'We basically had to move in a span of two weeks,' saidMcCullough. While they had nine months to remodel, McCullough and histeam had a much shorter window to move. 'We had to do a house of cards where we'd move instages - three different phases - and re-position equipment around,'said McCullough. 'If we're going to go inthere, where are they going to go? And if they are going in here, where arethose people going to go, because every room is in use?' 'That room was used bythe science centers, so it became a juggling act.

It wasn't just 'Let's go set-up that room,' that roomwas used by somebody,' explained McCullough. However, while the relocation made sense, it wasn't assimple as deciding to go. To move two more consoles into the Blue FCR, which assumesyou could find the room for two, would cost 1/3 the budget McCullough was givento spend on FCR-1. It's a very challenging job because ifthere's a problem, they've got to do three times the job.' They didn't also need to be runningall over, potentially data. 'So we needed two super consoles added into this roomfor the quality of life for these folks that were giving up two years of theirlives working in the middle of the night. 'There was not enough horsepower torun half a space station,' said McCullough. While a few summary screenswere available, if they needed any details about a system not represented bytheir console, they would need to physically move to the others. In the old Blue FCR, Titan and Atlas would each sit at aconsole, but would be responsible for two more. They go by call signs of Titan and Atlas and serve in those roles fortwo year stints. These two controllers - 'super-operators' asdescribed by McCullough - are each tasked with monitoring half of the station'ssystems. CDT and the least desirable of any shift anybody works.There is a flight director, a Capcom, the planner and two system operators thatrun the entire from their two consoles.' 'The lowest staffing during Orbit 1, which ismidnight to 8:00 a.m. 'Most of was labor, running the redundantpower to the room and making it a flight control room, which has a lot offacility requirements to it versus any other room in the building,' saidMcCullough.Īn important requirement was enough power to run the entirespace station from just two consoles.

By upgrading andreusing computer equipment, most of the funds went to retrofitting the oldApollo-era systems. 'So we had to get real innovative on thedesign, how we did it.' When we moved into the new room, we had a really tightbudget,' explained McCullough. 'There are a lot of advantages to having cleanslate, except for cost. Having outgrown the 16 large consoles that Blue FCR couldoffer, McCullough and his team began seeking a new, larger but low-costsolution. In that configuration theteam didn't have the best possible situational awareness of what was going on,'said McCullough. 'When we were doing complex operations, such asspacewalks, launches or rendezvous and dockings, we had to relocate to thelarger shuttle flight control room or use back rooms. Anything else you want, we had to pretty much addin,' said flight director John McCullough, who led the relocation effort.'Before we left this room, we ended up adding monitors on the side, TVs onthe side, and you can see just a bunch of 'band-aids' going into theroom.' 'The consoles designed for three displays, twosets of voice configuration loops that you dial in digital voice andthat's pretty much it. Thoughmodern for its time, space - no pun intended - became an issue quickly. The previous space station control room, dubbed Blue FCR,was put into service in 1998 with the first station assembly missions.

Have a nice death control room