I suppose when exploring in outer space, orbiting the earth or going beyond, the geographic location of the mission control center is not all that important, but it always struck me as odd that it's in Huston Texas. It's certainly not because the Kennedy Space Center doesn't have the room for the command and control faculties or that consolidating faculties generally costs more than having separate ones, because it usually costs less.

But suppose you have a shuttle mission. The astronauts train at Johnson and also at Kennedy Space Center. Mostly they would train in Huston, and then come to Cape Canaveral and possibly do some more training, if there is a specialized payload or something which there is no mockup for in Huston.

When they board the shuttle they would be under the control of launch control, in Florida. They are considered in the control of the launch control center until they clear the tower.. Then they're in control of Huston. That is except for items relating directly to aborting the mission.. The range safety officer in Florida is in charge of that until they reach orbit. Also, for the first leg of the trip, it's the UHF tracking stations in Florida which provide communications. They may be operated remotely from Huston however.


Then when it's time to land? Well they're in control of the Johnson Space Center until they enter the final glide phase, in which case they'd be in control of the range air traffic control, in Florida. (Or possibly Edwards AFB or even White Sands).


I can see a lot of reasons why it doesn't make sense to have control so far from the launch point. Example: Astronauts providing control at Huston need to make a plan for repair of tiles on the shuttle. They want to go to one of the other shuttles and see how difficult it would be to grasp the actual tile. They have the mockup in Texas, but the actual orbiters are.... in Florida.

And If I remember correctly, Alan Sheppard was under Huston's command for something like 15 minutes while he was on his suborbital flight which took him from Cape Canaveral to the ocean... off the coast of Cape Canaveral.


Maybe I'm missing something, but Houston seems like a completely arbitrary place to put your main control faculty.

i think they put it there because they just happened to have a bunch of open space, and most of the training facilities are there..
and i'm sure the congressional delegation from the Houston area made some pretty sweet deals back in the 50's and 60's when they were setting all this stuff up. having the space center there brings a lot of good jobs, which brings a lot of money to the area, which buys votes come election time.

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Handbook of Texas Online: LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER

Chariots for Apollo lists the criteria in this appendix.

Cocoa Beach would fail on both criteria 3 and 4, I believe.

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From what I've read, the real criteria for selecting Houston was that the land was owned by cronies of Lyndon Johnson. They profited handsomely and so did he.

Lyndon Johnson

Read the bood Space buy Michner. At least I think that's where.


Anyway, There was also a big cry for it to be put near Boston, but that didn't work out. They also kept changing the rules because the criteria allowed too many possibilities. Finally they changed them enough times that almost only Houston would work.

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First it's Houston, not Huston. We call this area of Houston, Clear Lake. Of course the lake is not clear but dirty. Supposedly it was clear a half century ago.

Here's a link to the history of JSC. Probably more than you wanted to know.