Posts: 72
From: Charlottesville, Virginia
Registered: Feb 2003

posted 12-04-2006 01:49 PM               

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Just noticed that Gemini 7 launched today and it brought a question up in my mind. After Gemini 6A launched and there were two ships in space how many control rooms were running? Did they have two seperate rooms, one for each ship? And if that was the case how did the Flight Directors communicate and which one was in charge during the rendezvous?

And since we're on the subject has the US ever again had two different ships in space at the same time?

[Edited by webbrass (December 05, 2006).]

Posts: 232
From: Oxford, UK
Registered: Mar 2006

posted 12-04-2006 03:29 PM               

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I've taken a look at Kraft and Kranz's books, and it sounds as if they had a second control room online for the Gemini 6 launch (when Gemini 7 was still in orbit), but other than that controlled everything from one MOCR. According to Kranz, the flight directors were Kraft, Hodge and Kranz.

Sounds like the major problem they had was not flight control manning, but dealing with the tracking and telemetry from two spacecraft at once. Do you want the details, or just the page references?

Posts: 59
From: Meadville, PA
Registered: Jun 2005

Posts: 572
From: Ridgecrest, CA - USA
Registered: Jun 2000

posted 12-05-2006 10:14 AM            

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I believe that in Krantz' book he writes that the Mercury control room was used for one spacecraft and the JSC control room was used for the other. The Mercury room (the control center at the Cape) wasn't that old and had already been used for the early Gemini missions including GT-3.

As I recall which spacecraft was monitored at which control center depended on the criticality of the function at the time and control could be switched between the 2 centers with JSC being the primary.

[Edited by Danno (December 05, 2006).]

Posts: 59
From: Meadville, PA
Registered: Jun 2005