Gene Kranz - Failure Is Not an Option

In the movies, the controllers always stand up and cheer each mission event, but if a controller ever did that before the mission was over and the crew was on the carrier, that would be the last time he sat at a console. There was only one thought now on our minds; all we need now are the parachutes, just the parachutes. The crew was almost home.

Kerwin called again and a few seconds later we heard, “Okay, Joe!” Just two words, but the intensity of the relief was overwhelming. The viewing room, the back rooms, and our instructors erupted again as they saw the chutes blossom on the TV. In the control room each controller has his moment of emotional climax. I find myself crying unabashedly, then I try to suck it in, realizing this is inappropriate. But it doesn’t work; it only gets worse. I was standing at the console crying. When the crew hits the water we once again sit at our consoles. Our job is over only when the crew is on the carrier and we have handed our responsibility to the aircraft carrier task force commander.

When this happened on Apollo 13 we finally realized that Flight Control and the people in the back rooms, factories, and laboratories had won the day. Our crew was home. We—crew, contractors, controllers—had done the impossible. The human factor had carried the day.

I was totally unprepared for the events of the next two weeks. The day following landing the flight directors and I stood on a platform with the wives and families of our crew as we received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on behalf of the mission operations teams. The cheers of our teammates, NASA engineers, and our families rose in crescendo as President Nixon concluded reading the award citation, “Three brave astronauts are alive and on Earth because of their [the mission operations teams’] dedication, and because at the critical moments the people of that team were wise enough and self-possessed enough to make the right decisions. Their extraordinary feat is a tribute to man’s ingenuity, to his resourcefulness and to his courage.” When our glittering technology failed us, our resourcefulness and courage, as well as every bit of the experience gained since the abortive four-inch Mercury launch, had carried the day.

Two weeks later on May 1, 1970, the flight directors and our wives flew to Chicago on the NASA Administrator’s private aircraft for a luncheon and ticker-tape parade. As the aircraft pulled to a stop, the throbbing pulsing tempo of “Aquarius” played by city high school bands filled the air on the tarmac. The tempo matched my heartbeat as we waved to the airport crowd and were greeted by the City Council. During a luncheon at Chicago’s Palmer House, Lovell was awarded the city’s Medal of Merit and we were each given the key to Chicago by Mayor Richard Daley. After lunch Marta and the wives took their place in the reviewing stand as we were escorted to the parade automobiles.

Jim Lovell and Jack Swigert took the lead in a Lincoln convertible. Sig Sjoberg took the second while the flight directors were paired in Cadillac convertibles. Milt Windler and I rode in the third car and were followed by Lunney and Griffin. (Fred Haise did not attend, as he was still recovering from the flight.) The convertibles were flanked by three layers of police, plainclothes men next to the convertible, a second row in crisp uniforms with white gloves, and a third row of police motorcycle escort. Screaming sirens and flashing red lights of the police outriders added to the cacophony. As we passed around the Chicago Loop, fireboats in the Chicago River sent streams of water into the air. The cheers of the crowd made it impossible to talk.

Chicago will always remain in my memory as a class city, and I thanked them for the moments they gave us to bask in the eye of the public. When we returned to the airplane after the exhausting day, a box containing a silver punch bowl was on each of the wives’ seats. (Upon return we each had to submit paperwork to the NASA legal folks to determine whether we could keep the gift from Mayor Daley and the City of Chicago. Since the punch bowls were engraved, the lawyers decided we could keep them.)

I think everyone, once in his life, should be given a ticker-tape parade.

The Apollo 13 debriefing had few surprises. We learned that the tank failure was due to a combination of a design flaw, mishandling during change-out, a draining procedure after a test that damaged the heater circuit, and a poor selection of the telemetry measurement range for the heater temperatures.

The debriefing party at the Hofbraugarten was merciless, beginning with a parody of the mission. The tape prepared by the Apollo 13 backup crew and the CapComs was not for the thin-skinned. The parody began and ended with the “immortal words” Liebergot and I exchanged early in the crisis.

Kranz: “I don’t understand that, Sy.”

Liebergot: “I think we may have had an instrumentation problem, Flight.”

The clips of the voice tapes from the mission and the press conferences were interwoven with a Spike Jones record, gospel music, and various sound effects. No one was spared. As the tape continued, the crews and controllers roared and poured more beer. The tape took a shot at every flight director and crew member, as well as Slayton, Kraft, and even President Nixon. By the time the evening was over the words “I don’t understand that, Sy” were forever embedded in memory.

There were no more missions in 1970. After we snatched victory from the jaws of defeat on Apollo 13, the rest of the year was a time of change, hard work, and frustration as further cuts were ordered in the flight schedule. Winners, however, persevere. We had a job to do and we sure as hell were going to do it. We had four more lunar missions; we had to get the crews to the Moon, attain our objectives, and get those crews back.

The downtime needed for redesign of the service module gave us an opportunity to take a breath and look around. The world was a mess and so was our country. White adults were attacking black children being bused to school. Black Panthers were shooting it out with police in our cities. Four students were killed by the National Guard on the campus at Kent State University. Egypt and Israel were at war, airliners were being bombed or hijacked, and civil wars were erupting around the world.

I was frustrated by the lack of national leadership, the absence of individuals capable of rallying the many voices, putting the pieces back together. I had my own doubts about the war in Vietnam and the course set by the President and political leaders, but I refused to dump the blame for the way the war was going on the military.

The space program was also suffering. The lunar program was coming to an end. With the cancellations of the last Apollo missions—18, 19, and 20—I felt betrayed. It was as if Congress was ripping our heart out, gutting the program we had fought so hard to build. Leadership is fragile. It is more a matter of mind and heart than resources, and it seemed that we no longer had the heart for those things that demanded discipline, commitment, and risk.

The future of our space program after Apollo was a small Earth-orbiting space station dubbed Skylab. Its mission included astronomy, life sciences, Earth studies, and a grab bag of other experiments. The Skylab space station would use the leftover hardware from the canceled Apollo missions.

During the period after the Apollo 13 mission, a small team of controllers continued to follow the redesign of the oxygen system, while others were reassigned to the developing Skylab program. John Llewellyn was one of the controllers reassigned. I believed his trajectory skills could be put to good use in the Skylab Earth studies. John initially was not happy with the reassignment, but I was convinced that he would eventually come around.