balettie.com by The Trench
Atomic Fireballs are icons in the Mission Control Center and were provided by the Orbit Flight Dynamics Officers for each Space Shuttle mission.
Fireballs have the distinction of being an honorary “consumable†that from time to time was addressed during pre-shift Flight Director briefings.
Fireballs were so important to Mission Operations that a Shuttle crew, to remain nameless, actually arranged to have a new box of Fireballs delivered to the MCC when quantities would not support a full mission duration.
Indeed, the responsibility of providing Fireballs to the Flight Control team is one of the many traditions in Manned Spaceflight that will hopefully outlive the Space Shuttle Program.
(from the Lead FDO Console Handbook)
Fireballs have been provided by the FDOs for many years and the reasons we do this have been difficult to determine.
The earliest known formal delivery of Fireballs to the control center was May 4th, 1989 for STS-30. The delivery was made by the Orbit 1 FDO. After STS-30, it was adopted that the “Deploy TRAJ†continue to be responsible for providing a box of Fireballs each mission.
More:
https://balettie.com/mcc/atomic-fireballs/
