Eugene Kranz

FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION
Gene Kranz

You don’t get much more eyewitness-to-history than Gene Kranz. As a member (later leader) of the Mission Control team for America’s space program, Kranz participated in every Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo launch, from the humiliating failures of the early Mercury tests through the heart-pounding Apollo 13 journey, to the demoralizing end of our active participation in manned exploration of space.

Kranz has a straight-up style, and the book’s only real show more flaw is that it may be overpacked with detail. In his attempt to ensure that every member of the ground and flight teams are acknowledged, and the technical details of the missions explained, there are a lot of names swimming around in the alphabet-soup of program acronyms.

The reader who can get through those gets a front-row seat to the missions, including descriptions of mission- (and life-) threatening glitches and problems solved on the fly. Most of the American public, even those of us who followed the flights with great interest, had no idea of problems that didn’t rise to the Apollo-13 level of magnitude.

As the Apollo program itself draws to an end, the emotional impact of the book strikes a deep and troubling chord. Kranz does a bit of soap-boxing at the end, acknowledging the short-sightedness of allowing apathy and changes in political support to fritter away the momentum we had at the height of the program. It remains one of the most devastating events in human history that we, as a country, turned away from space exploration and research just as we had battered the door open.

The shuttle and space station missions are not within the purview of Kranz’ book and so are not addressed. While undoubtedly providing valuable information, neither has the impact of the moon landings, and it’s heartbreaking to recognize what we lost.

Kranz’ viewpoint is a valuable part of the history of America’s man-in-space program, and an enthralling read as well. show less

The Right Stuff this was not. Dipped into this because I (like most?) know him as Ed Harris' cool, calm & collected character in Apollo 13. The book has a lot of play by play operational logistics, which - fair enough - is exactly his role in the NASA machine, but directing a long series of people saying "go" or "no go" and the collected wisdom of the sea of blinking status lights, is a bit too much "Railroad Tycoon" autism for me.
Now I appreciate that this is a great source and POV in the show more overall story of NASA operations, and as such the more details the better, so this critique is just from a place of storytelling; can you jump into this and read it with fascination? Probably not.
Apollo 13 is just one (surprisingly brief) chapter in this, it's the man's entire career (in charge both before and after said disaster) and you get a better sense of just how often and to what extent they had major issues with the vehicles and launches. The big event no longer seems like an extreme anomaly but more like one of the million things that could go wrong and did. I found him talking about learning the unique quirks of each vehicle especially illuminating for how seat of their pants these missions actually were despite the testing and checklists. And to be fair to the dull, systematic way of describing the bureaucracy of problem solving, that's also what the famous work the problem line is all about (unlike the titular "failure is not an option" which was made up for the movie). show less

When it comes to the space program, most books focus on the astronauts, but the readers do themselves an incredible injustice by skipping the other 95% of the action. This book covers those heroes. I had always thought of Mission Control as similar to Air Traffic Controllers. If the tower isn't open, planes can still land on their own with a specific set of procedures. But Mission Control is just that - they are as integral to the mission as the astronauts and the rockets - every one of show more them.

For every action of the astronauts - from docking, to EVAs, to even taking a poop, there was someone on the ground whose job it was to worry about that specific aspect of it and how it impacted every other part of the mission. These amazing specialist controllers worked and trained with the primary and the backup astronaut crews to develop the specific procedures for performing every action (potential and planned) the whole team might foreseeably encounter. When it came time to perform those actions, the makeup of the shift of controllers would be the specialists in those areas. So when the action changed from launch to docking rendezvous, the controller shift changed, too.

The Apollo 14 mission is one great example. Paraphrasing a chapter, one of the controllers had detected a problem with the ABORT switch. After a quick conference with other specialists, they called a backroom of other experts who was there to specifically back him up. Behind that back room of specialists was a software team from MIT on the line waiting just in case. While the astronauts were preparing and proceeding with their lunar descent, the MIT team had written a software patch, the back room team had tested it with the backup astronaut crew in the SIM and then transmitted to the crew. Without their efforts, the landing would have been scrubbed.

As another example, every time the launch was put on hold, there was a trajectory controller who performed the calculations for the new trajectory and upload it to the computers. You have to think, every minute means a new trajectory!

The Apollo 13 movie only hints at the immense pressure these guys were under. No rocket was perfect and every mission required troubleshooting (and fixing) one set of problems after another. Live. Thanks to Gene for giving these guys their due.

Another book that I think of as essential is Deke Slayton's book, "Deke!" This bridges the gap between astronauts and admin and how many of the decisions were made (such as who was first in space or on the moon). show less

If you've seen the movie Apollo 13 you might remember the actor Ed Harris, who portrayed Flight Director Gene Kranz. Kranz is mostly known for his leadership during the Apollo 13 crisis but he was also running the show when the Apollo 11 astronauts first landed on the moon. Kranz earned his position in Mission Control early on in the Mercury program, having written most of the original mission procedures from scratch. It was a difficult job to do because to develop these he had to first show more understand what actions had to be done during the mission, why they were necessary, which order they had to be accomplished in and what impact each had on the program overall.

Kranz was mentored by Chris Kraft, famous for stating "I am Flight. And Flight is God." Kranz recounts early episodes in the MCC - power squabbles between flight controllers, astronauts and vendors - that could have been dangerous to the missions underway. He made me understand why Kraft would lay down such a hard line; that when possibly-fatal, split-second decisions had to made, there was no room for vacillation. Discipline was very important for flight controllers. They had to be clear on the plan and they had to execute without delay.

Once spaceflights were long enough to require that the consoles be staffed 24/7, flight controllers were divvied up into shifts. Kranz was known as 'White Flight', Kraft was Red and John Hodge was Blue. When the astronauts were awake and performing tasks (the "execute" portion of the day), Kraft's Red team was in charge. White team then would come on duty, see the astronauts to sleep, make reports about which tasks were completed and how many consumables were used that day. Then Blue team would digest all that, make a flight plan for the next day and wake the crew up. It was a stable, dependable support system that worked throughout Gemini and Apollo.

During the Apollo 13 situation, Kranz made it clear that everyone working the problems had to absolutely believe they were getting the astronauts home alive. It was vitally important that they have that confidence and that they projected that confidence to the press, to their families and to the world. Kranz had the conviction, the courage and the drive needed to motivate and lead his team through those dark hours.

Reading Kranz's recollections of his time in The Trench during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs showed me the machinery behind the accomplishment of planting the American flag on the Moon. It was hard work - not every one at NASA could bunnyhop in the moondust - some had a lot of paper to push around. Those men at the consoles were just as important to the task as the astronauts who rode the rockets. show less