During late 1998, I spent a week working at Johnson Space Center.
NASA was using DEC GigaSwitches as part of the shuttle downlink network,
I was there to adjust performance and teach the local net admins about
all the advanced features.
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| 1. Inside the main entrance, a Saturn V rocket is on proud display. (23_22.JPG) |
| 2. Side view of the three engine stages; each was huge. (24_23.JPG) |
| 3. Closeup view of engine in the third stage. (26_25.JPG) |
| 4. Other rockets also on display. (25_24.JPG) |
| 5. Inside Johnson Space Center, secure doors were all over the place. (08_7.JPG) |
| 6. Science Fiction Art was on all the walls. (10_9.JPG) |
| 7. Along with the latest news... (11_10.JPG) |
| 8. One of five Mission Control Center rooms; each with projection screens in the front for fancy displays. This is one of two Space Shuttle Mission Control rooms. (19_18.JPG) |
| 9. Each has long rows of workstations. There are two shuttle mission controls since a second shuttle may have to launch as a rescue mission in case of problems with one already in space. (18_17.JPG) |
| 10. This is Mission Control for the International Space Station. This was taken before the ISS went operational. (9_8.JPG) |
| 11. The view from the visitor galley on the second floor behind a glass window. (13_12.JPG) |
| 12. A model of the ISS was hanging from the ceiling. (14_13.JPG) |
| 13. The second of two Shuttle Mission Control Center rooms viewed from the visitor galley at the back of the room. The reflection thru the glass shows up on the photo. (12_11.JPG) |
| 14. Each position had multiple workstations. The small screen to the left of the three workstation monitors is an intercom control panel (one on each end of the position). I forgot to take a photo, but it was touch-screen control where the operator could dial up any combination of chats to take part in. Basically a series of clearcom channels on steroids. (15_14.JPG) |
| 15. Most running Digital Unix. (16_15.JPG) |
| 16. Here's a view of the visitor galley where tourists who paid cash money got to watch me hang-out and drink coffee in Mission Control. (17_16.JPG) |
| 17. Here's one of two 'Apollo Era' Mission Control rooms. This one for regular missions, the other for 'Black' (ie, classified) missions. The black one was being renovated while I was there to be used as a tourist attraction. (20_19.JPG) |
| 18. Cool intercom system at each work position in the Apollo-era rooms. Each button represents a different intercom circuit (conversation) the person working that position could join. (21_20.JPG) |
| 19. Remember the fancy big-screen displays at the front of the rooms? For the Apollo-era room it was nothing more then a slide projector behind the screen. (22_21.JPG) |
| 20. The computer room on an upper floor was huge. (05_4.JPG) |
| 21. More of the computer room. (07_6.JPG) |
| 22. Believe it or not, this is 'Backup Mission Control', consisting of rows and rows of VT terminals. (06_5.JPG) |
| 23. Here's part of the equipment in the downlink. (04_3.JPG) |
| 24. And here's the actual equipment I was working on, the *original* GigaSwitch using FDDI. The shuttle downlink communications first went to two IBM Front-End Processors, then to the GigaSwitches, and from the to multiple FDDI rings to all the workstations in Mission Control and other places. It was a data-intensive multicast application sending 4K packets. Each packet contained all the data from the shuttle, each workstation pulled in the packets and then just grabbd the particular data it was interested in. (03_2.JPG) |
| 25. There were two switches in each downlink network operating in redundant mode. (02_1.JPG) |