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Floor plan of the dual Acceptance Checkout Equipment (ACE) Control Rooms.
ACE stands for Acceptance Checkout Equipment. The equipment has been designed for automated acceptance testing of Apollo spacecrafts and enabled a team of testers to run through numerous test cycles on various systems of the spacecraft. A particular test run comprising various tests could be initiated by the press of a button. Test results were displayed analogously or digitally and were automatically stored on magnetic tape or recorded on chart recorders. When the spacecraft had passed the acceptance test, it was certified for mating with the Saturn launch vehicle in the Vertical Assembly Building (VAB).
There were two pairs of these control rooms; they were located on the third floor in the south wing of the MSOB.
Each ACE Control Room was part of an ACE station. Such a station consisted of a control room, a computer room for processing data and commands from the control room and a terminal room to interface with the transmission system.
The two pairs of these control stations allowed NASA to conduct testing at the KSC on two pairs of Apollo spacecrafts simultaneously.
One pair of spacecrafts could be located in the Vertical Assembly Building (VAB) for integration with the launch vehicle or at the launch pad to prepare for launch. At the same time, testing in the MSOB on another pair of spacecrafts for the next mission could be conducted because of this second pair of control stations.
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