 During Mercury missions, this position was held by Christopher Kraft, with John Hodge, an Englishman who came to NASA after the cancellation of the Canadian Avro Arrow project, joining the flight director ranks for the 22-orbit Mercury 9, requiring Kraft to divide Mission Control into two shifts.The flight director's console was also the only position in the Cape MCC to have a television monitor, allowing him to see the rocket lift off from the pad.The NETWORK controller, an Air Force officer, served as the "switchboard" between the MCC, the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland (as on-site real-time computing did not exist), and the worldwide tracking station and ship network.