Gene Kranz - Failure Is Not an Option

My footsteps echo as I walk down the high, narrow gray hallway to the control room. I have the same feeling every time I walk into the MCC. It is a place where history is being made, day by day. It is the home base, the control center for our explorers. As I continue down the hall, I get my usual vague feeling that somehow my entire life has been shaped by a power greater than me to bring me to this place, at this time.

Our target today is the Moon, traveling 2,287 miles per hour in its orbit. Mountainous, pelted by micro-meteorites, and with craters 180 miles across, it is about one fourth the size of Earth. With only one sixth of Earth’s gravity, it has no air, no moisture. The temperatures range from plus to minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit during the two-week-long lunar days and nights. This heavenly body has never seen an earthling, never felt a footstep. But, as the scientific evidence from Apollo will help confirm, Luna is our geophysical sibling, separated from us in the violent formation of Spaceship Earth.

The mission operations control room door is heavy, and entering the room, I again realize how small it really is considering the magnitude of operations that take place in it. My eyes have difficulty adjusting to the heavy gray-blue gloom cast by the world map and the dimmed lights over the Trench. I listen to the ambient voice level of the room. It is always the first indication of what is going on. Today it is quiet. Lunney’s team is busy closing out its shift, and a lot of messages are being read by the CapCom.

I glance at the TV of the flight plan to the right of the room. The astronauts are awake and well into post-sleep activities. Many of my White Team controllers are on the console and already starting handover. Jerry Bostick, chief of the Flight Dynamics Branch, is standing behind the Trench, listening to his controllers. He is tall, thin, wears a coat, and has allowed his black hair to grow long; he used to have a crew cut like mine. He is in the process of taking a pulse check on his people. Bostick is like some permanent fixture in the MCC; I wonder if he ever sleeps because he is always there, standing behind his controllers, head cocked, coaching his people.

The coat rack is overly full. It swings like a pendulum and it threatens to tip over as I hang up my sport coat. The trip to the flight director console is like walking through a minefield, dodging books, lunches, and the spaghetti of headset cords. The room smells of cigarettes, with an overlay of pizza, stale sandwiches, full wastebaskets, and coffee that has burned onto the hot plates. The smell has never changed since we opened the control center four years ago.

A bouquet of roses glows red against the gray wall of the Mission Control room. The bouquet always arrives as we near launch day for the Apollo missions. The accompanying card simply states “from an admirer.” Initially they came from Dallas, subsequently from various Canadian cities, and then the eastern United States. The sender became known among the controllers simply as the “flower lady.” For us they were a tangible link with someone who represented the hopes and good wishes of the millions who cheered us on as we pushed deeper into space. We would not know the name of this anonymous supporter until the end of the Apollo mission, when we received, for the first time, a card signed with only the sender’s first name, Cindy. It became almost a talisman; the launch flight director always wanted to know that the flowers had arrived—and they always had every time. We placed the flowers in a vase on a small table to the right and beneath the operation room’s ten-by-ten-foot TV screen. This was in the area where we normally congregated to celebrate a successful mission. We knew that the TV cameras would pick up the roses sitting there in the background, thus showing our appreciation to the unknown well-wisher.

I talk briefly to each of the controllers, touch them on the back, and say, “How’s it going?” I snag a brownie to go with my coffee as I pass by the procedures console. I hang my silver and white brocade vest behind the flight director console, deposit my lunch in a drawer, place my Cokes in the refrigerator, and continue across to the exit, to the spacecraft analysis room. The SPAN room log tells me what the engineers are working on, and today it indicates that everything is normal.

Mission Control during critical events is like a magnet, drawing controllers and astronauts close to the action. Every person not working a shift tries to find a place to plug in his headset. Each console has four communications outlets and as the landing time approaches, every outlet is filled. Since the astronaut observers do not have support staff rooms to hang out in, they burrow into obscure corners to find a place to plug in. Today, a bunch of them have found their home in the SPAN area. I do not blame them. Today, we will watch Armstrong and Aldrin open a new chapter in the history of exploration.

Once we start the descent, we will have very little time to avoid disaster if things go wrong.

We have a ringside seat; the only better one is in the spacecraft. My final stop is the simulation control area; I want to say thanks to SimSup Dick Koos and his team. To my surprise, he is not there. Having finished my circuit of the control and support areas I return to the flight director console. Lunney would never be awarded the Good Housekeeping award for the condition in which he leaves the console, so I set about to clean up the debris and make room for my flight books. Lunney and Windler are not cigarette smokers, so I dig around to find an ashtray. Lighting a cigarette, I pull my headset from the pouch and plug in on the left side of the console, punching up the intercom loops to listen to my team as they conclude handover.

Everything is going smoothly, so I start reading the logs for all the shifts since I was last on console. Kraft arrives, and as he passes behind me, he pats me on the shoulder and says, “Good luck, young man!” He does not have to say more. He occupied this chair from Mercury to the Apollo 1 fire. I wonder how his stomach is today and whether his customary supply of milk is safely tucked away in the refrigerator. The last person to wish me good luck as he leaves the control room is John Hodge, who, like Kraft, has closed out his era in Mission Control and moved into the ranks of management. A new generation of controllers, many mentored by him, are now on the consoles.

Lunney finishes updating the log and indicates the crew has been ahead of schedule all morning. He, Bostick, and the FIDO have been trying to resolve a 500-pound weight discrepancy during much of the shift and have fine-tuned the maneuver times to an exquisite level. Lunney ends his log with the comment that much of the work is trivial… “all peanuts.”

Preoccupied, I put on my vest and move my gear to the right side of the console. I notice that the space artist Bob McCall is seated on the console step to my right. (NASA had run a competition to select artists to document the program. McCall was one of those chosen.) Looking over his shoulder briefly, I marvel at his work as he rapidly makes a series of pencil sketches of people in the room. I select my TV displays, bring up my intercom loops on the panel, and make the first entry in the flight log: “95: 41:00 MET White Team—descent, crew in LM, pressurizing preps—all looks good.” I adjust the intercom foot switch and call the controllers to give me an “amber” and check in. A small status light panel is at the top of my console. Each controller can signal me with the colored light to give his status. A green light signals “I’m Go!” Amber has several connotations, among them “console handover is in progress” or” I’m currently away from the console” or “I’ve got a problem, call me when you have time.” A red controller status gets a flight director’s immediate attention. It indicates that the controller has a serious problem or is preparing to call an abort.