posted 11-24-2010 03:45 PM               

I feel very fortunate to have found a shot of my particular panel "in action" in Firing Room 1 during an actual launch. Close-up comparison of the two photos show that although they're the same "station," they're not the identical piece of equipment. Mine was from one of the secondary Firing Rooms. With this context footage, I'll be able to light up my panel appropriately when I get around to restoring it.

The S-IC Engine Panel during the Apollo 8 countdown:

The panel in my collection:

posted 11-24-2010 09:56 PM               

Surprisingly, many of the consoles in the exhibit are left over from the Skylab/ASTP missions. In many cases, they appear to be Saturn V consoles that were later re-purposed during Skylab and ASTP, inasmuch as they are labelled for the S-IB. There are very few S-IC and almost no S-II panels in the exhibit.

Once you get up close and personal to the displays in the Apollo 8 exhibit, you see that they are placed in the room in random order. In the actual Firing Rooms, the panels were clustered by function (e.g., first stage electrical systems panels together, booster systems panels together, etc.). In the Apollo 8 exhibit, you might have an S-IB panel at the same console as an S-IVB panel. It looks nice from the audience's point of view, but it's not the actual Firing Room, unfortunately.

posted 11-25-2010 09:41 AM               

To give some context, the Firing Room exhibit consists of two rows of vertical equipment racks at the back of the room, and four rows of desk consoles, the closest to the audience being on a slightly raised floor.

The "map" is a converted Excel spreadsheet with back of the room at the top of the sheet. Each rack or console position is marked with an arbitrary number that I assigned for keeping track of things (e.g., DCR04/05 is desk console row 4, position 5). Most of the consoles had at least one panel in them, so I gave the panel name and function. There is a hyperlink to a photo of each console. I also made some quick notes for some of the panels. The photos are the original size, full resolution, so you can read each indicator on every panel.

It appears that the original 28V aircraft lamps that lighted the panels were replaced by LEDs (much better lamp life and less power needed). I noticed (and photographed) the modern control circuitry on the backs of some of the panels to run the show. There were also two subwoofers hidden from audience view in the back row of cabinets. I imagine those were not needed in the original Firing Room!

A quick comparison to photos of the original Firing Room will tell you that this exhibit is less than half the size of the Real Deal. However, it does a great job of recreating the feel of the place. All it's missing is a cloud of cigarette smoke.

posted 12-14-2010 02:41 PM               

As I suspected, the vast majority are configured for Skylab-ASTP rather than for the Apollo missions. There was one control panel dedicated to the S-IC, three for the S-II, and one for the OWS (Orbital Workshop = Skylab). There are ten S-IVB panels, which would have been applicable to either the Saturn V or the Saturn IB. On the other hand, there are nine S-IB panels. Some panels appear to have been repurposed from Saturn V to Saturn IB, because they have banks of indicators for both the S-IB and S-IVB stages with a blank column of indicators between the two.

posted 01-01-2011 09:01 AM               

I'm going to print out your panorama full size, get about 30 of my friends and relatives, and run my own CDDT.

posted 01-01-2011 08:05 PM               

As far as I know, all the multiplexing was done in the computer rooms at the LCC. Each FR had its own dedicated computer room. There was a Master Terminal Room located between the FR3 and FR4 computer rooms. All of the cabling to the Firing Rooms entered the LCC at the Master Terminal Room. It was also in the Master Terminal Room where the switchover from the Firing Rooms and the Mobile Launcher computers was made.

posted 01-02-2011 12:13 PM               

Without a doubt, that's a lot of cabling and to some extent the whole human-intensive approach to manning the consoles seems silly when considered in against more modern safety and operations automation. On the other hand, the direct-wire nature of the old LCC firing rooms does give you some simplicity. When the S1C gaseous nitrogen purge line valve #3 (or whatever) showed an error you knew exactly how to trace the signaling. Similarly, there were few questions about who was responsible for issues I suppose; if your light(s) went on it was your problem to address.