Gene Kranz - Failure Is Not an Option

Mental preparation was key to getting through a simulation. Each individual on the team had to find his very own way to be up for the challenge. Marta always sensed when I had to start working on it; she would say, “Isn’t it time for you to get ready?” She would then round up the kids and give me the time and space to start my internal preparation for each day. She made sure that I had some internal peace and was centered as I left to face whatever the day would throw at me. We had so much to do—and so little time.

Dick Koos was as concerned about the adequacy of the training schedule as I was. Putting all of the pieces together in eleven days of training scattered over two months was tough. After the first two sessions Koos’s judgment was that we were too damn cocky, and a bit of humility learned early in the training might make us more receptive. Looking at my team through the glass wall in the control room, Dick gave orders to increase the pressure. Smiling confidently, he thought, “Kranz’s team will remember June 10 as the day that started them down the path to the Moon.” Koos’s team leaned forward at their consoles, savoring the coming battle. Today only the fittest would survive.

The first session was the warm-up. Seconds after we started the descent it seemed every controller had problems. The voice loops were jammed by controllers voicing instructions through Charlie Duke to the crew. Seconds after the crew responded another problem surfaced, then another, until Bob Carlton advised he had problems in the ascent stage. If we continued we’d leave the crew on the surface without a way home. Once the abort call was made and the engine throttled up, Koos called on the loop, “Good one, Flight. You nailed it. Let’s start the turnaround for the next run.” Through the glass wall I could see Dick standing behind his console. If the first run was an indication, today was going to be mano a mano. By the third run of the day the time criticality and complexity of each training run was peaking and my team was barely holding its own. Koos was having his own problems trying to keep the simulation computers from crashing.

The fourth run ended in a crash. In the Trench Jay Greene got behind on his calls, allowing the LM landing speed to build up. Our final instruction to abort was too late and Greene’s large plot board in the front of mission control was mute testimony to the futility of our action. With the three-second delay in communications to the Moon, the crew was splattered across the Sea of Tranquillity. This was our first crash, the result of a few seconds’ delay in our communication and decision process. After a tough and very frank personal debriefing, Jay and I dared Koos’s team to get us again.

On the next session Koos delivered the coup de grâce with a virtual repeat of our previous crash. This time, with the crew approaching the lunar surface, the LM primary computer failed while I was working an LM electrical problem with the systems controller. The distraction caused by troubleshooting an electrical fault resulted in a late switch to the backup computer system for the abort. It seemed that no matter what we did, we just were not fast enough. We were learning the hard way about the deadman’s box, the seconds-critical relationship of velocity, time, and altitude where the spacecraft will always impact the surface before the MCC can react and call an abort. In flying terms we were behind the power curve. The debriefing was long and intense, focusing on the need for some new rules. Approaching the Moon at a high rate of speed the LM can go a hell of a ways in three seconds. Greene took the action to change his mission rules and plot board limit lines to add a bias to accommodate the communications delay.

The next two runs were a washout. I felt like a novice flight director, the sweat soaking my shirt at the armpits. There was something in the air, something I could not put my finger on. I felt unprepared, edgy. My moves and calls became hesitant and unsure, and I believe my voice betrayed my unease and passed it to my team.

Koos never backed off; his pressure was unrelenting. We were just hanging on, and our performance was in a downward spiral. Every team member, frustrated, tried desperately to get the team on track. By the final training run I felt like the coach of a sandlot ball club behind 21-0 in the third inning. All this had taken place in one day. I had just had my worst day of simulation ever as a flight director. But when the LM headed for the lunar surface, I would be working in precious seconds. We had to work out the bugs now.

During training runs it was customary for the big bosses, Kraft, Slayton, and even George Low, to listen in on the flight directors’ loop from their offices. We would cut the loops during the debriefings, so that we had some privacy for soul searching or a plain old-fashioned ass chewing. After the final busted training run, the telephone behind the console rang. Frustrated, I picked it up with my customary “Kranz here.” I heard the familiar voice of Kraft. “I listened to your runs today,” he said. “Sounds like you had a tough time. What’s going on?”

I think he really wanted to take a reading on my frame of mind by listening to the sound of my voice. He knew the business, and he knew the job, so my response was simple. “Chris, you’ve had these types of days. It is just a matter of time and training, we’ll work it out.” After Chris hung up, I switched off the ringer on the phone so I would no longer hear if he called.

SimSup was winning the battle and there was little we could do except hunker down, study some more, get more training under our belts, and come back and do it again and again and again. This was the time where “Tough and Competent … Discipline and Morale” took on a real meaning for me. “Morale” was not a new word in our vocabulary. The belief in our mission, our team, and ourselves was the key to our eventual success in Gemini. Morale sustained us during the difficult EVAs and when the Agenas failed to reach orbit. I had to practice what I preached.

Sam Phillips set up a preliminary telephone conference the week before the Flight Readiness Review with George Low, flight surgeon Chuck Berry, and myself at the Houston end; Kennedy Space Center director Rocco Petrone and Deke Slayton were at the Cape. I was surprised at the turn of the meeting when Phillips asked if we each felt comfortable with the schedule. He indicated a willingness to push launch into August if we needed more training time.

We each carefully measured out the time we had remaining to train and figured the few extra days would not buy us that much. Then it came down to Chuck Berry. Chuck was concerned about the crew work load but after stammering a bit about the crew schedule, he also gave a Go. My team was coming up to its peak very smoothly, and I did not want to back off. This was a time when the pressure was good. I think that Phillips also talked to Neil that day, and he got a Go from the crew.

The Flight Readiness Review was conducted on June 17, and there were no major open items. The review went well until Kraft made a few comments about the landing data rules. A free-for-all started, and I was called on to write some specific rules on the communications and data requirements for landing. This issue continued to be debated until the week before flight, and it appeared that some of the folks at headquarters were getting damn nervous about the consequences of a crash, if one occurred. Chris, Cliff, and I agreed on the real rule: that “we must have enough data to reconstruct what went wrong.” This rule left me the maneuvering room to take it right down to the surface before I had to make a land or abort call. Once we were close, I intended to let the crew go if everything appeared okay to them. I considered a low-altitude fire-in-the hole abort more risky than landing without data. I always looked at a fire-in-the-hole abort the same way I looked at a parachute when I was flying jets. You use a parachute only when you have run out of options. The day before the launch, I processed a write-in mission rule change that legitimized this landing philosophy: “The flight director will determine if sufficient data exists to continue the landing.” No computer could make this call—it had to be a human decision.