Gene Kranz - Failure Is Not an Option

At shift change time, Llewellyn sauntered into the room, exchanging banter with the various controllers until he got to FIDO. When FIDO did not respond, Llewellyn tried to pump him and RETRO to find out what was wrong. RETRO reported, “It’s that damn test with Sealab. It doesn’t make sense.” Llewellyn, concerned, responded, “What test?” RETRO advised him to talk to me about this mysterious test.

It was tough to keep a straight face as a troubled and deeply serious Llewellyn approached the console. He said, “RETRO said to talk to you about the test.” I told him to sit down, then I solemnly said, “John, I know how you feel about Carpenter, and you’re not gonna like what we have got to do.” His frown deepened as I continued. “We have orders to rig communications to Sealab, so that Carpenter can make the retrofire countdown. I don’t like it and have argued all night with Kraft, but he says, ‘Do it!’ ”

Llewellyn looked as if he had been poleaxed, first puzzled but then furious. At that moment, rookie astronaut Dave Scott walked by and asked, “John, what’s the matter?” Scott now listened to Llewellyn’s explanation of the Sealab command control test. Scott became even more furious than Llewellyn, loudly stating this was some kind of a “half-assed” decision and then complaining that he had doubts about whether he wanted to be an astronaut if such crazy decisions were going to be made in the future.

The team let Llewellyn and Scott dangle on the hook for a few minutes more before telling them it was all a joke. The gotchas in Mission Control were usually irreverent and often silly, a way of sticking a pin in the bubble of someone’s ego. They relieved the tension, poked fun, or just let one of the chiefs know that you will take their orders and respect their rank, but you won’t run scared. But I knew that I was in for a tough bout the next time I stepped on the judo mat with Llewellyn.

With the successful Gemini 5 mission behind us, it was time to go for a rendezvous and docking. The Russians, after their fast start, had been unable to rendezvous two spacecraft. We suspected they were hampered by inadequate computer and guidance capabilities. On two previous dual spacecraft missions, in 1962 and 1963, their spacecraft came within three miles of each other. Close does not count. A rendezvous means achieving a stable position that allows docking. It was now time for America to try for rendezvous.

The rendezvous target was an Air Force Agena upper-stage rocket. In early 1965, I made a fortunate series of personnel selections and formed a new systems branch combining Mel Brooks and Jim Hannigan, giving them responsibility for the Agena target and the lunar landing module. Brooks’s innovativeness and can-do attitude were perfectly balanced by Hannigan’s conservative do-it-by-the-numbers approach. Together, they built a great systems team for Flight Control.

The Agena was normally used to place super-secret military satellites in orbit. It was operated by an onboard programmer that issued coded instructions to operate the systems. The Agena was modified by NASA to provide a restartable engine, a docking adapter, a status light panel, and electrical connectors that provided a limited display and control capability for the crew. Many of my Agena controllers had cut their teeth at Lockheed and were rock-solid confident in their spacecraft. Other members of the MCC team were less impressed, disparagingly referring to the Agena as a restartable cigar.

I had a hell of a scare with the Agena rendezvous target rocket during a command test. Five days before launch, I was supporting the Agena readiness demonstration. In the middle of the evening, with everything quiet at the MCC, I heard the Atlas Agena test conductor call out on the loop, “Who the hell is transmitting engine start commands?” He continued, “Houston, have you been sending commands?” Just as I was about to respond, “Negative,” I heard the voice of my command technician state calmly, “Flight, the command system has failed, we have been in continuous command transmission. We have belched out every command in our inventory!” We were lucky that day. If we had been in orbit and our command system failed, the commands would have been transmitted to the Agena, possibly starting the rocket engine, changing control system modes, and turning the telemetry system off. The unplanned commands would have wreaked havoc on the mission. We amended our procedures, but we were still uneasy about the next step. Loading new software into new computers and using it for the first time was like playing Russian roulette. It demanded and got a lot of respect.

Brooks’s team was sharp as a scalpel as the test conductor pressed the button and the Atlas/Agena rose majestically from launch pad 14. To the north, at nearby launch complex 19, astronauts Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford sat atop the Titan II rocket in their couches and listened as the Gemini test conductor updated them on the Atlas/Agena launch progress. To set up the conditions for a rendezvous, we first launched the Atlas/Agena. When the Agena passed over the Cape at the end of its first orbit, we would launch the Gemini spacecraft from another pad into a slightly lower orbit to begin the catch-up phase of the rendezvous. Launch of the target spacecraft was normal. The Agena separated from the Atlas booster and the Agena engine ignited. Brooks’s data flickered briefly, then stopped updating. FIDO reported tracking was lost. Then came a report that Range Safety was tracking multiple pieces of debris falling into the ocean.

Meanwhile, the Gemini countdown had continued on Pad 19, but the reports going to the crew became progressively worse. The reports from Canary Islands and Carnarvon were negative. At launch minus fifty minutes, we scrubbed the Gemini countdown and gave the crew the bad news. The Agena was destroyed, pieces scattered in the Atlantic. They had no target for their planned rendezvous.

I stayed with Brooks and his Agena team until there was no hope. Brooks was defeated, utterly spent. Many thought that the Agena had lived up to its less than sterling reputation. I was sad for my team. It was time for a few beers at the Singing Wheel before we started to regroup.

This watering hole was a two-story, barnlike building, the place we went when we needed some R&R. It was located a mile west of the center on state Highway 3 and hosted the Gemini-Apollo generation of flight controllers. The floor in the barroom tilted toward the wall to a degree that made it impossible to lean back in a chair without falling over. The Singing Wheel sold Lone Star beer by the pitcher. Nelson Bland, the owner, knew all the controllers and ran remarkably accurate tabs for all of them. A wall-to-wall mirror stretched behind the ponderous and scarred bartop. The tables in the back room were covered with checkered oilcloth. John Llewellyn’s wife, Olga, occasionally tended bar. After judo sessions, Llewellyn, Dutch, and I, wearing our sweaty gi outfits (white cotton trousers and a heavy, kimonolike jacket), would drive over for a beer or two after calling it a night.

It was, for all of us, a place of refuge where we could celebrate on the good days—and lick our wounds on the bad ones. Today was one of the bad ones.

The rendezvous in space continued to elude us. The Russians had tried twice and failed—but we were impressed by their dual launch capability. We couldn’t even get our target rocket into orbit. Accomplishing this became the highest priority for Gemini and the American space program. Until now, a rendezvous in space was something only mathematicians really believed was possible. They worked out elegant equations and said, “If you launch it at this time, and go this fast, in this direction, you eventually are going to catch up to a target. If you perform the maneuvers properly, the two spacecraft will end up side by side.”