For more than four decades, building 30 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center has been home to Mission Control. It still is, but on Thursday it took on a new name to honor the “father of Mission Control,” Christopher C. Kraft Jr.
Kraft began his space flight career soon after graduating from Virginia Tech University in 1944 with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA’s predecessor agency.
In 1958 he volunteered for the Space Task Group, the organization charged with creating what is NASA today.
The group created the first flight manuals and developed the procedures for the operation of a never-before concept, a central control center.
New concept
“A control center was a new idea,” former Gemini and Apollo program flight director and Kraft protégée Glynn Lunney said during ceremonies in front of the mission control center. “Whenever there was a picture of a control center, it was ours. And now I don’t think you can go into a building that people don’t have a control center in it. What you see behind us is a pretty big building, but it’s not so much the building, the concrete and the consoles, it’s the idea behind it.
“This represents a pretty profound idea and Chris brought it to us.”
Read More
Kraft began his space flight career soon after graduating from Virginia Tech University in 1944 with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA’s predecessor agency.
In 1958 he volunteered for the Space Task Group, the organization charged with creating what is NASA today.
The group created the first flight manuals and developed the procedures for the operation of a never-before concept, a central control center.
New concept
“A control center was a new idea,” former Gemini and Apollo program flight director and Kraft protégée Glynn Lunney said during ceremonies in front of the mission control center. “Whenever there was a picture of a control center, it was ours. And now I don’t think you can go into a building that people don’t have a control center in it. What you see behind us is a pretty big building, but it’s not so much the building, the concrete and the consoles, it’s the idea behind it.
“This represents a pretty profound idea and Chris brought it to us.”
Read More
