Failure Is Not an Option
Page 12
The accommodations for my branch were short on windows, rest rooms, and decent lighting. The first floor was a huge open warehouse on which we located our gunmetal gray government desks. The secretaries were in pay booths just like those in a movie theater at the end of the hall on the second floor. These facilities would be our home as we closed out Mercury and prepared for Gemini.
In August, with their dual launch of two Vostok spacecraft, the Russians had shown us they were in the race to stay. Their spaceships came within less than three miles of each other. We believed they had intended to rendezvous but didn’t execute the final maneuvers needed to fly formation in the same orbit. For the first time, I thought we might have overestimated their technical capabilities. I respected their accomplishments, but the Russians no longer seemed invincible.
Kennedy’s bold commitment to put a man on the Moon had set America on a faster track. Daily we could see progress in developing the computing, communications, and precision guidance and control technologies we needed. I was confident the tools would be there, but I was concerned that we wouldn’t be smart enough, or at least have sufficient hands-on experience to use them well operationally.
September 1962
It was in the interval between the first scrub of Wally Schirra’s launch and the second attempt that President Kennedy made his speech at Rice University that confirmed his commitment. This time I was more attuned to his words. On a makeshift stage erected on the fifty-yard line at Rice Stadium, Kennedy repeated the question that many had raised: “Some have asked, why go to the Moon? One might as well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why sail the widest ocean?”
Kennedy’s words were to echo across the decades, and we, along with the rest of the country, found out that a noble cause brings out a nation’s best qualities. I now believe that Kennedy fully understood the difficulties before us. I listened closely to his speech, feeling that I was ready to do whatever it took to turn his great dream into reality.
Next up for a Mercury mission was Schirra, a known quantity to the controllers, the astronaut with the best feel for the emerging relationship between the flight crews and ground control. Schirra’s six orbits would be the bridge needed to go from three orbits to a full twenty-four-hour mission. (The medical community’s concerns about man’s ability to adapt to zero G led to conservatively planned incremental increases in mission duration during Mercury and early Gemini. In general, we attempted to double the flight duration of each mission.) I believed that the name of his capsule, Sigma 7, symbolized the sum of all the efforts of design, test, and operations necessary for success in space. For us, it signified teamwork.
Since I had hired Mel Brooks at Houston, he had been quietly transforming the training team. Previous training exercises had focused on the controllers’ knowledge of the mission sequence and had tested simple applications of their judgment on the flight rules.
With the perspective he gained from his satellite operations, Brooks had taken over the training of the flight control team with a single-minded zeal. Think of Alec Guinness in Bridge on the River Kwai. Recognizing their youthful naïveté and technical limitations, Brooks’s training staff attacked us individually and as a team. He went after those he felt were short on theory. He picked apart their communications and forced them to own up and say, “I don’t know.”
As we prepared for the final day of training, Brooks decided Kraft was too dependent on my backing up his every move and anticipating his command and data needs. So he took me by the shoulder, walked up to Kraft, and said, “Kranz is in the hospital. He was injured in an automobile accident coming to the MCC today.” My response was quick. “Dammit, Brooks, what the hell do you think you are doing! This is our last training run.” Kraft, amused by the byplay, said, “It looks like you’ve been benched.” Brooks believed that Kraft should conduct Schirra’s final training simulation without his regular wingman. Von Ehrenfried filled in and did well.
Schirra’s was a textbook flight. But within days of its conclusion the world was again on the brink of war, this time over the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba. I was glad we were not in Florida. My Air Force Reserve unit, among many others, was put on standby status as a showdown between the Soviets and the United States developed.
For almost two weeks, we in the space program were understandably preoccupied by the blockade and possible invasion of Cuba, which could presage an all-out nuclear conflict with Russia. With the two countries “eyeball-to-eyeball,” in the apt phrase of the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, the Russians backed own, turned their ships around, and removed the missiles.
The textbook flight of Schirra cleared the way for Gordo Cooper’s one-day mission to conclude the Mercury program. Cooper’s flight required two MCC control teams and a relocation of the ships to plug the gaps in the network coverage. The length of the flight represented a different test for all of us. The capsule would be out of communication on several orbits for over an hour as Cooper slept. We had no option but to trust the capsule systems. Still, I was less concerned about this mission than any of the preceding ones. The Mercury spacecraft, if used well, was getting the job done. The knowledge level of the controllers was at an all-time high and the remote site teams had proven that they could respond rapidly. The technology was advancing so rapidly that we could now reliably bring the tracking and telemetry data from the Bermuda, California, and Texas tracking stations to the MCC. Now we had almost twenty minutes of continuous data every time the capsule passed over these stations. Since we no longer had to staff these stations with controllers, we had the resources to make decisions in a much more focused and efficient fashion at Mercury Control.
Early 1963
With the New Year, more changes came. Bob Gilruth, director of the Space Task Group, became the director of the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. He was shifting resources to Gemini and Apollo, so the Mercury office was down to less than fifty people.
Marta was in the hospital in labor with our fourth child and for a change I was holding her hand. I had been in Korea for Carmen’s birth, out to lunch during Lucy’s, and just made it back to Virginia for Joan’s. Now the women in Flight Controller Alley decided it was time for me to do my duty. They selected Jim Strickland, a neighbor and systems controller, to carry the message. “Gene, we can carry on here at work. The Alley has decided you should be with Marta, so get home and take care of your wife!” The handholding was an experience in total helplessness. All I could think was to thank God for the courage women have to go through childbirth. Mark, our son and fourth child, was born in Houston in January 1963. We were staying with the Von Ehrenfrieds at the time we think he was conceived, so we have since concluded that drinking a lot of good German beer and living with a family that had two boys in it had a decisive effect. (Twenty-seven years later I again learned how powerless one can be. Mark was hit by a drunk driver. For an entire night Marta and I held his hand while doctors tested for neurological damage. Mark had to endure without medication. He spent the best part of two years in multiple surgeries and therapy before he recovered.)
With the organization in high gear, I prepared for the final Mercury mission. The Air Force Atlas program had suffered two unexplained flight failures. We could not move ahead until we figured out what had gone wrong. Then the Atlas booster to be used for Cooper’s liftoff failed its rollout inspection in San Diego in January. These setbacks had emphasized the need for support from inside the plant to track design changes.
The second Atlas rollout in March was successful and finally we had the flight elements for the final mission. Gordo Cooper’s Faith 7 mission was the first where we would literally fly beyond the coverage of the ground network. The ships Coastal Sentry and Rose Knot were moved to the Pacific Ocean to provide the mid-orbit communications coverage and to support the capsule retrofire sequence preparation. The two ships provided the majority of the controller support during the middle section of the mission while Gordo Cooper was sleeping.
Mel Brooks, in his capacity as SimSup, had achieved a degree of notoriety among the flight control teams as a result of the training exercises for Schirra’s flight. He was forming a new organization for Gemini, and for his farewell training run he unleashed an exercise that tied the control teams and especially the doctors in knots.
Most of the doctors assigned to the remote site teams were military personnel with broad experience; some were Army Airborne and others were Air Force and Navy flight surgeons. Those in Mission Control came from research backgrounds. Brooks was determined to build on their uncommon skills and motivation to create a real-time ready team. While medicine often has occasion for differential diagnoses (i.e., doctors who disagree), Brooks felt that the control teams didn’t need any doctors telling them, “on the one hand . . . but on the other hand.” So he did things like obtain electrocardiograms of people having actual heart attacks and patch those into training tapes. In the final simulation session Brooks had trouble keeping a straight face as tapes peppered with this type of material and instructors simulating astronauts in medical distress ratcheted up the anxiety level in their voices, giving our doctors plenty to think about—and react to. Fast. They quickly learned there was no time to wait until the next pass, and they learned to resolve differing diagnoses very quickly.
Brooks had a field day debriefing the medics and was in a merry mood. His final training run had been a success and now it was time to put on his other hat and become a capsule systems engineer on Hodge’s team for the final Mercury launch.
Shortly before launch, Cooper’s mission was expanded upward from one day to twenty-two orbits, placing the planned landing point near Midway Island in the Pacific. Since Gordo Cooper had been the first astronaut I had met, I was happy to be working his mission and even a tad sentimental about it. I was sure that my remote site controllers were in peak form. With the longer mission duration Kraft and Hodge formed two teams to provide twenty-four-hour coverage at MSC. Only Kraft, Hodge, Huss, Lunney, Aldrich, Llewellyn, and I remained from Kraft’s original Mercury Control team. The new teams were young, but we all were young together in the early years of space.
May 15, 1963, Mercury-Atlas 9
Thirteen seconds after 8:04 in the morning EST, Faith 7 lumbered skyward, and the final mission of the Mercury program was bound for orbit. The early orbits went rapidly. Cooper precisely checked off the procedures for the eleven experiments his capsule carried. On the fourth orbit, he launched a six-inch satellite with a flashing light to test an astronaut’s visual acuity in space. The orbits clicked off, the systems performing perfectly and the early Go NoGo decisions easily made. Mercury Control operated on a two-shift basis for the first time. After the Go NoGo on orbit six, Kraft’s team handed over to John Hodge’s team. In my newly assigned role as assistant flight director Kraft had assigned me to support Hodge’s team. My vision of the flight director’s role in Mercury Control was based on associating with Chris during the pre-mission planning periods and watching him in action during missions. Kraft was called the “Teacher” because of his hands-on mentoring of his young charges. The longer mission duration and infrequent contacts during the mid-orbits of Cooper’s mission allowed me to study another flight director at work, John Hodge. Hodge was different from Kraft, less on edge and more dependent on his team members. I quickly sized up John as a flight director who sought to obtain consensus in selecting a direction and one totally at ease with his people—but not with his role as their leader. John was a damn nice guy.
Cooper, a celestial observer, enjoyed the middle period in drifting flight, with all the capsule systems powered down. His thirty-four-hour mission would take him through twenty-two orbits. With the control center, network, and capsule systems reacting flawlessly, it was easy to get lost in Cooper’s descriptions of the view from orbit.
When things are going well, the controllers slip into a mode of relaxed awareness. You tune your senses keenly to pick up even the slightest departure from the norm; it seems that you have a second sense running in the background, almost subliminal, that can pick up the slightest deviation. It could be a minor glitch in a telemetry measurement, a procedural step overlooked, or an unexpected observation from the astronaut. It can be the tone of voice of another controller. When you are well tuned, a second sense kicks in, looking for something out of order while you proceed with the normal or routine. The mission continued in this fashion through the nineteenth orbit.
Kraft’s team was in charge as the mission entered the gate for the final three orbits. The recovery forces were calling in, and Llewellyn, checking the retro times, anticipated a perfect finish for the final mission.
Emerging from the network coverage gap at Hawaii, Cooper began reporting to Scott Carpenter, his CapCom: “Scott, I wonder if you would relay to the Cape a little situation I had happen and see what they think of it. My .05G telelight came on after the light check. I have turned off both the .05G normal and emergency fuses. Relay it to them and get their idea on it, over.” The telelight was indicating that the capsule was sensing the onset of reentry gravity.
Mel Brooks, seated next to Arnie Aldrich at the systems console, unfolded his schematics and began tracing the .05G circuitry. After a brief consultation with Mel, Arnie reported to Kraft, “Chris, the signal that illuminated on Cooper’s panel changes the operation of the automatic control system. It is used to provide a steady roll rate and dampen the capsule motions during entry.” After giving Kraft a few seconds to digest his input, Arnie continued, “With the .05G indication, the automatic system cannot be used for retrofire. I’d like to do a few tests with Gordo.”
The joint testing began over the Cape and continued through the next orbit, with Cooper reporting the test results to John Glenn, the CapCom on board the Coastal Sentry. The testing confirmed that the automatic system had malfunctioned and was in reentry mode. Cooper was informed that retrofire would have to be performed manually, but after retrofire was completed the automatic system would be usable for the final phases of entry.
So far everything had gone well. The team had responded to the glitch, the controllers smoothly regrouping and updating the retrofire and entry procedures. I kicked into gear, getting the new reentry plans out on the Teletype and setting up the backup communications to the Coastal Sentry.
You can feel the atmosphere of a crisis center; it is almost like sensing the change in pressure when a storm moves in. In Mercury Control it consists of the noise level of the room—conversations change from an informal banter to crisp dialogue, thick manuals thump open, small huddles form at the consoles. The feeling is unmistakable, and when problems developed for Faith 7 I nonetheless felt secure: the teams were poised, professional, and competent.
I was confident that whatever the problem, Mercury Control and the remote site teams could handle it. The last-minute decision to expand from sixteen orbits to twenty-two got Cooper’s mission into the record books as the third longest manned spaceflight. The Russians had flown sixty-four orbits with Andrian Nikolayev, and forty-eight orbits with Pavel Popovich. Cooper’s flight now edged out Gherman Titov’s seventeen orbits. The increased duration however, moved the landing point from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, resulting in reduced coverage at the time of retrofire and reentry. As the capsule moved toward its deorbit point, only three sites remained on the ground track. Cooper had worked around the small glitch in the .05G circuit by the twenty-first orbit and everything was returning to normal operation. Then all hell broke loose.
Jim Tomberlin’s job at Zanzibar was to complete the stowage and pre-retro checklists so that Gordo had an “all green” capsule, as he coasted to the Coastal Sentry site in the Pacific Ocean south of Japa
n, where John Glenn was CapCom.
Jim started reading the checklist only to be interrupted by Cooper. “Zanzibar, I have one item for you. My automatic control system inverter has failed, so I will be making a manual entry.” Tomberlin, momentarily startled, asked, “Has the automatic system inverter failed?” Cooper responded, “That is affirmative.”
Like a tennis match, Tomberlin again volleyed, “Have you tried the standby inverter?” Cooper’s response came like a firecracker, “Roger, it would not start.” Mystified, Tomberlin replied, “Roger. Then we better get on with the checklist now. Attitude permission to bypass.”
“Roger, retro rocket arm to manual,” Cooper replied.
The checklist dialogue continued for the next four minutes and when completed, Tomberlin switched gears and started a review of the backup procedures. During the six-minute pass, Gordo and the Mercury team at Zanzibar had prepared Faith 7 for retrofire and reviewed the backup procedure, and a potentially serious problem had been quickly addressed. We had come a long way in the two years and ten days since Alan Shepard’s launch.