We saw both the old and the new mission control centers. We first went to the original mission control, which NASA began using in 1965. It was a large room with 3 screens in the front that showed things such as flight trajectory path and other data. The walls were covered with the patch design from every mission. There were rows of seats that are raised like stadium seating so that everyone could see the screens. At each seat there were monitors and a control panel. The old mission control actually used a closed circuit television system for the monitor displays. To view information at each seat, a piece of paper was filmed in another room and assigned to a channel. There were only 75 available channels. There was a complex communication system where they can talk to different departments.

There was also a pneumatic tube system that would send various things like notes to the back room. The back wall of mission control was glass and there were seats behind the glass for family members of astronauts or VIPs to watch what was happening during a launch. The original mission control has been out of use since 1995 and is now like a museum. It was used as a reference for set construction of Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks, and parts of Armageddon were filmed there.

Then we went over to the current mission control center. The room was first used in 1995 for the STS-70 mission. Along with the current mission control, NASA continued to use the original mission control for a year to gradually phase it out. The design of the room was similar to the original mission control. The patches of each mission were on the wall. There were 3 large screens in the front, the back wall was glass with viewing seats behind it, and there were workstations with monitors and controls. The seats in the current mission control were not raised. The problem that they had in the original mission control was you could only have one thing on the monitor, so it was necessary to be able to see the screens in detail. With new technology and better monitors, you can now see many different things, and since the room is easier to construct when the seats are flat, they opted to alter the room a little.

The next room we visited was the multi purpose support room, or the MPS. While mission control remains basically calm, people in this room are the ones frantically shuffling through all the paper in a rush to get the right information. They communicate with mission control during space flight and aid in getting information so that those in mission control can make the right decisions.

The last room we saw was the New Flight Control Room. Here, a lot of work for the space station is done. When it is not being used for the space station, it is alternately used to run sims. Sims are simulations of space flight, which can last up to a few days. People must react to preprogrammed problems as if they were real. They learn what their capabilities are under pressure. For sims, people dress up, as they would for a real space flight. Otherwise, people working in mission control dress casually.

After that it was time to leave. We were all exhausted after such an exciting day. We were all very grateful to have such an excellent tour.