San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
50 years after moon landing, Mission Control rises again
HOUSTON — Gone is the haze of cigarette, cigar and pipe smoke. Gone are the coffee, soda and pizza stains. With only a few exceptions, NASA’s Apolloera Mission Control has been restored to the way it looked 50 years ago when two men landed on the moon.
It gets the stamp of approval from retired flight director Gene Kranz, 85, a man for whom failure — or even a minor oversight — is never an option.
Seated at the console where he ruled over Apollo 11, Apollo 13 and so many other astronaut missions, Kranz pointed out that a phone was missing behind him. And he said the air vents used to be black from all the smoke, not sparkly clean like they are now.
Those couple of details aside, Kranz could close, then open his eyes, and transport himself back to July 20, 1969, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s momentous moon landing. “When I sit down here and I’m in the chair at the console … I hear these words, ‘Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,’ ” Kranz said during a sneak preview at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
With all the empty seats, the room reminds him of a shift change when flight controllers would hit the restroom.
“It’s just nice to see the thing come alive again,” said Kranz, who titled his autobiography “Failure Is Not an Option.”
Friday’s grand opening — just three weeks shy of the 50th anniversary of humanity’s first otherworldly footsteps — culminates years of work and millions in donations. It opens to the public Monday.
Meticulously recreated down to the tan carpeting, graygreen wallpaper, white ceiling panels, wovencushioned seats, amber glass ashtrays and retro coffee cups, Project Apollo’s Mission Operations Control Room never looked — or smelled — so good.
The goal was “to capture the look and feel of July of ’69,” said NASA’s restoration project manager Jim Thornton.
Johnson’s historic preservation officer, Sandra Tetley, strove for accuracy. Her quest began in 2013, after the room had fallen into neglect. It was last used for space shuttle flights in the 1990s, then abandoned and opened to tourists.
The restoration effort finally got traction in 2017. The room was closed, and construction began. More than $5 million was raised, most of it donations.
Tetley and her team interviewed flight controllers and directors now in their 70s and 80s. They pored through old pictures and brought in specialists in paint, wallpaper, carpeting, electricity and upholstery. “I fought for everything,” Tetley said.
With the International Space Station’s Mission Control running 24/7 one floor down and work for future moonshots going on all around, Thornton said it was challenging to create a museum. But the painstaking work paid off. Some Apollo flight controllers were so moved at seeing the restored room that they teared up.
“Then we know that we’ve done it right,” Tetley said.
Marcia Dunn is an Associated Press writer.