computers work? Could you change the information displayed like a modern PC? The displays look very still, as if you couldn't change what was displayed.

6:02 ... A Space Odyssey!

Algunas dudas de realidad operativa practica,y si alguno de loa cientos de botones falla,alguien lo arreglaria en tiempo real...?

open the door Hal.

I was 11years old in 1986 and watched the shuttle launch with my class at school I still cry when I think of that flight but I've always loved and supported american space exploration God bless the united States of america Amen 🙏

A good movie always needs a good stage set...

OK, I wanna know at 7:25, WTH is that thing he put into that chute?

6:24 Red and green ... I don’t suppose they hired any colourblind engineers ...

I'm was extremely pleased that the center was restored. It's pretty sad though, this center is owned by the federal government, yet NASA, with its enormous budget, couldn't, or wouldn't restore it. They left it up to outside benefactors to do what they should have done themselves. Its abundantly clear, that NASA couldn't care less about preserving its legacy. Buy, they can spend billions on another moon shot, trillions for a still distant mars expedition, and other pet projects that serve no purpose, nor have any signifigance to the average American, or any average person on this planet.

"...separation attitude..."

Huge, amazing explosion of Technology all to get Americans on the moon, and it was amazing.

ASCII!

Does Nasa manufactures Transformers, Speakers and other Electronics items ? I want to know as there's company called NASA which manufactures and sells these in West Bengal ?

Any chance of knowing about the Russian equivalents.

OK

All processing power you see here and much more, now in your Iphone 12. LOL

Whoa! Thankfully we haven't lost the technology to return to the moon! ...phfffft.

These days they would probably name Philco Ford PHORD

Guess what: years like 2016 and 2019, etc. can be pronounced more easily than "two thousand sixteen," etc. Try "TWENTY-sixteen," etc. Why? Because it's fewer syllables!

Imagine the nicotine stuck to all this electronics, everyone smoked back then apparently.

1970: Invent usable computers and send men to the moon, repeatedly... 2021: Green number on spreadsheet good, red number on spreadsheet bad!

Блеванул, простите

Lately India fails without man satellite (Vikaram) to the moon, but don't Give up , Peace On 🌏

Have to go there, that's on my bucket list 🪣. How do you get there, and is it at the nasa complex.