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My earliest and also most-recent memories of the interiors of ground control stations feature a huge wall of monitors, with the largest and most-central displaying the ground track of the vessel under control.
My question is: what sorts of purposes would that display be useful for? Has there been, or could there be, any situation under which everyone in the room would be thinking, Wow, good thing we had that giant ground track display!
The ground track map presents some information on a quick look:
To supplement @Uwe's answer here are some early control room maps which prominently indicate the orbital ground tracks and areas where both communications and automatic telemetry could be expected. If someone at ground control were worried about a reading on some sensor but there's currently no link, they can quickly look up at the board to estimate when that reading might next be updated when telemetry resumes.
From Where to look for historical or reconstructed orbit data for early NASA missions - Mercury-Atlas 6 for example (see answers and comments there for additional information)
above: View of Mercury Control at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida (USA) during the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission, in February 1962. From here.
above: A ground-track map for Mercury-6 from here.
and from What happens differently when ISS is inside this red boundary (Russia & Europe & ...)? (see answers and comments there for additional information)
cropped and sharpened:
original:
Source: Russian ISS Flight Control Room (click for full size)
View of the Flight Control Room at Russia’s Federal Space Agency Mission Control Center in Korolev, Russia, located on the outskirts of Moscow.
Date: 21 April 2004
Source: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-9/html/jsc2004e19918.html
Author: NASA/Bill Ingalls
