Labyrinth- the Art of Decision-Making
Page 7
Another extraordinary example of applying an inquiry approach to a black swan situation took place a few years later, but in an entirely different environment.
Most of you have probably seen the 1995 Oscar-winning Apollo 13, based on the mission of the same name. The movie, based on the dramatic events that took place during the mission, was directed by Ron Howard, and the lead roles were played by a host of brilliant actors, including Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Kevin Bacon, Kathleen Quinlan, and Ed Harris, who played Gene Kranz, the flight director of Apollo 13 and chief architect of the rescue operation.
Kranz was an extraordinary figure. Fascinated by aviation from a young age, he later developed a passionate interest in the conquest of space. He studied at St. Louis University, where he specialized in aviation and technology, after which he went to the Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, where he trained as a fighter pilot. He served in South Korea as an F-86 Sabre pilot and on his return home began working for the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation. In 1960, he joined NASA.
NASA was created in 1958 by President Dwight Eisenhower, one of a range of initiatives to respond to the USSR’s growing dominance of the competition to conquer space. The Soviets were way ahead of the Americans, not only in the race to be first in space (they had launched Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite, and put the first man into orbit around the planet), but also in the arms race, where an important element of nuclear dominance was an ongoing increase in the quality and quantity of ballistic missiles. 5 Organizations such as NASA, while important for national prestige and self-image, were also crucial to national defense systems. NASA’s first undertaking was the Mercury project, the goal of which was to send the first American into space. It was partially successful in 1961, when Alan Shepard, flying the Freedom 7 spacecraft, completed a fifteen-minute suborbital flight, making him the first US citizen in space. Less than a year later, John Glenn, onboard Friendship 7, made history when he became the first American to make a complete orbital flight. These successes were reflected in the unusually bold vision set out by President Kennedy. On May 25, 1961, speaking before a joint session of Congress, he said:
This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
His words fired the starting gun for the race to win the greatest trophy in the global space conquest tournament: landing man on the Moon.
The Americans set up the Gemini program to build up knowledge and experience that would help them in their later, decisive undertaking, the Apollo series of missions. But while successive Gemini flights were successful, the very first Apollo mission ended in tragedy. A fire broke out in the capsule on January 27, 1967, during a launch rehearsal test, killing the three-man crew. The following five Apollo missions, in which the Saturn V delivery rocket was tested, were unmanned, and it was a full two years, at the end of 1968, before people were once again sent into space—the astronauts onboard Apollo 7. Further missions managed to go into orbit around the Moon (Apollo 10 got positively up close and personal, coming within almost 9 miles of our planet’s natural satellite) and finally the great day arrived. On July 20, 1969, two of the three astronauts in the crew of Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, stood on the surface of the Moon. President Kennedy’s bold vision had become a reality.
Less than a year later, NASA unexpectedly faced one of the most serious problems in its history. On April 11, 1970, punctually at 13:13 the Apollo 13 mission began (anyone feeling superstitious?). Despite the triptych of thirteens, the liftoff from Launch Complex 39 (LC-39) pad A at the Kennedy Space Center went smoothly and the three-man crew—James A. Lovell, Fred Haise Jr., and John Leonard “Jack” Swigert—took off according to plan on a flight whose mission was to be the third US landing on the Moon. The Apollo 13 crew was not a random assortment of colleagues. Commander James Lovell, an experienced US Navy fighter pilot and a graduate of Harvard Business School, was a leading US astronaut and had three flights under his belt—on Gemini 7, Gemini 12, and Apollo 8. In 1969, he was the leader of the backup crew for Apollo 11, so had Neil Armstrong been unable for some reason to participate in the mission, Lovell would have been the first man on the Moon. Although Fred Haise (another graduate of Harvard Business School) and Jack Swigert were on their first space flight, both were highly experienced military pilots. Haise’s task was to fly the Aquarius lunar module, while Swigert was in charge of the Odyssey command module. 6
On April 14, 1970, fifty-five hours and fifty-four minutes into the mission, at 03:08 universal time, a damaged electrical cable caused an explosion in one of the oxygen tanks, which led James Lovell to send back to Earth the famous, albeit frequently misquoted, message “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” The explosion resulted in a dramatic series of consequences that not only put an immediate end to their chances of landing on the Moon, but also put the ability of the crew to return safely in jeopardy. The story of the following eighty-seven hours became one of the most fascinating rescue missions in human history, and it remains a superb example of a practical application of an inquiry approach.
The mission director, Gene Kranz, was in the Mission Operations Control Room in Houston when those on the ground heard Lovell’s fateful words. Immediately after receiving the information about the problems onboard, the leader of Apollo 13 clarified that the explosion had caused the craft to lose power on the main B bus, one of the two main electrical circuits onboard. A moment later the telemetry came back on, and on Earth, a steady flow of automatically generated reports of new malfunctions began arriving: two of the three fuel cells failed, one of the oxygen tanks was completely destroyed, and the pressure was rapidly dropping in the other. The scale of the problems was difficult to imagine. Seymour Liebergot, the mission’s EECOM (Electrical, Environmental, and Consumables Manager), said in an interview that “It was not a single or a double or a triple failure I was looking at. It was a quadruple failure. That was impossible, it just couldn’t happen on that craft,” 7 thus classifying the situation as a black swan. Of course, there was no way the mission could continue, and instead the battle to save the crew began.
Apollo 13 was composed of two independent craft: a command module (CSM), connected to the service module where the explosion occurred, and a lunar module (LM), named Aquarius. Kranz’s team, analyzing the possible scenarios, very quickly came to the conclusion that, as a result of the damage sustained by the command module, the only way to save the crew was to use the LM as a life boat. The LM was equipped with its own power source, as well as oxygen tanks independent of the command module and life support systems for the crew. Houston therefore ordered the astronauts to get into the landing module and to switch off the power in the command module to save power for the return journey—the CSM was the only part of Apollo 13 suited to enter Earth’s atmosphere. If the command module totally ran out of power in the ensuing hours, or if it mechanically failed, the crew would have no chance.
Kranz’s team were faced with making another key decision: how to get the seriously damaged spacecraft to Earth. When Apollo 13 hit problems, it was almost 200,000 miles from Earth and almost 43,000 miles from the Moon. Houston’s challenge was how to plan a flight trajectory when the shortest route (i.e., turning the spacecraft round using its rockets) wasn’t necessarily the best. First of all, it meant dumping the LM; secondly, there was a risk that the command module engine wouldn’t work, as it was beside the site of the explosion. Neither the crew nor mission control had reliable information about the condition of the rocket, so if the CSM turned out to be inoperable after the lunar module was dumped, the crew would be certain to die. A second option, which involved continuing the flight toward the Moon, seemed utterly absurd, but only at first glance. In this scenario,
NASA planned to use the Moon’s gravity to jump-start Apollo 13 and to turn it around and send it on its way home. The spacecraft would have to make a controlled flight around the Moon and then, after a brief blast of the engines, head back to Earth. Two pluses of that option were that it allowed for some emergency alternatives if the engine in the command module failed and it saved fuel; a minus was that it significantly extended the timeline of the whole operation—according to the estimates of Kranz’s team, it would take about forty-eight hours more than the direct return option, which in light of the meager supplies of oxygen in the lander constituted a genuine risk to the astronauts’ lives. A further minus was that this scenario also required those involved to work out a set of totally original solutions and take absolutely nonstandard, previously untested actions.
Kranz brought all the mission control staff together in the main hall and spoke the words that have passed into history as an example of authentic leadership in crisis conditions, at the same time providing a superb example of initiating an inquiry process:
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 find out how to get them home. [... ] The odds are damned long, but we’re damned good.
He then named his team leads and gave a detailed breakdown of what he expected of everyone involved—making clear that communication across the board was crucial to success, that instructions from the team leads were to be followed to the letter, and that if anyone felt they were not the right person for a task assigned to them, they should suggest someone more suitable. His closing words were nothing short of inspirational:
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! 8
Kranz was in an extremely difficult situation—he had to balance the demands of two opposing forces. On the one hand, as he was dealing with a black swan, it was essential to carry out the most thorough and detailed analysis of the data possible, and to then generate the maximum number of potential scenarios. On the other hand, time was of the essence, as every second that passed sucked up the dwindling oxygen supplies.
Stuck in this dichotomy, Kranz was nonetheless certain about a few points. He knew that this was a mission impossible—a rescue operation without parallel in human history. He also knew that any error would be fatal, so he had to make use of every available second to check the data he was going to have to base his decision on. He knew that without involving a broad group of experts in the discussion, from both within NASA and outside the organization, he would have no chance of saving Apollo 13 and its crew. He knew that although the final decision was his to make, success hinged on very precisely defining the responsibilities of the key personnel in the decision-making process and involving them every step of the way.
He was also aware that there wasn’t enough time, resources were limited, and there was absolutely no margin for error.
Kranz recognized that it was fundamental that he involve the largest possible number of experts, from the widest possible range of fields in an open discussion. Every second had to be dedicated to understanding the essence of the problems Houston was struggling with and to generate the maximum number of action scenarios to then be further tested and analyzed. The team instantly abandoned any options that had even a whiff of not being implementable in the time available. All work was constantly checked by the designated leaders, Arnold Aldrich, John Aaron, and William Peters, so that the solutions chosen didn’t threaten to waste the time available for the critical resources on the spacecraft and the entire operation.
Later, Kranz explained that by creating an environment in which everyone believed in their collective ability to save the crew and felt able to speak out for the greater good without worrying about the reactions of their colleagues, the team was able to push forward and focus solely on addressing the crisis.
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. 9
Kranz’s instant decision to deepen the inquiry approach meant inviting engineers from NASA’s subcontractors to join the discussions—the Apollo program was carried out by over five hundred companies, which were responsible for designing and manufacturing various elements of the craft. Among the most important subcontractors were MIT’s Draper Labs, Grumman Aerospace Corporation, and North American Rockwell, whose experts were literally pulled from their beds and catapulted into the work for Kranz’s team. They had to deal with a range of doubts and questions that they had never previously encountered.
The problems with the engines on Apollo 13 required switching off all the spacecraft’s systems until it was time to prepare for re-entry. That gave them a chance of saving the energy that would be required later. The navigational system used the most energy onboard, being essential for the proper administration of all maneuvers during the mission and while landing, making it the prime candidate to be switched off. However, the engineers from Draper Labs, who built the system, were concerned because no one had ever powered down and then restarted the equipment during a flight. The matter was escalated, and a row, albeit a highly constructive one, broke out among the most important personnel. They debated the facts and concrete data that made it clear that leaving the navigational system powered on meant that the electrics would surely fail before the crew made it back home. If they turned the navigation off, however, there was no guarantee that they would be able to restart it successfully, and without it, there would be no return trip. After lengthy analysis and testing, a surprising solution was put forward: leave the navigation on, but turn off the heating and lighting in the module the astronauts were in, which meant a drastic reduction in the temperature inside the Apollo 13 capsule. The idea was put into action, and from that moment on the crew continued the flight in darkness and bitter cold, which was an enormous test of their physical and mental endurance.
Another black swan dealt with in inquiry mode was the matter of the carbon dioxide filters onboard the craft. Increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide during a mission was a relatively routine occurrence, and there were two distinctive square filters, like two large boxes, for cleaning the air on the command module. The unexpected problem stemmed from the crew’s being in the landing module, which enriched the air using its own filters—which were cylindrical. Typical air use in the LM was meant to be at much lower levels (only two people, not three, and for two days, not four), so there were no spare filters, and it rapidly became clear that if they didn’t change the filters, the crew would slowly suffocate. In an unfortunate twist on the old adage about trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, they were faced with trying to make the available square filters fit the canister sockets in the landing module, which could only take round filters. And as if that weren’t enough, they had to do it only using objects already on Apollo 13 and that weren’t required for any other vital tasks. After a whole night of fevered work and endless brainstorming, Ed Smylie’s team in the Johnson Space Center discovered they could use the cardboard covers of the pilot’s manual, some plastic bags, a piece of tubing borrowed from a spare space suit, and large amounts of gaffer tape. Transmitting the idea to Apollo 13 was no easy task in itself, and the crew needed to use a great deal of spatial imagination. The solution worked, though, and two hours later, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the landing module started falling back to safe levels.
All these actions, though, didn’t solve the fundamental dilemma of the increased flight time leading to the power supplies and oxygen running out
. Mission Control therefore decided to switch on the module’s engines, so as to increase Apollo’s speed and reduce the return trip by about ten hours. This decision also came at a cost. Re-entering Earth’s atmosphere in a craft hurtling along at over 25,000 miles an hour was an operation requiring almost surgical precision. The tiniest error could have catastrophic consequences. If they re-entered at too shallow an angle, the module would bounce off the outer layers of the atmosphere, like a skipping stone off water. Too steep an angle would lead to a sudden slowing and the capsule burning up. The safe zone was barely 2 degrees across, which—bearing in mind the massive speed and the still unknown levels of damage sustained by the CSM—posed an extraordinarily difficult challenge.
Before powering up again and starting the re-entry maneuver, the entire procedure was analyzed for hours and simulated on Earth, with the backup crew of Apollo 13 playing an essential role in the process. The final checklist contained over four hundred steps and ran to thirty-nine pages. The job of transmitting it to the CSM fell to Joseph Kerwin, the communications officer, who was supervised throughout by the entire team, including Arnold Aldrich. Dictating the checklist took over two hours, and Jack Swigert used up, among other things, every single cover from the onboard manuals to write it all down.
On April 17, 1970, the crew managed to restore the power on the CSM and the three astronauts left Aquarius to prepare for splashdown. At 1:40 pm, 138 hours after liftoff, the crew detached the service module in which the explosion had taken place from the command module. Photos of the ditched section, which were sent to Houston, showed massive damage, arousing fears about the state of the command module itself. If its outer surface had been even slightly damaged in the explosion, the CSM would never survive re-entry. Three and a half hours later, it was time to say farewell to the LM. The lander was detached and Apollo 13 began its final, decisive maneuver.