NASA recreates Apollo 11 Mission Control
(ABC) -- NASA recreated the Apollo 11 Mission Control at Johnson Space Center to look exactly as it did back in July 1969.
As Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out onto the moon, every move had to be cleared by staff in mission control.
Apollo 11 Flight Director Gene Kranz visited the recreated room and said it felt like he was stepping back in time.
"The people that lived here and worked here, the room talks to them, and you can remember the calls that the CAPCOM made," Kranz said.
The $8.5 Million project recreated every detail down to the data on the computer screen, the ashtrays, even a specific crew member's coffee cup.
Sandra Tetley: we had to get the exact colors of coffee cups, even the patterns of coffee cups. // the girl that was in charge of this spent hours and hours on eBay and Etsy and an antique shops and thrift stores.
Sandra Tetly, the Johnson Space Center historic preservation officer, says it took her team 6 years to make everything just right - digging through mission control records, and the few videos that existed from that day.
"We had to get the exact colors of coffee cups, even the patterns of coffee cups. The girl that was in charge of this spent hours and hours on eBay and Etsy and an antique shops and thrift stores," Tetly said. "It needs to be exact because you are telling history so it needs to be exact."
Kranz says it's nearly perfect.
Walking into the restored room -Kranz said he was brought back to the raw emotion of that historic day.
"This room was really stirring and the emotional intensity in this room was almost overwhelming. It was the kind of thing that only happens once in your life," Kranz said.