Music
MISSION CONTROL: Looks good ol' man. Boy, can you imagine? Here we go.
ASTRONAUT: Roger. Tape recorder running. 3 seconds.
Cameras are both running
Okay
C-O Box power on.
MISSION CONTROL: Roger.
[inaudible speaking]
MISSION CONTROL: T minus 50 seconds.
ASTRONAUT: Systems power, go.
ASTRONAUT: Roger, loud and clear. How many?
MISSION CONTROL: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
ASTRONAUT: Roger. The clock is operating. We're underway.
MISSION CONTROL: Hear you loud and clear.
ASTRONAUT: Roger. We're programming in roll okay. Little bumpy along about here.
CHRIS: We have a treat for you today. We're here at the
NASA Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
BLAIR: With Luis Berrios and what appears to be an actual Mission Control Center
but it's not. It's a restoration.
Music
LUIS: What we have here is a re-creation with a lot of authenticity from the original
Mission Control Center Facility on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
This particular mission control center, the consoles, all of the hardware and
strip printers, the tracking map that we see behind us were all relocated
from that facility and brought together here. We've done a very good job of creating as
much of an authentic recreation as we can with the finishes, the flooring,
the architectural elements.
But the real heart and soul and the essence of this room are these consoles.
CHRIS: This control center was actually used during the Mercury program.
LUIS: It was. It was used for six flights during the Mercury program, and one flight,
the first flight, Gemini 3, that sent two astronauts into space.
That flight was piloted by John Young and Gus Grissom.
This was state of the art back in 1961. This was the cutting edge of technology.
BLAIR: Cutting edge, that's important.
CHRIS: That's right. We like it.
BLAIR: Also, you say it's authentic. Because, I mean, you can't?
If you're putting together an exhibit like this, you can't go buy stuff like this.
It existed specifically for the purposes of?
LUIS: That's really important because part of the story telling,
our commitment to creating emotional connections about NASA's work and celebrating
the human accomplishments comes from integrating authentic spaceflight hardware,
consoles, spacecrafts, tools, astronaut suits.
When we can carefully choreograph their presentation into our story telling,
we create homeruns.
CHRIS: This is really cool because the public gets a chance to see what it looked like
back during that period.
LUIS: It's neat because our guests are made up of, you know, family experience.
So it's kinda neat to see the reactions when a grandparent comes in with their grandchild
and says, I remember seeing those on my black and white TV set
back when you weren't even around.
BLAIR: Speaking of that, you know, you were talking about authenticity.
If you bring in some former folks that actually worked in Mission Control,
I mean, did it pass the authenticity test?
LUIS: Very much so. Absolutely. It really opens up a memory for them and in some
cases gives back the goose bumps that they felt when they were right here at the moment
when they were a big part of what was going on with our space exploration program.
CHRIS: What's really cool is when a grandfather brings in their grandchild and sees one
of the original consoles. What's it going to be like 20 years down the road in terms of
what Mission Control might look like?
LUIS: That's the beauty of that. Is that, look how far we've come and yet look how far
we'll go. We don't even know. We're just scratching the surface of the accomplishments
and achievements that NASA is going to honor and celebrate in the years to come.
And the fact that this Mission Control Center is here since 1998, we've been able to share
it with over 10 million people.
CHRIS & BLAIR: Wow.
LUIS: That's something we couldn't do very easily at its original location.
CHRIS: That's right.
MISSION CONTROL: Roger. Reading you loud and clear.
ASTRONAUT: Roger, coming into high Q a little bit;
and a little contrail went by the window or something there.
ASTRONAUT: We're smoothing out now, getting out of the vibration area.
MISSION CONTROL: Roger. You're through max. Q. Your flight path is ?
ASTRONAUT: Roger. Feels good, through max. Q and smoothing out real fine.
ASTRONAUT: Cabin pressure coming down by 7.0 okay; flight very smooth now.
ASTRONAUT: Sky looking very dark outside.
CHRIS: Unbelievable room.
BLAIR: Oh wow!
CHRIS: Don't you kinda hear voices?
BLAIR: Yeah. It's almost as if you can hear history.
CHRIS: Yeah.
BLAIR: Look at this.
ASTRONAUT: Indicating 6 g's.
ASTRONAUT: SECO, posigrades fired okay.
ASTRONAUT: Roger. Zero-g and I feel fine. Capsule is turning around.
Oh that view is tremendous!
ASTRONAUT: And I can see the booster during turnaround just a couple of hundred
yards behind me. It was beautiful.
MISSION CONTROL: Roger, Seven. You have to go at least 7 orbits.
ASTRONAUT: Roger. Understand go for at least 7 orbits.
ASTRONAUT: This is Friendship Seven. Can see clear back;
a big cloud pattern way back across towards the Cape. Beautiful sight.
LUIS: There's a tremendous amount of responsibility that each of the gentlemen that
manned the consoles in this room and the consequent had a very specific roll.
Their job was to manage the content, to track the data that was coming in for the
spacecraft, for the astronauts' bio-rhythms; you know, their pulse, their heart rate, their
blood pressure. And that would help them make decisions.
MISSION CONTROL: Roger. Your impact point is within 1 mile of the
up-range destroyer.
ASTRONAUT: Roger. Okay, we're through the peak g now.
MISSION CONTROL: Seven, this is Cape. What's your general condition?
Are you feeling pretty well?
ASTRONAUT: My condition is good, but that was a real fireball, boy.
I had great chunks of that retro-pack breaking off all of the way through.
ASTRONAUT: Roger. Altimeter off the peg indicating 80,000.
MISSION CONTROL: Roger. Reading you loud and clear.
ASTRONAUT: Roger.
LUIS: Along the map what you have are these circles that follow the tracking stations
along the orbital path.
The red ones represent a circle where there may be a problem with that particular
tracking station that they're working.
The yellow ones mean they're okay but have a couple of small things
and the green ones means they're go.
So they can keep constant traction on how that spacecraft if making its
path along the orbital.
ASTRONAUT: I'm getting all kinds of contrails and stuff outside out here.
ASTRONAUT: Friendship Seven, going to drogue early. Rocking fairly,
drogue came out.
ASTRONAUT: Drogue is out.
ASTRONAUT: Roger. Drogue came out at 30,000 at about a 90-degree yaw.
ASTRONAUT: Main chute in on green.
Chute is out, in reef condition at 10,800 feet and beautiful chute.
Chute looks good. Rate of descent has gone to about 42 feet per second.
The chute looks very good.
ASTRONAUT: This is Friendship Seven, standing by for impact.
ASTRONAUT: Friendship Seven. Getting close. Standing by.
ASTRONAUT: Here we go.
[water splashes]
ASTRONAUT: Friendship Seven. Impact. Rescue aids is manual.
BLAIR: Earlier I was walking around and I flipped about every switch imaginable in
here. It's not wired to anything, right? There's no jeopardy there, right?
LUIS: No. What we've tried to do is create some of the animations, and show that these
buttons are in fact, that they have lights behind them but they're not right now wired
or not working to anything that will cause a catastrophic event.
BLAIR: That's good.
CHRIS: So, I want to clarify. It's safe to say that if Blair doesn't touch any of these
buttons those rockets in the rocket garden aren't just taking off.
LUIS: Unfortunately no. We're not able to do any live demonstrations in that regard.
But we are able to share that there's a lot of hardware in here, a lot of buttons to push and
a lot of knobs and gauges to keep track of. So it's very serious work.
CHRIS: Well, Luis, I want to thank you so much for giving us the opportunity
LUIS: It was a pleasure to talk to you guys.
to show this old mission control center.
CHRIS: and to see this beautifully restored Mission Control Center.
BLAIR: Maybe one day you can wire this up for me to launch my own
lunar missions if possible.
LUIS: You know what, when you're ready you let me know. We'll see what we can do.
BLAIR: You might lose on the authenticity at that point.
LUIS: But it will be relevant.
CHRIS: You're watching NASA EDGE.
BLAIR: An inside and outside look at all things NASA.
Music
ROBOTIC VOICE: This is NASA EDGE.