Gene Kranz - Failure Is Not an Option

In these harrowing hours and the days that followed there was no way to comprehend or accept the loss of Grissom, forty, White, thirty-six, and Chaffee, thirty-one. If there was anything that could be retrieved from this tragedy, it was the evidence—it was right there in front of us on Pad 34. We had a chance to discover the cause of the fire before another spacecraft was put at risk.

The fire did something else. It reminded the American public that men could and would die in our efforts to explore the heavens. It recreated the tension and uncertainty of the early flights of Shepard, Grissom, and Glenn. The Russians worked in secret, but the entire world could watch our flights on television. Success had become almost routine for us… until now. The country had gotten complacent. Only many years later would the full count of losses become known: these three Americans plus four Russians, all brave, good men who ran out of luck, whose technology failed at a crucial moment.

We were torn between feelings of fatalism and defiance. The United States had catapulted men into space sixteen times without a casualty more serious than a stubbed toe—although we had lived through some very scary situations. In our series of ten Gemini trips, Americans had repeatedly broken all records for survival in space, had strolled casually into the void, had navigated their craft through complex maneuvers, tracking down and docking with another spaceship.

With each flight the bar had been raised higher. No one knew how many orbits Apollo 1 would attempt. Grissom, White, and Chaffee would have been blazing yet another path, an open-ended mission, a bold departure from the rigid, limited spaceflights of the past. Theirs was to be essentially an engineering flight, a shakedown for the Apollo systems.

Built by North American, the Command and Service Module was by far the biggest and most sophisticated space vehicle ever designed. We had come so far, so quickly, from Alan Shepard’s pioneering fifteen-minute flight. When reporters asked Shepard what he thought about as he sat atop the Redstone rocket, waiting for liftoff, he had replied, “The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.” It was a funny crack, but with an edge.

In marked contrast to the tiny Mercury capsule, Apollo was, in spaceflight terms, practically a luxury liner. It had hammocks for full-length sleeping, hot and cold water, and a primitive galley. The spacecraft was the transportation for the crew to Earth orbit, to lunar orbit, and back home. It consisted of two sections, or modules, the upper one cone-shaped, the lower a cylinder. In the top section, called the command module, the astronauts occupied three cockpit couches looking up at a maze of controls—gauges, dials, switches, lights, and toggles. The service module was essentially an engine room. It housed the fuel, the crew’s oxygen, the basic electrical system, and a large rocket with 22,500 pounds of thrust that would supply the propulsion required to enter and leave a lunar orbit. The CSM was thirty-four feet long and weighed about thirty tons when fully fueled.

The Saturn booster rockets were enormous. Towering 223 feet above the launch pad, the two-stage Saturn IB rocket provided 1.6 million pounds of thrust at liftoff and was used for Apollo Earth orbital missions not requiring an LM, or lunar module. [1] LEM versus LM: In the early planning of the Apollo program, the term “LEM” was used, but by the time the program got started, the “excursion” (E) was dropped from the vernacular and it simply became Lunar Module. The S-IB was a prototype for the Saturn V and used the same S-IVB upper stage as the more powerful Saturn V.

The Saturn V rocket with 7.7 million pounds’ thrust at liftoff was the largest rocket ever developed by the United States. Standing 363 feet tall, it was used for missions that carried both the CSM and LM.

The LM was a buglike, rocket-powered craft that two astronauts would board for the descent to the Moon’s surface. The LM, with landing legs folded, was mounted on an adapter at the forward end of the S-IVB, which was in turn enclosed by four tapered conical panels with the CSM perched on top. For lunar missions the S-IVB (the third stage of the rocket) injected the CSM and LM into Earth orbit, and after a checkout period the engine reignited to place both spacecraft into a lunar trajectory.

The capsule of Apollo 1 was a total loss, charred and blackened both inside and out, its sensitive instruments ruined beyond any useful purpose—except for whatever clues it might surrender. The three bodies had been left strapped in their seats for seven hours while the first anguished experts tried to sort out the causes of a fiery accident that traumatized an entire nation.

One by one the controllers left after securing the records, the log-books, and the voice and telemetry tapes. Almost by reflex, everyone drifted over to the Singing Wheel, the controllers’ watering hole.

As the word of the Apollo 1 fire spread through the Clear Lake area, Nelson Bland, the owner of the Singing Wheel, cleared the building except for the controllers. Throughout the evening, more drifted in as others left. Worried wives came looking for their husbands, clustering in one of the back rooms. It was like the nights of years earlier, when you lost a squadron pilot and a good friend. All that was lacking were the songs we used to sing back then, our way of saying, in the words of Dylan Thomas, “death shall have no dominion.” This night, however, was one of limited and subdued conversation. We mourned our crew and the loss of whatever naïveté we had left.

We had known setbacks before. We had lived through some bad days, but we had never taken a knockout punch like this one. I wished there were some way to get in a judo match. I just wanted to feel some physical pain. The beer was not helping anything.

When we returned to our homes that night, we were changed in ways none of us could describe.

The next day was no different. The controllers wandered between the offices and the control center, their minds now moving to the question, “What’s next?” Kraft was nowhere to be seen. I guessed that he was probably working with Bob Gilruth, Deke Slayton, and Joe Shea, the Apollo program manager, to put together an investigative team. The day stretched on forever as dribs and drabs of data filtered into the offices. There were many rumors, few facts.

As I was sitting in my office, a picture of an antique biplane hanging in a tree caught my eye. I had carried it with me to keep me on track since my time in flight test at Holloman Air Force Base. A caption below the picture read:

Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity, or neglect.

No one understood the risk any better than Gus Grissom. He had been quoted as saying, “If we die we want people to accept it. We hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”

Roger Chaffee had been CapCom for my first mission as flight director. I had worked with Gus and Ed White in Mercury and Gemini, but we hadn’t spoken for some time except for brief phone calls or crisp de-briefings after a test. Now it was too late. They were gone, and all I had were some foggy memories of three Americans who had died in the race for supremacy in space. A rational feeling or not, I felt that I had personally let down the crew of Apollo 1. But I also knew that I had to put aside these feelings and take the lead in rallying the controllers to get us moving forward again. I had seen Mueller, Low, and Williams get out in front and lead when we had had problems and setbacks. Now it was my turn to set an example.