Richard Stachurski intro

Richard Stachurski (centre) in the Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR) in Houston. Frame from a NASA film.

Richard writes:

“I worked in the Apollo Mission Operations Control Room. There were two of us at the Network console, which was two consoles to the right of the Flight Director’s position – the diagram below shows the relative geography. My partner and I were responsible for all ground systems world-wide – tracking stations, ships, aircraft, communications, and all of the systems in the Mission Control Center.

During an Apollo mission we exercised operational control of the IST [Instrumentation Support Team] whose members were on the first floor of the Control Center. Tom Sheehan was in charge of all of the folks who manned the Tracking console in the IST area. I had a lot of good experiences working with Tom and his crew. The Network Controllers and the IST trained as a team by mission phase.

For Apollo 11, we worked the launch from Earth (Green Team – Cliff Charlesworth) and the lunar ascent phase (Black Team – Glynn Lunney). Needless to say, I would have paid them to do that job.”

The Apollo 9 Orange Team – night shift. Richard Stachurski is in the centre, back row, with Captain’s bars on his collar – he was the Network Controller on the team. Flight Director Pete Frank is sitting on the console, third from the camera, and astronaut Stu Roosa is at far left.

The Layout of the MOCR (Mission Operations Control Room) – courtesy Richard Stachurski. (More info on the MOCR in the MCC section.)

A more recent photo of Richard.