Gene Kranz - Failure Is Not an Option

When I put on the headset and moved to the flight director’s console, John Hatcher, the ground controller, informed me, “Flight, the MCC is Green!” (Colors were used in controllers’ verbal status reports. Green was Go, Amber indicated problems, and Red indicated a NoGo.) John continued, “All voice, telemetry, command, and radar interfaces between the MCC and KSC [Kennedy Space Center] were checked. We are now receiving CSM telemetry. The MCC countdown is on schedule and my test team is in place.” Hatcher, as usual, had everything under control, so with less than a month to the planned Apollo 1 launch, I turned to my action list, nailing each item with a to-do date.

My office mail included a note from Kraft, indicating that headquarters was conducting a meeting in Washington to lay out the Apollo schedule. Chris knew that a recent report by General Sam Phillips, the Apollo program director, had been critical of Mission Control. Phillips expressed his concern about our ability to support the approaching flight schedule. His report said: “Mission Control has two problems, the software is not written and the computers are not working.” Kraft’s action memo to me was clear: “Get your damn systems guys to stop the gold-plating. I want you to personally justify every one of their requirements.”

I penned a brief “roger” on his memo and left it in the flight director’s log for him to review when he reported for countdown support in the afternoon. Then, in the early morning, I brought the MCC on line for the test scheduled to take place early that afternoon. MCC personnel participating in the plugs-out test would arrive an hour before the crew entered the cabin, about 11:00 A.M.

As I listened, the countdown preparations progressed smoothly. The banter between the communications technicians at Houston and the Cape told me that the Apollo team chemistry was developing rapidly. The launch and flight control teams had reaped the benefits of the previous two days of plugs-in testing. There had been a bundle of communications problems, but at this point the voice communications sounded crisp.

Hodge appeared just after 11:00 A.M. Shortly thereafter a mixed team of controllers straggled in from their nearby offices. Our handover was short. “John, the interface tests are complete, communications solid, and the MCC is Go. I have a team in place on our end to troubleshoot any communications problems if they reoccur.”

Settling into his chair, Hodge adjusted his headset and neatly placed his pipe and tobacco pouch below the voice comm panel. In his clipped British accent he remarked, “I sure as hell hope it goes well today. We need to get a break from this blasted testing and get going on our own work.” I nodded as I packed my headset in a pouch and shoved it in a drawer. I didn’t want to get John started on the long litany of open work remaining for Flight Control. Just past noon in Houston, I handed the console log to Hodge and departed for the office area. I had planned to leave early that day.

At the launch pad, the test conductor gave the Go for crew entry into the command module. Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee had arrived at the sterilized White Room, then ambled across the twenty-foot catwalk to the hull of the capsule. Shortly after entering the spacecraft, Grissom activated the suit circuit oxygen flow, and immediately noted an odor like sour milk. The spacecraft test conductor continued the countdown hold, as technicians performed air sampling of the suit circuit. When the sampling was completed, Hodge ran a brief status check and gave the pad test conductor a Go to resume the count at 1:25 P.M. Houston time.

Chris Kraft had been listening to the MCC and pad voice transmissions in his office. Since the countdown process is often erratic, we normally listened to the countdown over the squawk boxes in our offices until it was time to report for our shift in the control room, all of a five-minute walk away. When the count resumed and the launch team completed the hatch installation, Chris left to report to the MCC for the final hours of the simulated launch countdown.

Chris adjusted his headset and started to track each step of the test. Kraft and his Red Team would launch Apollo 1 and then support the first three orbits before handing over to my team. My White Team was to pick up from Kraft five hours after launch. I had the systems shift, responsible for dealing with any CSM problems and getting the crew to sleep. Hodge then picked up with his Blue Team, developed the next day’s flight plan, awakened the crew, and then handed back to Kraft. The three-shift sequence was the same one we successfully used in early Gemini.

Shortly before 3:00 P.M., Kraft polled his team and waited for the test conductor’s call-outs for the MCC abort command checks. Hodge, with his handover complete, briefly considered returning to his office, then put down his tweed jacket, shrugged, and ambled toward the coffee pot. If the test dragged on (like the previous day’s plugs-in test), he planned to relieve Chris later in the day so that Chris would have the option to go back to his office and do some paperwork or take off for the weekend. As usual during such tests we had a mixture of members from different teams involved so that all controllers got a chance to see the CSM telemetry.

Since everything seemed to be going well, I left the office early to avoid the traffic.

Marta and I had not had many nights out since the birth of our sixth child, Jean Marie, now nine months old. I had promised her an evening at the Athens Bar and Grill, a popular Greek restaurant on the Houston Ship Channel, where on any night the impromptu entertainment might include, for example, a large, sweaty woman slinging a skinny sailor around the dance floor. I also wanted to see what the big deal was about eating food cooked in grape leaves.

Arriving home, I had to hit the deck running and get dressed if we were to beat the evening supper crowd. Marta had the kids all lined up and fed. With the help of the older ones, a single baby-sitter could handle the whole gang and, since it was a Friday night, the kids didn’t have any homework.

At the launch complex in Florida, meanwhile, the spacecraft voice lines started glitching. The crew was having trouble communicating with the launch team as well as with each other. It was approaching sunset at the Cape when the countdown was held to permit troubleshooting. Kraft kidded George Page, the test conductor at the Cape, saying that he was keeping score on who called the most holds.

The communications systems used between the crew, launch team, and MCC were incredibly complex. Hundreds of engineers, operators, and technicians were wired to their support teams. In Mission Control there were more than a hundred communications panels, each with forty-eight talk-listen buttons. If you wanted to talk to someone sitting next to you, the voice communications went through dozens of connections. From the MCC to the Cape the communications were carried by numerous telephone lines. When anything broke down, the simplest problem might take hours to troubleshoot and resolve. Doing it during a pad test bordered on the impossible.

The launch team continued trying to work around the communications problems. Attempting to resolve the comm problems, Grissom and Ed White exchanged their suit audio/electrical connectors while Roger Chaffee and the launch team rehearsed the procedures for a dry check of the spacecraft thrusters. At 5:20 P.M., the countdown entered the scheduled hold point at T minus ten minutes where the spacecraft would switch to its internal power. The communications problems had to be fixed before proceeding. Kraft entered the hold in his console log, punched at his voice comm, and said, “Ground Control, see if you can get a handle on the voice problems. The rest of you can take ten.”