Several years ago I came across Jeff Highsmith’s Mission Control Desk project and immediately filed it away as something I wanted to build someday. He built a NASA-inspired control console using a Raspberry Pi, Arduino, lots of switches, LEDs, displays, sound effects, and real Apollo mission audio. It’s more of a soundboard than a simulator, since it’s designed for free play and imagination, but it has so much polish that you could imagine young kids having a lot of fun with it.
What I especially liked was the old-school look of the physical controls and displays. There’s something special about opening a missile switch cover before flipping a toggle switch in this age of touchscreens.
Now that my kids are old enough to enjoy something like this, I decided to build my own version centered around Apollo 11 and the first moon landing. I want it to be more of a mission simulator than a soundboard: the kids will work through launch, staging, orbit, the trip to the Moon, landing, and eventually the return to Earth while the controls, displays, alarms, lights, and audio respond to what is happening.
Like most of my projects, the plan has already grown considerably from the original idea. More to come as the design takes shape.
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