Gene Kranz - Failure Is Not an Option

My landing team formed up quickly. Each team was constructed on a mission-by-mission basis. When the flight directors received their mission phase assignment, the branch chiefs carefully matched the personalities and strengths of controllers to those of the individual flight directors and their capabilities to handle the mission events.

Bob Carlton, nicknamed “The Silver Fox” for his prematurely gray hair, had the responsibilities for the LM navigation, control, and propulsion systems. His call sign was CONTROL. During the last seconds of landing, his slow, deliberate Alabama drawl would be the only voice on the intercom, calling out the seconds of fuel remaining.

Don Puddy, the tall, intense Oklahoman who never wasted a word, was the self-appointed leader of the lunar module team, responsible for communications, power, and life support systems, call sign TELMU.

Steve Bales, filling the GUIDO (guidance) position, was one of the first of the computer whiz kids. Steve in many ways was more like the systems controllers. He had not yet developed the arrogance so characteristic of the typical Trench inhabitant. He spoke rapidly, running his words together occasionally, then letting them stumble out. You could tell how he felt by his voice inflection. His large, round black-rimmed glasses set him apart from most of the controllers.

FIDO was Jay Greene, the pipe-smoking New Yorker, a rabble-rouser who did not like it when things got quiet. He liked to coach the flight director along a decision path. He was elite in the ranks of the FIDOs, cocky and crisp with his calls. Bostick, my branch chief with responsibility for the Trench, knew that I was the weakest flight director when it came to the trajectory, so he gave me an experienced FIDO who would teach me the new stuff I needed to know for the landing.

To Greene’s left sat the RETRO, Chuck Deiterich. Like Greene, he had a classic disdain for any controller who did not immediately surrender to the wisdom coming from the Trench. Chuck would either bury you with more data than you needed or cut you at the knees… once telling me during a debriefing, “You don’t want to hear about that, Flight… it’s too technical!”

The combination of Chuck’s Texas and Greene’s New York accents during the rapid-fire exchanges on the voice loops made for interesting listening during time-critical operations. Their voices were unmistakable.

The final member of the Trench was Gran Paules, who would work with Bales. Gran was a tall, blond, taciturn controller who had the habit of turning to look at you when you called. His nasal inflection reminded you of someone constantly suffering from an allergy. Like Steve, he was typical of the next generation in the MCC.

Slayton selected Charlie Duke from the astronaut class of 1966 as my CapCom. Duke was well experienced in the operation, having worked on Glynn’s team for the previous mission. For flight directors and CapComs, the principal tools used during the mission were the MCC intercom and crew voice loops. Our common job was to listen, integrate, communicate, and act.

During mission preparation, Duke provided the communications conduit. Aware of both crew and MCC concerns during meetings, he brokered and summarized the resulting actions with the crew. Watching him operate, I knew why the Apollo 10 and 11 astronauts wanted him in the CapCom’s slot. Of all the astronauts, he would have made a hell of a good flight director. I had a great feeling about the easy confidence Duke showed during planning sessions. He contributed to making my mission preparation successful, helping to bring the controllers to the highest pitch of readiness in the three months before the lunar landing mission. The SimSup and his team came from the Flight Control Division’s Mission Simulation Branch. SimSup was my other partner in team building. He worked with the flight directors and the branch chiefs in carefully monitoring controller performance during training and certifying them suitable for mission support. There was no way one flight director could do this job by himself.

My lunar module team, the four controllers in the Trench, and Charlie Duke were the core controllers for landing. Our job was to get the LM, an odd-looking contraption—like a praying mantis, Mike Collins said—close enough to the surface to let the crew take over and attempt landing. “Close enough” was subjective. Only the crew in the LM would know whether to land or abort in the last few hundred feet. It was our job to get them to their decision point.

There were three members of the command module team in the control room, looking over Mike Collins’s shoulders in the spacecraft. Ed Fendell was making the transition to a consolidated (CSM and LM) communications position. Ed was intuitive in responding to problems and he developed great young controllers. He was also noisy, poked fun at every controller, and could be disruptive. You had to earn his respect and keep him on a short leash. I worked with Ed many times during Gemini and liked his spirit, commitment, and willingness to step up to responsibility. Above all, I liked him because he never left the flight director hanging and never catered to anyone. His independence irked many of the controllers, but they respected him. Glynn and Cliff considered him a pain in the ass. The rest of the team consisted of Buck Willoughby and John Aaron. During the landing phase their job was to monitor Mike Collins’s solo operations in the command module. During the descent, if needed, we would use the Command and Service Module as a communications relay point and possibly an orbital rescue vehicle.

With the assignments completed, I called the first meeting of the White Team to finish working out the detailed landing strategy. Personal and team readiness would emerge from our study and the team working sessions on the trajectory, flight plan, and the mission rules. Then the simulation training would integrate the ground team with the astronauts and test our mission planning. The White Team had a total of eleven days of simulation to get ready for the landing. Only seven of these were with the crew. Four were with math models and a simulated astronaut.

Bill Tindall had started weekly meetings on the descent phase in April and had released a barrage of “Tindallgrams” and assorted notes. “Tindallgram” was the name given to Bill’s comic and highly treasured memos of the techniques meetings he conducted from 1966 to 1970 to document key engineering and operational decisions. In May 1996 the memos were bound in a single volume and distributed to “Bill’s many friends.” Tindallgrams were converted into new procedures, flight plan entries, and the jargon used by the controllers in their Go NoGo.

One of the Tindallgrams really grabbed our attention and also gave us a few laughs. It began, “There is another thing about powered descent crew procedures that has really bugged me. Maybe I’m an ‘Aunt Emma’—certainly some smart people may laugh at my concern, but I just feel that the crew should not be diddling with the computer keyboard during powered descent unless it is absolutely necessary. They will never hit the wrong button, of course, but if they do, the results can be rather lousy.” The next day we started a review of every crew computer keystroke and its effect throughout the descent phase.

Another “Aunt Emma” note challenged the terms used by my flight controllers after landing, “Once we get to the Moon does Go mean ‘stay’ on the surface, and does NoGo mean abort from the surface? I think the Go NoGo decision should be changed to Stay NoStay or something like that. Just call me ‘Aunt Emma.’ ”

We changed the procedures for the entire after-landing process into a series of Stay NoStay decisions. Tindallgrams, spiced with humor, idiosyncratic grammar, and personal “revelations,” got the job done. After Apollo 11, at a post-mission beer party, Flight Control made Tindall an honorary flight director, with the team color Gray. His color is retired, like that of many flight directors, and now hangs in the third floor of the Mission Control Center.