Gene Kranz - Failure Is Not an Option

The room was getting crowded and noisy as even more people tried to force their way inside. Quickly scanning the crowd, and then motioning to my White Team controllers, I said, “We have to cut this team down to size and get some order. There is plenty to do and this room is too full to get anything done. I want the White Team to look around the room and if you see anyone that you don’t need, send them back to their consoles.” Several of the controllers, program managers, and spectators left voluntarily, gingerly stepping around the recorder paper strewn on the floor.

I turned to Chuck Stough, my trusted flight planner. “Chuck, you’re the recorder. I want you to get with the Trench and the flight planners and build me a work plan on every decision we need and when we need to do it.” Then I addressed the people remaining in the room.

“Okay, team, we have a hell of a problem. There has been some type of explosion on board the spacecraft. We still don’t know what happened. We are on the long return around the Moon and it is our job to figure out how to get them home.

“From now on the White Team is off-line. Lunney, Griffin, and Windler will sit the console shifts. We will return only for two major events. The first will be a maneuver, if we decide to do one, after we have passed the Moon. The second will be the final reentry. The odds are damned long, but we’re damned good.

“My three leads will be Aldrich, Peters, and Aaron. Make sure everyone, and I mean everyone, knows the mandate I’m giving them. Aldrich will be the master of the integrated checklist for the reentry phase. He will build the checklist for the CSM from the time we start power-up until the crew is on the water.

“John Aaron will develop the checklist strategy and has the spacecraft resources. He will build and control the budgets for the electrical, water, life support, and any other resources to get us home. Whatever he says goes. He has absolute veto authority over any use of our consumables.

“Bill Peters will focus on the lunar module lifeboat. There are probably a lot of things we have not considered and he will lead the effort on how to turn a two-man, two-day spacecraft into one that will last for four days with three men.

“Whatever any of these three ask of you, you will do.

“Now, I’m addressing myself to the program office and design engineers in the room. Aldrich, Aaron, and Peters need numbers, answers to questions, and unlimited access to your resources. They will ask for things you never thought you would be called on to do and to answer questions you never expected to be asked. I want nothing held back, no margins, no reserves. If you don’t have an answer, they need your best judgment and they need it now. Whatever happens we will not second-guess you. Everything goes in the pot.

“My message to everyone is: rely on your own judgment, update your data as you go along. If you are not the right person, step aside and send me someone who is. When you leave this room you will pass no uncertainty to our people. They must become believers if we are to succeed.”

I moved to the blackboard. “Okay, now let’s get down to work and come up with our initial shopping list. Then I want Aldrich, Aaron, and Peters to select a work area and pull their pieces of the job together.”

In real time I used the same brainstorming techniques used in mission rules or training debriefings, thinking out loud so that everyone understood the options, alternatives, risks, and uncertainties of every path. The controllers, engineers, and support team chipped in, correcting me, bringing up new alternatives, and challenging my intended direction. This approach had been perfected over years, but it had to be disciplined, not a free-for-all. The lead controllers and I acted as moderators, sometimes brusquely terminating discussions with “Close it,” or “It’ll take too much,” or “We’ve tried it before, it didn’t work!” Often the response was simply, “Save it for our last-ditch try.”

With a team working in this fashion, not concerned with voicing their opinions freely and without worrying about hurting anyone’s feelings, we saved time. Everyone became a part of the solution. For the next fifteen minutes, we brainstormed out loud. Astronauts and engineers were assigned to teams, rooms selected, and working schedules arranged. The session concluded with a brief update from the Trench on the trajectory options. Then I took a deep breath and concluded the meeting.

“Okay, listen up. When you leave this room, you must leave believing that this crew is coming home . I don’t give a damn about the odds and I don’t give a damn that we’ve never done anything like this before. Flight control will never lose an American in space. You’ve got to believe, your people have got to believe, that this crew is coming home. Now let’s get going!”

In the control room upstairs, Lunney had completed the evacuation of the crew to the LM and was preparing for a small maneuver that would place the spacecraft on a path to return to Earth. After completing the Tiger Team meeting, I went back to the control room to get a status update from Lunney. Glynn was now concerned about powering down the navigation system. He had been advised by astronauts Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan, in the simulators, about the difficulties of performing an alignment while docked, using the LM optics. The navigation platform (gyros) is aligned using stars and a sextantlike device. Sunlight reflecting off the CSM made it difficult to recognize the navigation stars.

The crew’s report that they could not recognize stars due to the cloud of debris surrounding the spacecraft further convinced Lunney that we needed to keep the LM computer and display system powered up until we completed the get-home maneuver. Then we could power down and coast back to Earth. The risk was high, trading electrical power to keep the computer and navigation system on line against the possibility that we might be unable to realign the navigation platform. Without a navigation platform we could not perform the maneuver to accelerate the return to Earth. If we ran out of power, we could not get into position for reentry. We were playing showdown poker; we needed to get a better hand.

I tracked Aaron down and gave him this new complication, telling him that he should make it his number one priority. Aaron said, “I don’t have to run the numbers all out, but I can tell you that if you take this approach, you will have to power down to a survival-level, limited telemetry, a very late power-up for entry, and the possibility that some of the systems may fail due to the cold. It is going to be tough on the crew. Some of the systems may freeze up.”

“John, the best judgment we have,” I replied, “says that we cannot realign the navigation system. I think this is our only option. Get on it!” Aaron’s problem just got a lot tougher. His group set up their camp in the support rooms adjacent to my home base in the data room. John Aaron would not return to the console until the final shift four days later.

The next set of estimates were grim. We were twenty hours short in electrical power and thirty-six hours short in water for the return trip. I kicked myself for overlooking water as the most critical resource. Water is used for cooling LM equipment, for drinking, and for food preparation. I dug rapidly into a “how goes it” sheet Peters had made for me. We had water for about sixty hours available in the LM descent stage and fourteen hours in the ascent. We weren’t even close. I was now grateful for the time we had spent before the mission in the mission rules, flight planning, and procedures meetings developing options and workarounds for all conceivable spacecraft failures. We knew when the chips were down we could use the command module survival water, condensed sweat, and even the crew’s urine in place of the LM water to cool the systems.