Gene Kranz - Failure Is Not an Option

The afternoon before the final Gemini 6 simulation, while drinking beer with his Hawaii team, Fendell had been approached by the site-training chief, who proposed that Fendell fake a heart attack during the training run to see if Bucholz and the backup flight surgeon, Dr. Warren Prescott, were capable of taking charge of the site team. Fendell returned to the Hawaii site, conferred briefly with the training boss in Houston, then put the plan into action.

The final network simulation was a full-blown mission dress rehearsal, involving all sites and teams in the MCC. During the second simulated Hawaii pass, as the Gemini 6 spacecraft was closing preparatory to the rendezvous, Fendell turned to the Hawaii surgeon and said he did not feel well. Moments later, he stood up from his chair, grasping his chest, emitted a groan, and then crumpled to the floor.

The team momentarily forgot the simulation as the flight surgeon ministered to Fendell in the course of their own little simulation. Struggling into the CapCom’s chair amid the tangle of headset cords, Bucholz stepped on Fendell’s chest, punched in his headset, and croaked on the voice loop, “Chris, Fendell just had a heart attack.” Kraft, momentarily startled but wise to the tricks of simulation, called the simulation supervisor and asked. “SimSup, is this some of your doing?” Since he had not originated the plan, SimSup responded, “Not mine, Flight!” Kraft then punched up the loop. “Hawaii, keep me apprised. Have the surgeon give Fendell’s status to the MCC surgeon.” Although deeply concerned about his CapCom, Kraft knew that the clock was ticking to launch and, with the whole tracking network up and operating, not even a heart attack could be allowed to interfere with the mission preparation.

Bucholz passed the test. With Fendell on the floor at his feet, he took control of the site’s part of the simulation, provided support to Gemini 7, then reconfigured to support Gemini 6. For the next hour and a half, despite everyone in the loop worrying about Fendell, the simulation went forward flawlessly. As the third Hawaii pass approached, Fendell rolled over, got to his feet, and placed his headset back on. The startled Hawaii team was speechless, then relieved, then concerned how they were going to break the news to Kraft. Kraft was angry, but Fendell, with an ear-to-ear grin, was delighted that his new protégé, Bucholz, had come through.

Bucholz, a pilot, got the critical assignments on the old merchant ships for the remaining Gemini missions. At the end of Gemini, he returned to combat duty flying C-123 transports to relieve the pressure on the Special Forces based in Vietnam. Many young heroes passed through Flight Control in the 1960s. The Air Force transfers were some of the best, adding seasoned backup to the recent college grads in the evolving Brotherhood.

As rapid as the technology developments were in the entire program, the human factor was still key to our success in Gemini and Apollo—and in integrating the contractors for both into our data and operational loops. From the first Mercury mission through Gemini, the personal, gut-level knowledge each controller brought to his console from liftoff through completion of mission was the key to success—and to survival when things went to hell. Years later, it was the human factor that would save us when technology could not.

It wasn’t always easy to get contractors to play the game our way. North American Aviation, for example, was one of the new Apollo contractors, and they strongly resisted the transfer of design engineering data to Flight Control. They grew up building fighter airplanes that were always delivered with their own write-ups of flight manuals and procedures. Control of this function was even more important to them in building a spacecraft. They didn’t believe that flight controllers had sufficient knowledge to put together the manuals and procedural documentation. I fought a long battle (as I had with contractors in Mercury) to get two North American engineers assigned to Flight Control to set up a data pipeline linking our offices at the MSC with the North American factories. In any complex and high-risk program like Gemini or Apollo, there is always an understandable reluctance to share the intimate design details and detailed test data. The contractor’s design teams often doubted that the flight controllers were technically capable of understanding and correctly using the data. The team building and trust between designer and flight controller demanded sharing the information openly.

Given the magnitude of the change in mission content and direction, it was remarkable the way the launch, flight, and contractor teams collaborated. There are times when an organization orchestrates events so perfectly that the members perform in perfect harmony. It is part of team chemistry, where communication becomes virtually intuitive, with teams marching to a cadence, the tempo increasing hourly and the members never missing a beat.

The cadence continued unbroken and at 1:30 P.M. Central Standard Time on December 4, 1965, the Gemini double launch mission began.

The Gemini 7 flight was a saga of human endurance and spirit. Borman and Lovell were cooped up in a spacecraft smaller than the front seat of a Volkswagen Bug. The ejection seats and instrument panels limited their range of motion. The seats were canted 12 degrees outboard and 8 degrees forward. A console, with the pistol grip attitude controller much like a gearshift in a modern-day sports car, was between the seats. The crew would be virtually immobile for fourteen days. Try to imagine yourself stuffed into a confined space like this for fourteen hours, much less fourteen days.

The crew wore new lightweight suits designed for use only inside the spacecraft. The most recognizable aspect of the suit was the soft hood that replaced the traditional hard helmet. According to the manual, in an emergency, the crew could don the suit in fifteen to twenty minutes. In fact, after much effort, it turned out to be more like an hour.

Food was as limited as the rest of the crew systems, consisting of simple rehydratable meals (“add water and ignore the taste”) in a squeeze bag with a feeder spout. The bite-sized foods were dry and tended to crumble. The fourteen days in the spacecraft were like a primitive campout, minus the ability to shower, stand, stretch, or take a walk. Through every day of Gemini 7, the controllers’ hearts were with the crew in the spacecraft, and we worked hard to cheer them toward their fourteen-day flight goal.

As soon as the Gemini 7 Titan had cleared Pad 19, the launch turn-around for Gemini 6 started. Both stages of the Gemini Titan arrived at Pad 19 within two hours of the previous launch. The race was now on.

Kraft, Hodge, and I were following the team rotation pattern we had established on the two previous missions. During Kraft’s shift, Borman and Lovell flew formation with the Titan upper stage, and then methodically started on the flight’s medical experiments. Kraft’s handover was smooth, and soon I was up and working my third mission as flight director. The technology of space was sprinting forward, especially in communications. The ships on my shift were in their familiar locations in the northwest Pacific near Japan and in the southeast Pacific off the coast of Chile. For the first time, we used a satellite communications relay from Chuck Lewis’s team on the Coastal Sentry .

I had a new controller working on the White Team for Gemini 76, who would become a key player on many of my Apollo teams. Gerry Griffin was an experienced Lockheed Agena engineer and in the military flew as a “scope dope” (radar and weapons officer) in the supersonic McDonnell F-101 Voodoo interceptor. Griffin followed in the footsteps of Aldrich as a Gemini GNC (guidance, navigation, and control engineer).