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Comment by herodotus | Hacker News Reader

Pictures from these kind of NASA events always show rows and rows of people sitting at computer screens. I have always wondered why there are so many of them, and what they are doing. Obviously there is a lot of work to be done to process the data that is received, but why so many real-time people? Is it just organizational bloat?

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Found this[1] answer. Basically, each of them is watching/controlling a small part or a subsystem of a such mission. Some organisational overhead is possible ( dunno, chief scientist, mission director/assistant, etc ).

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2014/05/25/how_do_nasa_s_mi...

They were ahead of the curve with the open office plan. I always assumed each person was responsible for paying attention to or watching some specific system or stream of data to alert any possible issue.

I'd also be fine with everyone just showing up because they worked hard and long on the project.

Look at the CERN control room shots too http://home.cern/sites/home.web.cern.ch/files/image/update-f... http://today.slac.stanford.edu/images/2008/lhc-control-room3...

There are a lot of moving parts

A nitpick would be that open office is probably pretty great for mission control/control rooms where some complex event is being coordinated as it unfolds in real time. But I don't think NASA engineers necessarily develop in such settings.

You're absolutely right I was flippant with the open office remark.

Also a lot of champagne on the back wall!

Similar open control room with lots of screens at LIGO.

I've been in the Ops Room of a UK warship (Type 45 air defence destroyer) during training. Lots (~20?) of people looking at screens, each with a different system. Plus team leaders, coordinators and senior decision makers. On the bridge more people driving and fighting the ship, and checking local seaspace for intrusuion. In the damage control centre, more guys. Propulsion? More crew.

On a complex system with multiple sensors and effectors you need a lot of people.

And with critical systems where the downside of any mistake is high cost, in life or money, it helps reduce risk if people only watch a small number of data points, which they can concentrate on fully. So, similar to your navy example, I have heard of early warning radar operators being asssigned to only 10 degrees of horizon on their screen, so you now need 18 people to cover east to west fully, but each person is completely focussed on their little task.

the netflix documentary Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo describes the early days when someone had to invent the very concept of a "mission control center" after it became clear that astronauts were going to need a lot of realtime, outside support.

wikipedia says "One of [Christopher C.] Kraft's most important contributions to manned spaceflight would be his origination of the concept of a Mission Control Center."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_C._Kraft_Jr.

I've never worked in a mission operation context, but I assume in this case it's mostly an assembling of the team as a sort of last celebration for the end of the (very successful) mission, than any major technical requirement.

Each person is responsible for a different subsystem on the spacecraft, as well as supervisors like mission directors.

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