RARE NASA Mission Control Consoles CLOSE UP SCREEN VIEWS 1970 HD (Space Apollo Computers MOCR)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มี.ค. 2021
- RARE High-Definition NASA Apollo Mission Control Houston close-up displays: 1970. The following is unusually high quality video of the display screens and operator consoles of the NASA Mission Control Room, taken in 1970. This is after the Apollo11 and Apollo 13 flights and before the launch of Apollo 14. The footage is silent, so we have added narration and explanatory text in parts of the film. It provides a unique close up look at the displays as they appeared over 50 years ago. This is PRIOR to the 2017-2019 restoration project. These are operational consoles during the Apollo program. These higher-resolution film clips are from NASA archives. Designed and implemented by PHILCO-Ford. MOCR = Mission Operations Control Room. Editing: CHAP
Some related videos can be found here:
Apollo Mission Control Center Restoration
www.nasa.gov/emd/crm/jsc-apol...
www.nasa.gov/content/restorat...
Apollo Flight Controller Every Console Explained
sservi.nasa.gov/articles/apol... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
This is frankly some of the best footage I’ve ever seen of the MOCR facilities. The archive has really outdone itself this time!
Glad you enjoyed it too. The "originals" found look like out-takes, but the camera person did a great job getting close ups. : ) Vicror, CHAP
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.
Yes, it was more complicated than most people realize. ... and the wall displays were not LCD... they were multiple projections. Thanks very much. CHAP
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Speaking of those multiple projections...did any of the Eidophor projectors survive?
Thank you, I always wondered how the data got to those screens.
I wondered how they did those text displays in that era. Thanks for the info.
I wonder about this "transparency slide" idea. The dynamic characters and graphs were rendered in positive (light letters against black background) on a slow scan (long glow) vector tube, photographed by a 525-line raster TV camera in a light sealed box for UHF syndication to the consoles. This was quite similar to the stuff Doug Engelbart & co. was using for the "Mother of all demos" and apparently using some of the same hardware (the vector fonts look identical). How would a slide overlay between the vector tube and the camera have been able to add artwork with the same polarity as the glowing letters? Unless it was a side-lighted, etched acrylic plate, or something like a monoscope tube with a custom artwork plate that was hooked up genlocked / synchronized to the camera.
In Doug Engelbart's systems the software was sophisticated enough to render vector art and text together in relatively advanced compositions. Is it not reasonable to assume that the RTCC software running the console screens would be equally sophisticated and actually draw the line art on the screens along with the text readout? Most of the non-text console screen artwork consisted of relatively simple block-diagram lines and boxes, some occasional arrows and extremely simplified illustrations that would seem "economical" enough to have in the vector tube scan cycle.
I would be curious to know more about the "hardcopy" system capability. What was that, exactly? Was that a screen dump on line printers from RTCC with all the text content of the screen shown, or was it something like a xerox repro of the 525-line TV image? I noted that the hardcopy request panel could select either of the console screens, (left, middle, right). But some of the UHF channels you might have dialed up on those contained television instead of RTCC screen views.
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.
I know right! then they just destroyed all of that technology and 52 years later the only group on the planet that can even close to it is still learning to land vertically and that is Space X kinda makes one wonder right? With your experience maybe more? I don't know, too bad NASA destroyed all of their data...... but budget cuts.... whats one gonna do huh?
Agree. Many very smart people.
@@Vintage_USA_Tech
They didn’t destroy anything. Every blueprint is on the web.
Every time I pull my old Pickett 10 N4-ES down from the shelf I have to remember that we basically went to the moon with tools such as these.
@@JeffersonMartinSynfluent re: "we basically went to the moon with tools such as these."
Look, IBM sold a literal ** ton ** of computers to NASA and industry - DON'T KID YOURSELF, computers were in use to make calculations too ...
This footage is simply astounding! 1970 High Definition. We have to thank old 35mm film for this. Very, very fascinating.
Glad you enjoyed it and thank you for the kind words. Hope you can explore some of our other videos as well. ~ Victor, CHAP
Is it 35? 16 can look pretty good too.
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.
That "Family Day" event sounds like a fascinating experience! Undoubtedly one a youngster will never forget. Wish I could have done something similar. Thank you for sharing that story! ~ Hunter, at CHAP
Those incandescent projected digit displays really have a unique look to them.
30 seconds into the video: Primary mission: Don't drool over my computer's keyboard.
40 seconds into the video: Mission failed...
This is one of my favorites!
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.
You can. You can buy those buttons online. See CuriousMarc's and Fran Blanche's channels for more details.
@@TheUglyGnome Wow! I certainly will, thanks!
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.
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.
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.
Hi CeeDee91, you're absolutely right! The global telemetry tracking and communication system was amazing, especially for that time period. Links to tracking stations in Australia, out at sea, and so much more. A fascinating accomplishment! ~ VK
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.
Hi Timothy, thanks very much. I am glad you can utilize these clips in your classes. Sounds excellent! ~Victor, at CHAP
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.
I was there in the early 2000's and by then they had the original control rooms as they were in 1969 downstairs and the new ones for shuttle and ISS upstairs, all in the same building at the same time. They even had the original wheeled chairs for VIPs to sit in.
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.
And don’t forget the cigarette smoke. When they were refurbishing MOCR 2 to turn it into a public exhibit, they had to clean out a lot of tar and nicotine gunk!
Not redundant filaments, but redundant lamps. Each of these indicator/buttons had lamp sockets for four lamps, which in some cases had colored rubber (?) boots to change their colors. The result was that if you had an indicator that could be red or green to indicate status, there were two lamps with red boots and two lamps with green boots.
Yep, I think I have the fuse version of one of those lamps (called a Fuse-Lite). It has some MSC part number on the bottom of it.
Brilliant film. I'm glad they got the funding to restore it.
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!
They didn't have the internet and smartphones to distract them...
@@rockets4kids This just makes their achievement even more unbelievable. They had no Google to look up an equation or any theory they don't remember, so they had to know everything, and when they had to look up something it meant hours spent in a library, going through tons of books and microfilms. And they had to design everything on paper, no CAD. In case of such a complex system like that, within this short deadline, it's mindblowing.
It's not the build of the system which amazes me the most, it's a huge achievement on its own, but with enough labor it's doable if it's backed with perfectly designed plans, schematics, netlists, BOMs. What amazes me the most is that along with the build, the full software and hardware development is included in this two years. And it's a system that was completely unique, no previous experience they could rely on (apart from the mainframes themselves). All the designers and software developers were true geniuses, for sure.
@@mrnmrn1 Yup. That's the difference between engineers of the 1960s and engineers of today. Most the the people getting engineering degrees today would have flunked out after their first year back then.
@@rockets4kids Yes, maybe not most of them, but probably around 50%. No, I'm not protecting myself, I'm not an engineer, just a technician :-) . But I know great young engineers. It would be interesting to know what could they achieve with just '60s technology behind them. But this is kinda silly idea, because you couldn't do much with today's stuff if you would have just '60s technology behind you. They designed the MOS6502 CPU on paper, try that with not even today's i7, just with a 1GHz Pentium from 20 years earlier. Even that is impossible. Probably it would already be impossible even with a 100MHz Pentium from the early '90s.
@@tomfinley6620 NASA was one of the most diverse hiring organizations back in the 1960s. Not only could they do that, they did do that.
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.
The graphics were drawn by draughtsmen. Back in the rooms with the mainframes, there were text terminals displaying just the text. A draughtsman drew an overlay on acetate or similar that was laid over the screen, this added the graphics elements which never changed. Then there was a TV camera pointed at the screen. There were many of these. When an operator in mission control changed which screen he was looking at, he was literally just changing TV channels. Low tech, simple to implement, and reliable.
I received a tour of this room (and the latest Space Shuttle and ISS equivalents located in the same building) when I received an SFA Award around 2002. They explained that all the monitors were TV displays sent from other locations throughout the center. The large screens in the front were basically projected images manipulated from behind in another room by others who were in radio contact with various engineers in the support rooms.
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).
I like how they have both light and dark mode for their consoles.
Some apps today still can't do that
@@karenelizabeth1590 yeah they truly were ahead of their time
7:30 I’m thinking a lot of the audience will have no idea how pneumatic message tubes worked ...
very first FTP !
Forgot about those! as a kid a grocery store near me had some going to the registers, I think they put the cheques in them and sent them to the office or something... That might have been the reason, because I would get to see them used and would get excited, I think the cashier would let me press the button to send it away.
They're still being used in hospitals as a fast way to get samples to the lab and some drugs from the pharmacy.
used to go to the lumber yard, you woul buy things and they would send it thru the tube to the back lot where you would go pick up your stuff
They were intended for ordering printouts, as one of the operators is seen requesting in this film. The printout would arrive in the tubes. But they were also used at times for delivering things like hot dogs.
Wow, thanks for giving us easy access to this!
Thank you for this incredible footage.
Glad you enjoyed it
This is so Epic! Thanks for sharing!
Vic, thanks very much. Glad you enjoyed it. ~ Victor, CHAP
Back when real engineers designed hardware and software to make it happen. Mouse click generation need not apply. Awesome historic video.
everything about this is so awesome!
Fantastic.. thank you
John, glad you enjoyed it.
Awesome !
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.
That is the ultimate Retro Computing Restoration!
Amazing
Glad you enjoyed it! ~ Hunter, at CHAP
Excellent!
Thanks for posting. I wonder if original wire diagrams for that facility are still around.
amazing. They did much more with such computers at 70s than now
2:54 - those indicators illuminating in series reminds me of Knight Rider!
Outstanding.
Thanks, glad you liked it.
Hard to tell this footage from that in the 90's when we were still using these consoles for shuttle flights!
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.
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.
Fascinating, I bet those were very interesting times! "Interdata" that's a company with a fascinating history too. Thanks for sharing! ~ Victor, CHAP
An extraordinary, impressive adventure
Excelente!
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
All my life I wondered what was on those screens. And I watched the moon landing on tv, I was four years old.
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.
Very glad you enjoyed it.
"select number"
"2-0-0-1"
Great!
Thanks C.H.A.P!
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.
I think we've used these high grade black and white monitors on our Cintel telecine machines in 80s and 90s.
Cintel is now acquired by an Australian company Blackmagic Design. The new Cintel line of digital telecines just need a computer, HDMI display and a disk array.
Those CRT’s remember me like 2001 HAL’s interface
My mind is going...
I have no idea how they were able to design, build, setup all this stuff, and test it in such a short time.
You can thank Chris Kraft for that. He was the management genius behind it all.
@6:19 , 1987-1991 Mazda RX-7 center console display.
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 '
Hi @DrTWG, that is good spotting! You are probably correct. "OUT DETENT" in this NASA context does seem to relate to flight/touchdown related activities. "Detent" has its own meaning in the aviation/space program, not something I am familiar with. A word search comes up with several detailed definitions. ("A detent is a mechanical or magnetic means to resist or arrest the movement of a mechanical device.... and more...") Great question. Thank you! ~ Victor, CHAP
Thanks for the informations👍👍👍👍🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿♥️♥️♥️
Hi Ali, you are very welcome! Glad you enjoyed it. ~ Vincent, at CHAP
0:18 dark mode and light mode users in 1970 interesting
I gotta tell you, this is some serious tech porn, right here. Thank you!
SEX, LIES and VIDEOTAPES!
@@alfacentauri5744 Very interesting.
Would have been wicked if Ed Straker was the narrator. Amazing peace of film
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 !
Nope, these screens worked totally different than what we comprehend with output from a computer. These were hand drawn items and the updated portions were just overlayed on the drawings, while a tv camera pointed at the whole thing and broadcasted over closed circuit analog to the control room. Also, no, your 1985 watch did not have more memory - the IBM 360 at this time had least the equivalent of 512k of memory or more; your 1985 watch was unlikely to have more than 1kb .
glad I didn't have to wire that up, or program it.
They had all that?? But i still cant get service in northwest corner of the house or wifi in the shop?? 50 years later.
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.
Very different, radically different than the setups of the late 70s which are what we are most used to understanding computer output outside of paper printed output. For one thing, those old machines had very little limited storage compared to what we have today, so even one character to store and update was a massive resource to consider having.
They had high res bitmaps & 80 column text 10 years before the luckiest consumers could get 40x25 text with very primitive graphics.
No graphics, they were drawn by hand and laid over terminals displaying just the text.
What happens if one of the flight controllers pushes the wrong button?
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.
Nasa has the modern computers now and they haven't accomplished anything as amazing as landing a man on the moon even like 50 years later.
It would take 10 times longer and have 10 times the problems.
A cheap smartphone today has more computing power than all the computers of the planet back during this time. But you'd have a tough time running a space mission I'd think off a smartphone as the brains and branching out from there. Do-able, likely, but still not easy and would require a lot of creativity just like they had to do back then.
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?
Algunas dudas de realidad operativa practica,y si alguno de loa cientos de botones falla,alguien lo arreglaria en tiempo real...?
I'm just here to count the ashtrays.
6:02 ... A Space Odyssey!
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 🙏
The Missile Knows Where It Is...
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.
Some may have seen stories about NASA losing some original films from the 1960's space program. It is hard to believe that they would not guard and preserve and restore this information as a national treasure. There is likely hundreds or thousands of feet of historical material at the National Archives, Smithsonian, etc, that should be professionally restored and shared with the public. Seems that more needs to be done in that regard. ~ VK
OK, I wanna know at 7:25, WTH is that thing he put into that chute?
Hi Agenda, great question. What you see is part of a pneumatic tube system, which is a tube system to enclose a tube containing a document or small article that is transported through a tube system to other locations. Usually, it contained a paper document that needed to get to a different part of the building quickly, and the pneumatic system used compressed air and vacuum system to speed the tube container rapidly from one place to another. These were used often in government agencies even into the 1970's. I bet you that there are some government agencies somewhere in the U.S. that still use these tubes. Thanks for asking! ~ Victor, at CHAP
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject WOOOW Thanks for the answer! Ive wanted to know this for YEEEARS LoL! Gooday!
open the door Hal.
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 ?
No, I do not think so. The NASA in this film is not the same at the NASA company in West Bengal you refer to.
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject ok
6:24 Red and green ... I don’t suppose they hired any colourblind engineers ...
"...separation attitude..."
A good movie always needs a good stage set...
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Huge, amazing explosion of Technology all to get Americans on the moon, and it was amazing.
ASCII!
Any chance of knowing about the Russian equivalents.
Have not seen any videos of those yet, but it would be a great historical piece.
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject I have wondered about the Soviets' mission control, because ours and theirs were developed independently. Chris Kraft came up with the concept in the U.S., based on his experience in flight test. I've wondered how similar the Soviet counterparts were, since you might expect a kind of convergent evolution, as they're both solving similar problems.
Lately India fails without man satellite (Vikaram) to the moon, but don't Give up , Peace On 🌏
OK
OK! BEAULTIFUL PANEL, I LIKE PANEL SPACE... CONGRATS ! I. LIKE NASA.
All processing power you see here and much more, now in your Iphone 12. LOL
The original first release Iphone had more power than the entire world's computing devices at that point in time.
These days they would probably name Philco Ford PHORD
Whoa! Thankfully we haven't lost the technology to return to the moon!
...phfffft.
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.
They had great AC in clear lake
Блеванул, простите
1970: Invent usable computers and send men to the moon, repeatedly...
2021: Green number on spreadsheet good, red number on spreadsheet bad!
Have to go there, that's on my bucket list 🪣. How do you get there, and is it at the nasa complex.
The film is from 1970, at Houston's Manned Space Flight Center, now called "Johnson Space Center" (JSC), Texas. That, and the Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida, are both great places to visit. Lots of history there to see.