Gene Kranz - Failure Is Not an Option

Without a break, the White Team rapidly recycles and, minutes later, gives the crew the “Stay for T2.” We then hunker down for the final Stay NoStay decision.

Sixteen minutes after the T2 Stay, Carlton jolts me with the call, “Flight, the descent engine helium tank pressure is rising rapidly. The back room expects the burst disk to rupture. We want the crew to vent the system.”

My team doesn’t have the opportunity to savor even a few seconds of the euphoria after the landing, as we watch the descent engine helium pressure rise, stabilize, then plummet. Carlton hovers over his telemetry display, anxiety coloring his drawl, then with a deep sigh he says, “Flight, we’re now okay. The pressure has dropped and the system is stable.” From that point on, the Stay decision is a piece of cake, Duke giving the crew the final, “Eagle, you have a Go for extended surface operations.”

Windler and Charlesworth come to the console during the T3 Stay NoStay processes, and prepare to step in if the crew requests an early EVA. There is controlled confusion as elements of two teams circle the consoles, unsure of which team is in charge until I hand over. Tindall walks over, his eyes moist, offers a handshake and says, “Damn, Geno, good show!” The lunar landing techniques were his. I made no proprietary claim on whose show it was. It was a victory for the tens of thousands who worked on and believed in Apollo.

Before leaving for the press conference, I walk to the simulation control room to thank Koos and the training team. The instructors are unbelieving that the last problem given us in training is the one big problem during the landing. (I also learned that Koos, in his haste to get to the MCC for landing, rolled his new red Triumph—a TR3. I thanked God he came out all right.)

While walking across to the press conference with Ward, I finally have time to absorb the full reality of it, in a moment of silence when there is no busy chatter on comm loops and my mind can move into a reflective, rather than reactive, mode. We have just landed on the Moon. In a way, I feel cheated that I didn’t have the chance to savor those seconds as deeply as those who watched. I thank God for being an American, and I think of my team and the way they performed during the landing. More than ever, I appreciate the great training, the unrelenting pressure put on us in getting ready for Apollo 11.

All I want to do is get the press conference over, so I can get back to Mission Control. Today we were perfect, devouring each problem and grasping for each opportunity. When I get back to the control room, Milt Windler is in the process of orchestrating the planning to get the EVA preparation started in about three hours. Cliff Charlesworth is already bringing his team on line. The world is about to witness an explorer setting foot on a New World. I sit with Charlesworth, awaiting Armstrong’s descent from the lunar module to the surface. I am sure of it now—this is the best day of my life.

On July 20, 1969, at 9:56:20 P.M. Houston time, Neil Armstrong steps from the ladder to the surface and, as his boots touch the lunar dust, he declares, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It was worth every sacrifice for this moment. I remember President Kennedy’s words, “We choose to go to the Moon… . We choose to go to the Moon in this decade, and do other things… not because they are easy, but because they are hard!”

I was more teary-eyed in the months after Apollo 11 than at any time in my life. Every time I heard the National Anthem, or looked at the Moon, or thought of my team, I got misty. On August 13, just a few days short of my thirty-sixth birthday, Marta and I were invited along with program managers, designers, controllers, and astronauts to a presidential dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. The Army Drum and Bugle Corps, in their brilliant red jackets, shiny brass, and blue pants kicked off the ceremony with the ruffles and flourishes. If ever I was on a high this was it. After a marvelous evening, a series of awards was presented by President Nixon. Steve Bales, my twenty-six-year-old, bespectacled guidance officer, accepted the Medal of Freedom on behalf of the entire team for flight operations.

I don’t think anyone outside the program ever expected us to succeed on our first attempt at landing on the Moon. Now that we had set the standard we were expected to do it again… and soon.

With six children—some of the girls playing in the band, some cheer-leading, and Mark playing—I spent a lot of time at high school football games every fall. As the harvest moon rose over the stands in the east, I never failed to stare at it with the binoculars, picking out the Apollo 11 landing site, hoping that someday we would continue what we started. I pray that my children will someday feel the triumph, the joy, and the shiver I felt the day we painted the Moon with our Star-Spangled Banner. Their day will come when we put men on Mars or accomplish some other feat where the human factor makes it possible to achieve something that technology, no matter how brilliant and advanced, cannot. We have “slipped the surly bonds of Earth” and our destiny will ultimately lead us to the stars that glow in our deep black night sky, like diamonds scattered on a field of velvet.

On the Moon there was a flag from the Earth, and on Earth there were pieces of rock and soil from the Moon. It seemed a fair exchange.

The days after a mission, and sometimes the weeks, are tough. The euphoria of the missions, coupled with the emotional intensity of the parties and the debriefing with the crew, is followed by a strange kind of emotional decompression, as if you are a diver who has come up from the pressure of the deep sea and has to gradually adjust to the sudden absence of that pressure. We did not have much time to decompress. We also felt like we had pushed our luck; solving the Apollo 11 problems and then landing with only seconds of fuel left was a lot tighter than any of us expected. After the string of successes that started with Apollo 7, I had a nagging premonition that we were about to break this lucky streak. When you get this feeling you keep it to yourself and move forward. That kind of feeling has no place in our business.

The lunar program now focused on pinpoint landings, extending the duration and complexity of the surface activities, and mapping the Moon. There was enough action for everyone. The systems controllers were the crew chiefs for the spacecraft. They were by nature and training tinkerers, mechanics. Living on government pay and raising a family was not easy, so a lot of us saved money by doing our own auto repair work, swapping tools and skills as necessary. You could identify the houses of the NASA guys who personally kept their old, but well-maintained, cars and motorcycles humming along by the oil stains on their driveway. Smooth-running engines and the harmonic rhythm of the valve train were music to their ears.

Whether it was a car or a spacecraft, the systems guys were the experts in diagnosis and providing quick fixes, using the materials and tools at hand. They had a gut knowledge of why things worked and why they broke down. They grew up with the legacy of Aldrich, Brooks, Hannigan, Fendell, and Aaron, the taskmasters who learned their trade in Mercury and Gemini. They were the kind of people you liked to have around when things unraveled. They worked like detectives, suspicious of anything that did not seem to fit, doggedly tracking down every glitch, relishing the opportunity to explain what was, to the rest of us, inexplicable. They would soon prove themselves the ultimate backup when their own systems let them down.