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\h        NARRATOR: It takes hundreds of controllers to orchestrate a space shuttle launch. Their office on launch day

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\h        is one of the most unique work places in the world: a firing room at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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\h        The firing room serves as the nerve center on launch day.

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\h        LEINBACH: KSC Safety/Mission Assurance?

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\h        VOICE: KSC Safety/Mission Assurance is go, Mike.

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\h        LEINBACH: Thank you, Mark.

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\h        NARRATOR:Behind consoles, wearing headsets and checking off countdown milestones in thick binders,

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\h        launch specialists monitor the space shuttle as it stands at the launch pad three miles away.

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\h        From the firing room, they also send commands to the spacecraft,

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\h        talk to the astronauts and communicate with dozens of other teams,

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\h        from rescuers near the launch pad to mission controllers in Houston.

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\h        A successful countdown and launch requires the team to complete more than 1,600 steps, in order.

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\h        The checklist is contained in part of the eight-volume set of shuttle launch documentation.

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\h        Covering almost 8,000 pages, the books also contain contingency plans for handling launch scrubs or emergencies.

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\h        LEINBACH: Range Weather?

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\h        KATHY WINTERS: Weather is green on all constraints, winds are from three feet five degrees, 18 to 25.

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\h        LEINBACH: OK, thank you Kathy.

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\h        NARRATOR:Keeping track of the countdown as a whole are the shuttle launch director and the NASA test directors, or NTDs.

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\h        They sit in the front of the firing room at consoles on risers.

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\h        The orbiter test conductors share the second row with the NTDs.

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\h        In the back of the firing room, facing the two-story window looking out at the pads,

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\h        are a series of horseshoe-shaped cabinets. Systems specialists sit there.

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\h        They have a deep knowledge of the inner workings of the space shuttle.

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\h        If a problem crops up, they are the ones who would bring it to the attention of the people in the front of the room.

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\h        The specialists also would be called on to come up with solutions to allow a safe liftoff and present them to the launch team.

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\h        NASA built space for four firing rooms on the upper floors of the Launch Control Center at Kennedy during the Apollo program.

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\h        Each one is dominated by the angled panes of glass that let controllers inside see the

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\h        spacecraft on the pad and during the first minutes of ascent.

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\h        When the first space shuttle mission launched on April 12, 1981,

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\h        controllers in Firing Room 1 had the primary responsibility for the liftoff.

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\h        The firing room recently was renamed the Young-Crippen Firing Room for that first crew.

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\h        Firing Rooms 2 and 3 also were equipped and staffed.

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\h        Shuttle launches require two active firing rooms: one as the primary and one with senior

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\h        engineering and management personnel teams. A third firing room is capable of stepping in.

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\h        Firing Room 4, which had been a conference room during much of the shuttle program,

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\h        was remodeled and opened in 2005 to give the launch team more room and modern computers.

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\h        The computers are used to constantly monitor the shuttle's myriad of systems.

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\h        Simply put, they can pick up minute changes in a system's status before a human could detect it. Late in the launch countdown,

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\h        the computers run the countdown completely through a set of software called the ground launch sequencer.

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\h        HOBAUGH: We're ready to go.

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\h        LEINBACH: Thank you very much, Scorch. Much appreciate that. NTD, with that, you are cleared to launch Atlantis.

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\h        STEVE PAYNE: Copy, clear to launch.

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\h        NARRATOR: The launch control team can intervene to hold a countdown if they see something they don't like,

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\h        but otherwise it is the software that retracts the orbiter access arm,