Recreating the Firing Room

April 4, 2015 - Jonathan H. Ward

Today we kick off a completely re-worked edition of my apollolaunchcontrol.com website. It has been re-purposed as an adjunct to my new books, which will be coming out this summer.

Much of the content of the previous version of my website was completely overtaken by events during the 6 years since I first put it up. My website originally started as a way to document what I was learning about the Apollo-era Launch Control Center based on research I was conducting into a few Firing Room control panels that I acquired. The website helped me meet fellow collectors and enthusiasts.

Eventually he website caught the attention of some of the NASA and contractor engineers who actually manned the Firing Room during Apollo launches. My conversations with them were the genesis of the idea for what became my two books about the Apollo era at Kennedy Space Center. There was very little information about what went on behind the scenes at KSC to prepare an Apollo mission for launch. While there are many photos of stacking operations in the VAB or the Saturn V sitting at the launch pad, there is precious little information to provide context about what was going on in those photos.

I hope that the books will provide a plethora of information for both the interested amateur and the hard-core space fanatic.

Rather than duplicating all of that material on this website, I intend to build the site to supplement the information in the book. Photographs in a book cannot be zoomed in or connected. That's the kind of thing where a website can be helpful, and you'll eventually see lots of pieces of photos and diagrams on this site.

If I waited until I had put together all of the information, this site would never have made it onto the web. We're starting off with a lot of placeholders. I will write blog entries and add content that will find its way onto the site to build it out.

Our sister site, www.apollo-saturn.com, is also a placeholder at present. I intend to use that site to talk about the people and teams that made Apollo/Saturn work. There will also be a blog on that site.

I hope you will enjoy sharing this continuing journey with me.