Amazing Space Technology That Never Went To Space 

Scott: As one of those "I didn't know I wanted to know that" things: the tones (or beeps) you hear in the Apollo (and Shuttle) videos were dual frequency tone bursts used in the Apollo days to key the remote site transmitters on the half duplex voice communications. The first burst (at the beginning of the up-link transmission switched the site analog radio into the transmit mode and the ending burst, switched it back to receive mode. After shuttle came along., there was an attempt to remove the tones since the digital voice links in the shuttle were full duplex and didn't need switching. However, the flight control team (especially the CAPCOMs) had become so accustomed to hearing the tones, they insisted that they be retained. (Note that the shuttle DID have a UHF radio that was half-duplex and that link needed to keep the tone.)

Gene Kranz mentions in his book going to "battle shorts" during the lunar landings. They would short out all the fuses feeding power to all the consoles and support equipment in Mission Control. They didn't want the fuses blowing unnecessarily during the landing and would rather risk burning out the ground equipment.

I had an Uncle that worked for IBM as a subcontractor at Johnson Space Center. He wrote some of the programs that would send test telemetry to the mainframes to test that they were working properly. He did this during the Apollo and Sky Lab Missions. He gave me a tour of the Johnson Space Center in the late 70s., this was before they started have tours open to the public.

Wow! Tv monitor which is stream from the camera pointed to another monitor with UI glued on it! Push the button and printed document come to you through a vacuum tube! I work in a company, which deliver 4K video stream to million users, using AWS computing power to transcode it in real live. But I couldn't print a sheet of paper in an office, because of some technical problems. 50 years passed.

Scott "I could talk all day about this" Me Please do :D

In the early 90’s, I taught Windows 3.0 classes to industry on Compaq laptops that had 20mb hard drives. I take one RAW photo with my DSLR now that averages 20mb in size. That camera can take 10 images per second, and write them in batches of 200 images in 20 seconds onto an XQD card that will hold 64gb of information. This still trips me out when I think about it.

Re: Neil punching out of the LLTV: Later that day, somebody came by his office to tell him "Did you hear? Somebody had to eject from the LLTV!" Armstrong looked up from his paperwork (probably the "how I pancaked a $gigagabucks test vehicle" report), and calmly said "Yeah, it was me."

IBM 0,6mhz, 1mb memory mainframe -> put man on the moon. My Pc 8 x 4200mhz, 24000mb -> watch YT mostly.

Both of my parents worked on System 360 in the Kingston IBM facility. Awesome to see some love for the supporting technology in the history of space exploration!

I have long felt that the actual mission control systems are much under appreciated. When you said, "I could probably talk all day about mission control and its hardware..." I thought, "Please do."

Keep it up scott. Thanks

FYI, the system 360 mainframe later evolved into system 390 and system Z mainframes, still sold by IBM for a wealth, and are still refreshed every couple of years. The architecture is currently called s390x.

This is really cool stuff, i am always curious about the 'behind the scenes" of big projects. Thanks for the bits of curiosities Scott!

Scott, I think this is actually my favorite video I've seen you produce! So many things I didn't know! Thank you 😊

Thanks so much, Scott! It's so easy to take for granted how amazingly smart and clever the Apollo era (and earlier) engineers and designers truly were!

I've worked for decades in the MCC, and in the early part of my career, there were still quite a few Apollo vets around. They're great to listen to. My mentor was a guy who was key in making the simulators work. For a while, I did tours of the MCC for Public Affairs when various tour groups would visit JSC. The best thing about living in this area is getting the chance to talk often with Gene Kranz (we go to the same church). He's probably forgotten more stories than most people know (and he has a mind like a steel trap). The engineers of that time did amazing things with technology that we would today throw out as useless museum artifacts.

Thanks for this short peek to the past. That whole bit about the console displays in Mission Control was all new to me. Did not know that. Thanks!

Really great video! Well, I couldn't expect no less from Scott :) Also, a very nice topic to bring about. There were so many innovations going on back then... 60's were a thing.

Absolutely brilliant vid Scott. Yes, please more of the same. And thanks for your brilliant channel.

Great idea, featuring this kind of behind-the-scenes technology! Also emphazises the point what a massive project Apollo was, wich the Saturn V just being the tip of the iceberg, of sorts. I would love this topic to be a series!

Thank you for the effort, very interesting and well documented.

Very interesting topic! Please create more of these background info video’s. Love it.

Thanks for an awesome breakdown. Listening to your segment about the simulators reminded me of my training in the Air Force when I was going through ground training to become an In-flight Refueling Specialist on the KC-135R. The simulators were very crude in terms of visual displays. I believe they used a large RPTV that displayed the aircraft that we'd refuel in what I would consider maybe PlayStation 1 graphics. However, that's not what is interesting about that. Our classrooms had model aircraft hanging from the ceiling all throughout. Every refuel-able aircraft there was pre-2000's. They used to use those as the aircraft in the simulator. The window between the boom operator and the aircraft was actually a magnifying glass which made the aircraft seem larger and give a real sense of depth while the boom flight controls control a miniature boom used to connect to the model aircraft. The simulator operator would control the speed of the aircraft's approach via a rail that the aircraft moved along giving it forward and back as well as up and down/side to side movement. I only got to hear about the process but never got to witness it. It's amazing how far things have come since I was a boomer but stories like that, you never forget.

Great and informative video. You are the person who got me obsessed in space after watching your KSP vids. Thankyou and looking forward to seeing your future ones :-). Fly safe

You produce a tremendous amount of very entertaining videos. Thank you for making my breaks from lectures 10x better!

Love the video be cool to learn and hear more about those early days. And those videos from those days are a great touch

I’m so glad I stumbled across your channel. Always great content.

This is a great video Mr.Scott

Holy smoke, how awesome is the shot at 6:28! I didn't even knew something like this existed in the Apollo-Era! This is beyond awesome!

Loved this! I was always transfixed on the TV images of NASA’s mission control room during Apollo. It’s great to learn a lot of these specific devices and methods. Thanks Scott Manley.

This is just waaay cool! Great video Scott!

I hope you never stop making cool space videos

great video as usual. love the apollo stuff!

I love me a great Space Video

Scott. al your videos are wonderful.

One megabyte actually sounds impressive for its time.

Very interesting and really packed with info! Thx for educational videos;)

Very cool and educational reminder of the behind the scenes.

Amazing! Thank you for all your research putting this together. This needs to be saved for posterity.

Great video!! I’ve always wondered about those big projector screens.

Hi, Scott, I've got a few more stories about the S360 Model 75 computers used to control everything at mission control. I worked for IBM in Poughkeepsie from 1966 to 1973, the last three years in their education department where we trained new college grads how to do things the "IBM way". With all the students coming from around the country, I heard a lot of interesting stories, unfortunately all second hand so I can't vouch for their authenticity. We heard that there were 5 model 75s in the system. The first would run the mission, the second would be hot-backup for the first. Two other Mod 75s would run a simulation in parallel, again as primary and hot backup. The fifth one would do nothing except wait to step into the backup role if one of the primaries failed and the hot backup was used. One thing I heard was that near then end of the lives of these computers at mission control, the fifth computer failed with a memory error. They eventually found the problem: the ones bit of the computer clock register, which did nothing but flip flop between 0 and 1 at a high frequency for years on end, had enough heating contraction and expansion to cause the core holding the ones bit to rotate around the readout wires, eventually wearing through one of them and causing the memory fault. Probably this is the only time a memory core did this. Dave

I stood under the last existing Saturn V last Tuesday. The scale is just unimaginable. It really IS a 35 story building which goes to space. All the little artifacts and trivia about the LEM and the Rovers and such makes me want to be a tour guide at the KSC.

Love this, so much detail that was never available or explained to us mere mortals at the time. The best we had was James Burke and Patrick Moore on the BBC with their plastic models 😊👍❤️

Awesome, clear enthusiasm for the cool stuff on the ground. And it is/was super cool stuff.

Your videos are getting more and more interesting

Such great timing with the completed restoration of the Apollo Mission Control consoles!

"I could probably talk all day about mission control..." PLEASE DO!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)

GREAT, interesting stories, Scott!!

Cool info. I'd love to hear more about the specialized vehicles and support systems like the Crawler, the optics and camera systems used for tracking, the Saturn V launch complexes including towers, and the processes used in the VAB.

the more i dive down in apollo program, the more i became mind blown and appreciate all of the scientist, engineer and astronaut hard work that took part in the mission.

Cool video man! Thanks for sharing.

Very informative and well researched Scott. I learned alot of neat trivia here about lost technology or I should say forgotten technology. Early NASA was filled with innovation. Great video.

Highly informative and extremely interesting. Thank you so much!

Thx. Really a great video.

Perhaps those flying-bedsteads are the only simulators in history to have been more dangerous than the thing they were simulating, and that will probably always remain true.

LOVE your shirt! Very informative - thanks.

Scott: one of the (possibly apocryphal) legends that are widely passed around JSC is that during some of the final sims leading up to the Apollo 11 mission, the Sim folks wanted to test the LM crew's reaction to smoke in the LM cockpit, so they planted a smoke bomb under one of the panels in the Simulator LM cab. Armstrong and Aldrin are doing their landing thing when the smoke bomb is triggered. But, Armstrong, thinking the LM SIMULATOR is on fire, busts out of the simulator, runs down the hall, grabs a fire extinguisher, runs back into the cab of the simulator and sprays the control panel with the extinguisher.

Your depth of knowledge is simply astounding

Great stuff! Thanks Scott...

This was great. Can you make some more videos of this stuff please?

Ooh! Ooh! Do a video on old simulator tech. I've always been fascinated with the simulators those astronauts used back in the Gemini/Apollo days.

Good stuff... You should do more on the mission control stuff.

When I saw the title, I was expecting a video about technology that was developed, but not used for various reasons. While I think that would be an interesting topic (and one you've covered in certain specific cases), seeing what the people on the ground had to work with is also quite interesting.

One of the best. Hands down.

Again another great video Scott. Would you be able to discuss co-orbital configuration in a future episode?

Fantastic subject, great video!

Those stuff are so fascinating that I have watched this video twice in a row.

Great video Scott. I've always wanted to know how those big screens in the control room worked.

The sophisticated console displays were model ACA10138, they had two toggle switches for power and polarity and two knobs for brightness/contrast with a coaxial input.

Had a friend in the 80s that ran a repair department in a large computer company. This department recertified or repaired computer boards to support their older computers. When the company sold new computers they would buy back the older system and parts it out to support customers that still operated their older systems because the computer company no longer manufactured replacement parts for them

Well done!! That was cool!

We were still using those Mainframes in the 90's in my first job at a Banking clearing house.

Please gief me more of these vids. Loved it!

Very interesting Scott. I go back a bit with old-ish computers.... PDP8, PDP11/23 , HP9100, HP9830, and at home. UK101, Acorn ATOM, BBC B and the like. It is a different World now. I still have a working BBC B, but now my favourite thing is Arduinos.

Great video!

So very interesting to see! Thanks...

Great Knowledge. Thanks

:D Fascinating! Thanks Scott!

Mission Control needs it's own episode. I NEED MOAR!

great research... so interesting, like no other.

Thank you mate, amazing stuff!!!!

I am beginning to realise that this RU-vid channel is Scott's only way he can get to sleep at night. It's therapy, his mind is fully loaded with so much information, he has to offload it regularly. Another great video 😎 thanks

Indeed, amazing !

Interesting video, very cool!

Awesome stuff!

09:13 That crash happened just six weeks before Apollo 11 took off, I believe. Also, the LLTV, or “Flying Bedstead”, was such a beast to fly, that you needed a fair bit of training before you were allowed to train in it.

Fantastic video!

Nice job!!!

Cheers, nice video ! more like this on this subject please ! :)

Please do more of these

I learned to program on an IBM Model 360-65 back in 1970. No display screens or real time interaction then, strictly punchcard deck input and printed output. But I fell in love with computers and the affair continued throughout my career.

More! Mooooore! Damn, that's interesting! Never knew those details about Mercury/Gemini/Apollo.

Just incredible what they were able to do back in those days. Just brilliant. 👍

Don't forget, the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, the largest single story building in the world! Also my brother works inside it, working on the Mobil Launcher Platform for the SLS.

really interesting stuff.. did not think alot about the actual mission controll harware until now...

indeed, please make a long version going into detail, most of us young'ns dont even know how to find such cool info!

awesome stuff

Those lunar lander trainers are quite cool to hear about and all of the old computers about how they even worked then.

In the early '70's, as a kid I got a tour of the "underground" SAC command center at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, NE. My next-door neighbor, a few years older than me, was a computer geek in the Air Force at the time. They had the big screens there too.. At least some of them were projections of film slides. There was a system to render some computer graphic (probably via some CRT) onto some film stock, and run it through a film developer / rinse / fixing process and then ship it off to the projection device to then show it. I have no idea how long that process would take.

Great Video and Excellent Channel. Thanks for all the information! - We don't truly realize and take for granted a lot of things that we use in our daily live actually came from the space program. Freeze dried / dehydrated foods, microwaves, radio components, the growth of computer logic, etc. The list goes on and on. I can't wait until we, the United States, start up our manned space program again!