PROPEL

"VAB” is the historic build site of the extraordinary heavy-lift vehicle known as Saturn V. Originally called the Vertical Assembly Building, VAB was later renamed the Vehicle Assembly Building. VAB served as a construction hub for the Saturn V rocket to send people to the Moon. The Apollo program is a model of incremental experimentation, learning, and exploration in achieving that goal. Project Apollo is also a master class in coordinated communication. On the ground and during liftoff, launch site operations are led by the Apollo Launch Control Center (LCC) at Kennedy Space Center in Brevard County, Florida. 

Once the rocket has cleared the tower, a handoff occurs. Control over Saturn V, with its myriad of antennas and instruments, switches from LCC to Apollo Mission Control, commonly referred to as “Houston,” located in Houston, Texas. In essence, Houston is a specialized 20th century lighthouse with the task of facilitating the safe passage, not of a seafaring vessel with crew, but of the manned Apollo spacecraft. 

Lighthouse keepers work diligently to mind the gap between the world as the mariner sees it and the world as it actually is. Today’s oldest extant lighthouse is located in Spain. That historic structure is known as the Tower of Hercules (Torre de Hércules) and it predates the very first antenna by more than 1800 years. However, the Tower of Hercules and Apollo Mission Control share a common fundamental mechanism: wave propagation. Wave theory principles can be applied beyond lighthouse optics because visible light is an electromagnetic wave. While the Tower of Hercules relies on visible light wave propagation for communication purposes, Mission Control relies on transmission of waves from a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum: those waves are associated with antennas and signal propagation.  For this reason, lightkeepers and flight controllers benefit from the life's work of one engineer and physicist: