Gene Kranz - Failure Is Not an Option

Gemini 2 was the first mission requiring controller support. (Gemini 1 was an unmanned Gemini launch on a Titan II rocket on April 8, 1964. The Cape MCC flight support was limited to an informal evaluation of the Titan rocket systems and launch trajectory support by the booster and trajectory controllers. The dummy spacecraft was not recovered.) The game plan for Gemini 2 took Kraft and me to the Cape for what we hoped would be penultimate Cape deployment. The construction and much of the testing of the Houston Mission Control Center (MCC-H) was completed. John Hodge headed the checkout team in Houston that would monitor Gemini 2 from the new Mission Control Center. After two successful missions in a monitoring mode the mission control functions would be transferred from the Cape to Houston.

Kraft and I were sharing a two-bedroom efficiency apartment to stretch the per diem. The arrangement was convenient, since the living area provided enough room for us to spread out all the material we had to work on to study the endless details involved in a launch. This mission was to be a simple lob shot, much like Alan Shepard’s, but without a pilot. The goal in Gemini 2 was to check out the Titan’s propulsion and guidance system, and its ability to steer along the planned launch trajectory. This would place the Gemini on a path to test the heat shield on reentry. An automatic sequencer controlled the entire mission. The only role of the control team was to issue backup commands if the sequencer failed. Two ships were deployed downrange to monitor the eighteen-minute flight.

Ed Fendell was a rookie flight controller assigned to lead one of the ship’s teams. In Gander, Newfoundland, he was the voice on the radio guiding pilots to safe landings in blizzards and later, at the Cape, he worked in range control. A hard-driving perfectionist, Ed was perfect for Gemini, and he inherited responsibility for a computer-driven remote site system that was marginally ready to do its assigned job.

To prepare for my role as a flight director, I essentially became Kraft’s understudy. The pre-mission responsibilities were vast. The flight director developed the mission game plan; ascertained that each test objective was scheduled; verified the network readiness; made sure that his control team was fully trained—and came up with a contingency plan in case things went wrong.

Throughout the pre-mission period, the flight director oversaw the mission control, network, and team readiness, and provided the flight operations Go NoGo at the reviews preceding the start of the launch countdown.

Each evening, Chris and I would meet in the apartment, and I would listen to him run through the long list of open items for the first unmanned launch. As troubles mushroomed in the thruster and seat tests, he became obsessed with ensuring that the control team was capable of detecting and responding to any problems in flight. Kraft gave me the authority to do anything needed to get on top of our job. I told him I had been marching my controllers in this direction for a long time. This was my first experience in the Go NoGo world in which Kraft lived.

At launch minus six days, Kraft got sicker than hell. He couldn’t even leave the apartment. I knew it was bad when he told me to cover the final simulation, pad tests, and pre-launch briefings. I wondered what he would do if he did not recover for the launch. Each day as I returned, I waited for his word, half expecting him to tell me to step into his seat. While I prayed for his swift recovery, I have to admit that I also liked the idea of filling his shoes for the first time. Kraft told me to go ahead with the briefings. Nervous as a cat in a rocking chair factory, I conducted the final readiness reviews. It finally dawned on me that I might actually have to do the launch, and I looked around for a security blanket, a way to mentally power down when I needed. A copy of Sports Illustrated, with a cover photo of an awesomely attractive young woman in a one-piece black-and-red swimsuit, was on the table. I cut out the photo and slipped it inside the plastic cover sheet of my mission book. Whatever happened, I would have her image with me at the console.

Kraft recovered through sheer willpower. As I watched him get dressed for launch day, impeccable in a crisply starched shirt and tie, I was relieved. With Chris firmly ensconced in the flight director’s seat, my job on Gemini 2 was simply to make sure the control teams were go, and the data flow met the pre-launch requirements. During the brief test flight the mission controllers would send ground commands to back up the automatic sequencer in the Gemini. These commands would separate the Gemini from the Titan rocket, fire the separation rockets, initiate the turnaround maneuver for reentry, etc. I used two stopwatches; one started at liftoff, and another started at Titan rocket shutdown to cue the controllers to send their commands. On my call, the controllers issued the commands to back up the onboard sequencer.

The press was allowed inside the control room. Launch coverage was provided by fixed cameras and lights on both sides of the room, with a roving camera coupled by an umbilical to a recorder. We weren’t going live with this one but we would be live on later launches. It seemed excessive coverage for a simple lob shot, but it was a launch that kicked off the next round in the race to the Moon.

As the countdown progressed through the last few seconds before launch, the lights turned on, the room momentarily bathed in brilliant white, while the cameras whirred. I had a fleeting urge to call out, “Lights, camera, action!” Then everything in Mission Control turned black as the Titan lifted off. It was so dark I could not read my stop-watches. We had been plunged into a power failure because of the overload caused by the TV lighting. The only illumination in the room came from the small buttons on the Western Electric intercom sets, which were provided with a battery backup.

Working blind, I listened to the reports from the launch pad. Unable to do anything, the controllers in the dark monitored reports coming in from the ships downrange. When Hodge didn’t hear my backup command calls, he reported mission status to Kraft from his console at the new control center in Houston. The teams were prepared for anything—except a total blackout.

Gemini 2 was in reentry and the mission virtually over before we were able to restore electrical power. The Titan rocket and Gemini spacecraft performed flawlessly and Hodge’s team in Houston tracked the entire mission. Kraft’s debriefing was short and curt. “Find out what happened,” he barked, “and fix it so it never happens again.” We soon determined that when the press powered up their lights and cameras the surge momentarily overloaded the circuit breakers and cut the power to the entire control center at the Cape. Houston made sure there would be no such snafus in the future. Critical systems were reassigned between two separate electrical circuits powered by three different electrical sources. And the press was required to provide its own power.

The mission was declared a success and the team returned to Houston, enduring the cheerful put-downs of the Houston controllers who had participated in the mission. In debriefing, Hodge jokingly told Kraft he should carry a flashlight with him for Gemini 3, the final mission to be controlled from the Cape. Kraft didn’t laugh.

Almost overnight, it seemed we were back at the Cape in the final days of preparation for the first manned Gemini mission. This three-orbit flight test involved a large number of maneuvers to check out the propulsion and guidance systems and the new onboard computer, the first ever used in space. Gus Grissom had been selected as the pilot of America’s first two-man spacecraft with John Young as his co-pilot. Bright and exuberant, Young was a Navy pilot from the second class of nine astronauts. We now had three astronaut groups, including a new breed of scientist-astronaut, competing for a handful of flights.