by Gene Kranz
I took the advertisement home and talked to Marta. That evening I wrote a letter to the Space Task Group requesting an application for employment. My bosses, Ralph Saylor and George Doerner, applauded my choice, but the pilots thought it was a bad call. They derided the civilian space program because the equipment was wingless and fully automatic; the spacecraft were able to function just as well without pilots, they said. They thought man should go into space in winged rocket ships like the X-15.
Test pilots labeled Project Mercury a Mickey Mouse operation, a man in a can. Then they said, “Everything they launch blows up!” The rockets did have an unfortunate tendency at launch to keel over on their side, a scene that reappeared frequently in the newsreels. Of the nineteen unmanned U.S. rockets launched in 1959, nine failed their missions.
In spite of the risk, I felt I had to press on. I had chosen my direction. I believed that space was the future.
I was hired sight unseen, as virtually all of us were in those early days. I mailed my application and a few weeks later received a phone call saying I had been accepted. This was how fast the agency was moving.
Driving into Hampton, Virginia, on a dreary, rainy day in October 1960, I felt lost. My unease was not just a product of changing jobs. I missed the desert, missed flying, and suspected that I had made a disastrous mistake. Maybe the pilots were right. Maybe this was a Mickey Mouse deal.
Marta and I checked into a motel on Military Drive and camped out there while we looked for a house with enough room for us and our daughters, Carmen and Lucy. (Little did I know then that I would not be spending much time at home for the next three years.) I was familiar with Langley Air Force Base from my flying days, but the material sent to me by NASA gave a much deeper perspective. Congress had funded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1915 “to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight, with a view to their practical solution.” In 1917, the first aeronautical laboratory was built at Langley. This was the cradle of early aviation and, as I drove around the base in search of my new home, I felt a reverence for the early pioneers who worked in the labs.
Most of the two-story red-brick buildings dated to the 1930s and seemed to emit a musty antique smell. The people of the Space Task Group were young, much like the members of my squadrons in the Air Force. But the similarity ended there. Just looking at the people, you sensed they were radically different.
In the military, everyone was cut from a common stencil that allowed only minor variations. Those in the Space Task Group were a rainbow of personalities, mannerisms, and speech. They were friendly, almost collegial, but they did not seem to have the intensity and focus I had experienced elsewhere. They seemed to be dreamers, dealing in ideas rather than actions. I wondered what the hell I had gotten into and how I would fit in.
I reported to the personnel office and was directed to walk across the alley to the operations building to find Chris Critzos, the administrative assistant for operations, who had hired me from Holloman. Critzos, a natty dresser with a nasal inflection to his voice, took me down the corridor to my new office. Over the years, I learned to respect Critzos for his ability to slice through rivers of red tape. He was the mechanic who got things done, and I don’t think he ever failed. There were no doors on the offices, so we walked in. The introductions to my office mates were brief and businesslike.
Paul Havenstein was an engineer and a naval officer detailed to work in establishing Mercury Control. Another engineer, a guy named Paul Johnson, was working on the remote sites. A third, Sigurd Sjoberg, was the assistant to the Mercury flight director, Chris Kraft.
Havenstein and Johnson, while pleasant, continued an intense conversation. Only Sjoberg seemed to acknowledge me. I was taken immediately by his friendliness and sincerity. Just talking to him brought a smile, but as I listened to him I saw a depth, a passion, that frequently broke to the surface like a trout taking a fly. Sjoberg handed me off to Johnson to learn about my new job.
This was the first clue I had about the work I would do. Johnson gave me a three-page job description of my position on the control team and an IBM book on Mercury Control. I had been onboard only minutes, and the job description was Greek to me. Johnson said he would get with me later, which, of course, turned out to be those all-too-short two weeks at Cape Canaveral. But even when he wasn’t around, he was still my guardian angel in my first, uncertain months in the program.
The people of the group were friendly, but unlike the Air Force they did not go out of their way to make a stranger welcome. Their reserve, combined with their preoccupations, made it tough to get started. Gradually, I got to know the rest of the office: John Hibbert from Bell Labs, the Englishman John Hodge, and Kraft, who answered to Chuck Mathews, the operations division chief.
Intense and high-energy types from Britain and Canada milled around like Boy Scouts at their first camp trying to figure out where to place the tents and campfire. They filled critical positions in every work area and much of the important midlevel leadership. Fred Matthews, Tecwyn Roberts, Rodney Rose, and John Hodge seemed to be everywhere, covering every base. Months later I found this was the elite Avro flight test and design team. When the Avro Arrow, the world’s top performing interceptor aircraft, was canceled by the Canadian government, the engineers came south to the United States and into the Space Task Group, providing much of the instant maturity and leadership needed for Mercury.
I found it difficult to believe that the people in my building were the core of the team that would put an American in space. For the first time in my life I felt lost, unqualified, but no one sensed my confusion. Then I thought, maybe they feel just like me. All I knew was that the clock was ticking down to the next launch and, after the Space Task Group’s first Mercury-Atlas launch disaster, this one had better work.
Behind the friendly faces there was an air of formality and an informal pecking order not represented on any organization chart. The local people talked about Tidewater, their little spot in Virginia, as though it was heaven on earth. After coming from the desert and mountains, I wondered if they had ever been out of their home state. The Tidewater group was like a country club, with a bunch of unwritten rules that only the longtime members knew. I soon found that I had some measuring up to do.
Kraft advised me to dress up. No more sport shirts and khakis. Then a few days later he said, “Let the secretaries do your work.” I had been doing my own typing and other office functions and had offended his secretary. I was out of step. Everyone seemed to be busy and moving to some cadence that I did not hear. I wondered whether I had come so far to be that saddest of all figures, an unnecessary man.
Hampton, Virginia, 1960
During the second week, I started to grasp the lines of authority. Kraft’s role was like the operations officer in a squadron. He called the shots, assigned the resources. Kraft’s leadership style was to state a position that he had thought through and see who would challenge him. Familiar with his technique, Sjoberg and Hodge would rise to the bait. Kraft liked to lead and at times deliberately injected an emotional content into the discussions by overstating a position, just to see how strongly others felt. Chris and Hodge could really get going, but with Sjoberg acting as moderator it stayed friendly.
I was just an observer and, while most of the dialogue went over my head, I slowly came to realize that since there were no books written on spaceflight, these few were writing them as they went along. This was their style. It was time to join them and pick up part of the workload. I knew about flying, systems, procedures, and checklists. I started to figure out how and where to use my background to fit in. It wasn’t easy, nor did I expect it to be.
By the time the Gemini program got rolling, I knew my job much better. I looked forward to stepping into the flight director’s shoes and taking charge.
6
GEMINI—THE TWINS
The astrologers loved the Gemini project. Gemini was one of the twelve constellations
of the zodiac, the sign of the Twins, and one controlled by Mercury—a perfect label for a spacecraft flying a two-man crew. This program would be the training ground for the lunar landing. To reach the Moon, we needed to develop new skills in mission planning, in the rendezvous and docking of two spaceships, in performing on-orbit maneuvers. Computers had to be abruptly yanked out of laboratories and made operational. Our mission duration had to virtually double with each flight until we reached fourteen days, the longest possible lunar mission duration.
Then there was the matter of pride. We were tired of being second best in space. We were reaching for the brass ring, an American manned space record. With two spacecraft, the manned Gemini and the unmanned Agena rendezvous target, we doubled our risk and the burden of responsibility. We now had two guys with fishbowls on their heads, sharing a cramped cabin and flying higher and farther than anyone before them. They were also flying untested state-of-the-art systems.
The Gemini spacecraft looked like the Mercury capsule, but if you peeled off the skin, you could see a profound difference. An onboard computer provided the capabilities for precision navigation and maneuvers. Fuel cells and cryogenics allowed longer mission duration, bipropellant rocket engines were more efficient, and the propellant fuels were storable.
The Gemini technologies were new and alien, the engineering so complex it bordered on pure science. My engineering knowledge had expanded only in a practical sense after my college years. With the exception of a brief experience with a computer on board the supersonic F-100 Super Sabre, my knowledge of digital systems was nonexistent. I was a dinosaur stumbling forward into a technical revolution.
Tec Roberts’s digitalized control center was taking shape at the new Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. Many of us were quite nervous about, even suspicious of, computers, but they were inevitable. Automation allowed us to stay ahead of the escalating risks of spaceflight. With radically improved ground data systems and a deeper knowledge of the Gemini spacecraft systems, we gained greater control from the ground and enhanced our capability to support the astronauts. This was a whole new ballgame.
The tracking stations were now using digital systems and 2.4 kilobit/ second high-speed data transmissions. The Mercury requirement for multiple voice communications was relaxed to once per orbit for Gemini, allowing the thirteen manned Mercury sites to be reduced to six, including the two tracking ships. The Mercury veterans gave us a foundation to build on. Now, with only six sites to staff, the control team skills were the highest in our brief history. We reinforced our existing teams with the first generation of college graduates who had grown up in space. Young engineers schooled in the new technologies were matched with the Mercury veterans, and jointly they marched to the edge of knowledge, technology, and experience.
During the Gemini years, the Kranz family continued to grow. We were back to girls. Our daughter Brigid was born on February 15, 1964. We considered her and Mark our “twins” because they were born eleven months apart. That was a pretty tight formation.
After Gordon Cooper splashed down in May of 1963, nearly two years passed between the last Mercury and the first manned Gemini launch—twenty-two months and one week. We needed every precious minute.
The Mercury debriefings indicated that in the unforgiving and fast-moving world of space, the personal abilities of controllers and the quality of data feeding into the console were key to the controllers’ performance. “Learn by doing” kicked into high gear in Project Gemini. Flight controllers from my branch deployed to the contractor facilities, returning with bundles of the drawings used to manufacture and test the spacecraft and boosters. We studied the manufacturing and test data and then prepared schematics and performance plots on each of the spacecraft systems. This data was then used in our classroom studies, also taught by the controllers. When the schematics and training were completed, the controllers turned to the flight procedures, then to the mission rules.
Only after we thoroughly understood the design and operation of the spacecraft, did controllers focus on the Mission Control Center, designing our displays and laying out our consoles. During the years preceding our first Gemini mission, we lived as a team, accumulating vital data, preparing the mission plan, and teaching each other. We were ready to start only when we trusted our data and trusted each other.
The relationships that developed between the controllers and their families on Flight Controller Alley were both personal and professional, and it was not long before they turned to the social and the athletic. One evening while standing on the corner talking, Dutch casually stated, “How about coming out to Ellington with me tonight? I’m thinking about starting to play judo again. They have a pretty good coach who is forming a team.” This invitation started me on a decade-long love for the sport of judo, the “gentle art.” When I was issued the invitation, I did not know that Dutch and John Llewellyn had been playing the sport for years and were brown and black belts, respectively. I was the new guy on the block. Our primary instructor was the Houston Marine recruiting sergeant, and his team was topnotch in the Armed Forces Judo Association, in which we competed for promotion.
We looked forward to moving into our new permanent offices at NASA near Clear Lake, outside Houston. Inside the old Stahl-Myers plant where we had been, the constant hassle to make more room for the incoming rookie controllers had us all but sitting in each other’s laps.
I compounded the floor space problem there when I brought in a cockpit trainer for the controllers. Electrical cords stretched across the floor and under the drafting boards and desks. People treaded lightly near the mockup, walking around it like a swamp. But I wanted the control team to know the cockpit as well as the crew did. I spent hours in the plywood and cardboard replica until it became as familiar to me as my console in the Mission Control Center. The controllers practiced blindfold drills, sitting in the cockpit, reaching out and touching each switch or running through each of the checklists until they had the intuitive feel for the crew’s every procedure. That was comparable to what we did when preparing to fly jets. We would have a blindfolded cockpit drill, with an instructor leaning over your shoulder. This enabled you to find any switch, at any time, under any flight environment. That was exactly the kind of proficiency and self-confidence I wanted my controllers to develop.
Shortly after noon, on November 22, 1963, Maureen Bowen, Mel Brooks’s secretary, burst into my office, her face drained and white. She said, “Kennedy has been shot in Dallas. Connie just heard it on the radio!” The shock spread through the building. We hung on to each radio report. Someone found a television set and we congregated around the drafting tables. Tears were coursing down the faces of Kennedy’s moonstruck recruits. John Kennedy had inspired us with his vision. One by one, we left work to grieve in private. The flag was at half-staff in our hearts.
The vice president, Lyndon Johnson, who as the Senate majority leader had been instrumental in passing the Space Act, was sworn in as the thirty-sixth President on the plane that carried Kennedy’s body back to Washington. We now looked to him for leadership. We were confident that he would carry out JFK’s commitment. But none of us will ever forget what it was like to live through that incredibly sad weekend when America came to a stop, stunned by this tragedy. At Mission Control and throughout NASA, in our hearts we resolved to honor John Kennedy’s memory by meeting the challenge he had set for us.
Midway through the interval between Mercury and Gemini, Hodge, Lunney, and I were named as flight directors for the Gemini and Apollo missions. The short intervals between the planned missions (less than two months), high flight rate (up to six missions per year), and long flight duration (up to fourteen days) demanded around-the-clock operations in Mission Control. The announcement in August of 1964 was a hell of a nice present for my thirty-first birthday. I was no longer flying Kraft’s wing; I now had my own team to lead. To differentiate the teams for training and mission support, the flight directors chose identifying colors. Kraft chos
e red for his team, Hodge blue, and I selected white for mine. At a later date, Lunney chose black as his team color.
In Mercury, the decision process seemed to be a shared responsibility between Kraft and Walt Williams. At the conclusion of Mercury, Kraft knew that the flight director must have the authority to make the final decision and more autonomy within his team. The operations director’s role had to be advisory rather than supervisory. Kraft’s job description, when he was Mercury flight director, had included words such as “directs, controls, monitors, and approves.” But Chris had gotten tired of having someone sitting above him. For Gemini, he began rewriting the definition. The mission rules are the flight director’s bible, and in that document he inserted this new description:
The flight director may, after analysis of a flight, take any action necessary for mission success.
This was about as clear as a job description will ever get. So the flight director no longer shared authority. He was now the guy in charge.
We had plenty of other job descriptions to lay out. For example, the Titan II booster for Gemini was equipped with a primary and secondary guidance system, plus the ability to switch between the systems in flight. Since the switchover cues were determined by the flight trajectory, a guidance position was established in the trajectory team.