Apollo Flight Controller 101: Every console explai

"Ars recently had the opportunity to spend some quality time touring the restored Apollo "Mission Control" room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. We talked with Sy Liebergot, a retired NASA flight controller who took part in some of the most famous manned space flight missions of all time, including Apollo 11 and Apollo 13"

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/10/apollo-flight-controller-101-every-console-explained/

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Thanks for posting that. When we toured KSC in 2005 we probably got that explanation, but darned if I can remember the details.

When my Dad worked at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt Md. as assistant director he would take me out to work during some of the manned flights. They had a exact duplicate center to Huston (to be used as a backup in case Huston went down) with all the large real time maps and STDN station "footprints" and all the backup workstations for different subsystems. Quite interesting. They also had a gallery above the working area where "dignitaries" (and young squirts like myself) could hang out and watch the folks down below work (it even had a large curtain that could be opened and closed for more "dramatic effect"). On a few occasions Dad would actually bring me down into the work area and let me listen to the manned ground to spacecraft chatter on some earphones at one of the COM stations.