Failure Is Not an Option

by Gene Kranz

  While McDivitt was chasing the booster, Ed White did the best he could to complete the preparation for the EVA, which was scheduled to start over Hawaii at the end of the second orbit. McDivitt looked at the timeline. Since the EVA would expose the Gemini and its occupants to a vacuum, with nothing between them and instant death but the thin fabric of their space suits, he decided to postpone the EVA to the following orbit to make sure all checklist items were completed.

  John Aaron, seated with the crew systems engineers at the console, welcomed the delay. It bought them some badly needed time. They had been having trouble keeping in sync with White as he proceeded with his checklist. Using the delay to the third orbit, the astronauts had ticked off the items on the checklist and were now ready for the EVA. Fendell, at Carnarvon, made the call. “Gemini 4, your spacecraft’s looking great. You are Go to depress [depressurize] the spacecraft.”

  The oxygen pressure in the spacecraft was gradually reduced from 5.2 pounds per square inch—one third of what we experience on Earth—to three psi. With the pressure suits inflated, White and McDivitt carefully checked out their suit systems, making sure the lock rings and seals held the suit’s air pressure. They then gradually reduced the cockpit pressure to zero. If the suit sprang a leak or they blew off a glove while they were still inside the capsule and the hatch was still closed, they would have had to respond instantly and repressurize. Once they opened the hatch and started the EVA, they faced a different set of problems. With his suit inflated, it was damn near impossible for a Gemini astronaut to get back into his seat and get enough leverage to close the hatch through which he had exited for the EVA. If a major leak occurred in the suit with the hatch open the astronaut wouldn’t survive.

  Minutes later, after a brief report from the Hawaii CapCom, John Aaron turned to Kraft, gave a thumbs-up, and quietly said, “We’re Go, Flight.” With the Go from Houston, Ed White emerged over Hawaii to his third sunrise in space, decked out in the suit made by highly skilled seamstresses at David Clark, Inc., in Worcester, Massachusetts.

  The world listened mesmerized to the interchange between White, McDivitt, and Gus Grissom, the CapCom at Mission Control during the stateside pass. This was one of those magical moments, like Alan Shepard’s launch and John Glenn’s reentry, that are forever embedded in my memory. Pride, patriotism, and American know-how triumphed that day. We were now neck and neck with the Russians and in the next few minutes would eclipse Leonov’s space walk record. I was happy and proud, almost giddy, but then reminded myself that it was time to get back to business.

  There was no real plan for a sequence and evaluation of the extravehicular activity, so White improvised as he went along. He used his thruster gun to maneuver around the Gemini, from the adapter section to the nose, trailed by his umbilical, reporting on what he could see in space and on Earth. He floated and tumbled for twenty minutes, and clearly was in no hurry to return to the spacecraft.

  As White passed across Florida, Kraft consulted the timeline and told Grissom it was time to terminate the EVA. Grissom briefly stalled Kraft to give White some more time, then Chris repeated, “I said to get him in!” The final crew comments were vivid. McDivitt: “Come on, let’s get back in here before it gets dark.” White replied, “It’s the saddest moment of my life.” McDivitt, sternly: “Well, you’re going to find it sadder when we have to come down with this whole thing.” White, finally yielding to his commander’s orders, reluctantly responded, “I’m coming.”

  The early lessons were always quick in coming. Throughout the EVA, the hatch seal had been exposed to deep space, and with the cold, the seal lost its flexibility. It was a real struggle to get the hatch closed and latched. Once it was closed and the cockpit repressurized, the team decided not to open it again to jettison the EVA equipment. Another rule in Mission Control was “Don’t press your luck.” With the hatch closed, it was time for me to occupy the flight director’s chair for the first time. Kraft handed me the logbook as if it were a baton in a race. With a broad smile, he gave me a nod. “Young man, it’s yours,” he said, then left on a high for the post-EVA press conference.

  Mission Control was mine. My White Team members completed their handovers, and Kraft’s Red Team left for a well-deserved celebration. Marta’s resplendent white vest hung behind the console. No one had seen me bring it into the MCC. What the hell, I made up my mind to put it on. I felt like a matador donning his suit as I put on the vest.

  Dutch Von Ehrenfried, seated to my left, was the first to notice. Rolling his eyes, he buried his head in his arms, then scooted his chair over to mine and said, “If you’re not careful, they’re going to haul you away, then I’ll be in charge.” He rolled back to his console, made a remark on the intercom, and then I noticed the control room TV turn and zoom in on me. Moments later my picture at the console, resplendent in a white vest, was on television throughout the center, as well as the press area. One by one, the controllers reported to me, “Nice vest, Flight!” The next day, a photo of me wearing the vest made newspapers across the country.

  Now that I had decked myself out in Marta’s vest, it was time to clean up the open items, resolve the “funnies,” or anomalies and glitches, get the spacecraft configured for drifting flight, and put the crew to sleep. It was time to go to work as a flight director.

  Throughout the eight hours of my shift the capsule’s orbit, combined with the Earth’s rotation, would take the spacecraft off range and into sparse tracking coverage. At the end of the shift, only the Rose Knot Victor tracking ship would “see” (that is, be able to contact) Gemini 4, once every ninety minutes. (Our official call signs or designators for the two tracking ships were RKV—Rose Knot Victor—and CSQ—Coastal Sentry Quebec.) This period in the mission, with the infrequent contacts, the spacecraft in drifting flight, and the crew asleep, provided an opportunity for detailed analysis of the spacecraft systems and orbital trajectory.

  Mission Control borrowed technology from many eras. Most of the systems the controllers used were cutting-edge, only months removed from the laboratories. One notable exception was borrowed from turn-of-the-century technology. A pneumatic tube system provided the means to transmit messages of all types between the three floors and the work areas used by controllers and computer operators. The P-tube carriers were aluminum cylinders, twelve inches in length and three and one half inches in diameter. A spring-loaded hinged door allowed messages to be placed in the tube.

  The flight dynamics team was a principal user of the P-tube system, exchanging hundreds of messages daily within the complex. During a particularly hectic shift, when Llewellyn and his console partners fell further and further behind in unloading and returning the P-tube carriers, the empty canisters lay scattered on the floor about the consoles. Surveying the litter of canisters Llewellyn, a former Marine, stood up, stretched, and in a voice for all to hear declared: “I think I am back in the trenches again with my fire control team, surrounded by empty 105 howitzer canisters.”

  Inspired by this colorful analogy, “The Trench” was subsequently adopted as a nickname by the flight dynamics team, who used it in their reports and media interviews. Within weeks “The Trench” matchbooks were circulating within the control teams’ ranks—and each subsequent mission contributed fresh additions to their lore and legend. The stage was set for competition among the mission control specialties. The Trench had thrown down the initial gauntlet.

  My White Team quickly settled down to the business at hand. One of the black arts in the Trench, and one of the most critical, was orbit trajectory propagation. As the spacecraft circled the globe, numerous forces worked on the orbit, twisting and shifting it. It is necessary to forecast the spacecraft position hours and often days ahead for flight and maneuver planning. Now flying our longest mission and with only two Gemini missions remaining before the first attempted spacecraft rendezvous, Ed Pavelka, the FIDO, plotted the data, directing the computer controller to periodically input precise changes to the atmospheri
c drag constants. He worked with the same precision he used when tuning the engine on his hot rod.

  As my shift progressed, Gary Coen, my GNC (guidance, navigation, and control) engineer, calculated how much propellant had been used during the Titan rendezvous. Then he turned to forecasting the usage throughout the remainder of the mission. All engineers were reviewing the telemetry for the entire mission, looking for anything, even the slightest deviations from the expected. As they worked, they smoked, and soon the usual pall of blue smoke hung in the air over the consoles. Stale cigarette butts, cold coffee, and day-old pizza made up the scent of Mission Control.

  Mission Control was windowless. No clock referenced us to local time in Houston. Greenwich Mean Time, the local time in England, synchronized us to our stations around the world. Then as now, every action, both in the spacecraft and on the ground, worked to time that started ticking after liftoff—mission elapsed time (MET). Our bodies were the only laggards, responding to the need for food and rest on a schedule corresponding to a sun we couldn’t see.

  Besides the team in the control center, I had Skinny Lewis stationed on the Coastal Sentry Quebec midway between Hawaii and Japan, and the team on Rose Knot Victor also stationed in the Pacific, 1,200 miles southwest of Lima, Peru. The ships on their lonely vigil were the only source of information about the spacecraft’s status for the MCC throughout the last half of my shift.

  Tec Roberts’s new control center was working to perfection. After the Teletype of Mercury, the new Mission Control Center was a giant leap, a window to the New World of space. The Gemini telemetry list had doubled from Mercury. With 225 measurements, I could now review, during a remote site pass, one or two samples of the data seen by the controllers at the site. Trend monitoring of the spacecraft systems was becoming a reality due to the computer and communications breakthroughs generated by the space program.

  The eight hours passed swiftly and my relief was palpable as I started shift handover to Hodge. In many ways, my first shift was like flying an aircraft for the first time. It was great to get back on the ground in one piece. My first shift as a flight director was over and, thank God, it was uneventful. I took off my vest and hung it on the rack at the side of the room. It was a good start.

  Each flight director had another ordeal to endure. After a ten-hour shift (including handovers), he was expected to spend at least an hour at a press conference, feeding news to the hundreds of reporters covering the mission. I depended on the public affairs officer (PAO) just as I relied on my controllers. He would help me through press conferences (they sometimes felt like interrogation sessions) and make sure that the right word got out—and that the flight director’s tail was covered. The PAO really earned his pay when things went wrong. He was our first line of defense—and fortunately we had PAOs who were very good, and unflappable when things got a bit dicey during a mission. They would prep us on how to answer questions likely to come our way, show the flight director how to put his best foot forward—and keep the other one out of his mouth! I never quite got used to seeing my face on TV and in newspaper photos—but Marta assured me that I was the handsomest flight director she had ever married.

  Returning to the MCC, I went to the backroom surgeon to receive my whiskey ration. To assist in getting a good sleep in the center’s bunk room, the military surgeons prescribed a double shot before bedtime. I poured the whiskey into my coffee and I sat silently next to Hodge for the next hour, watching as he led his team and periodically chuffed on his pipe. Pouring booze into a cup of black coffee was dumb, but winding down after a shift was a problem for virtually everybody, and this was the way we did it. There were some nondrinkers in our ranks. They either took pills handed out by the surgeon—or counted sheep.

  Gemini 4 helped create a media misapprehension that I was a Marine. Jim Maloney, a reporter for the Houston Post, a morning newspaper, always covered my late night press conferences. Since the Gemini 4 mission was the first flown from Houston and the first with three flight directors, he wrote an article on Kraft, Hodge, and myself. Adding some color he described me as “an ex-fighter pilot who you would trust with your life. Stocky, crew-cut and blond, Kranz is a bloodthirsty model for a Marine Corps recruiting poster.” The next evening after the press conference I corrected him, “Jim, you got it wrong in your article. I’m Air Force, not a Marine.” He corrected me, saying, “I didn’t say you were a Marine. I said you looked like a poster boy for the Marines! What the hell do you want me to say?” Over the years this clipping was picked up by the national and international media. No matter how many times I corrected it, the image persisted, even to the present day.

  The mission continued through the shift rotations and I slept at the MCC. With five kids, Marta felt my best chance for rest was at Mission Control. She was quietly pleased that I had worn her vest and told me that she would make me a new one for each succeeding mission. Later on, if my team did especially well, I would ask her to make me a splashy one for the landing shift. It became one of the ways I signaled to my team that they had done well.

  My relationship with Kraft had subtly changed. As in judo, there is a relationship between master and student that develops as the student grows in skills. Then one day the master steps aside and a relationship based on a newfound respect begins to grow. Kraft was beginning the process of teaching his brood to be on their own. The flight of Gemini 4 ended in a nearly flawless fashion, a smash hit with Congress, the American public, and the media.

  The mission debriefing indicated we had indeed done well. The team structure was successful and the shakedown cruise of the new control center was a roaring success. We would need every millimeter of technology as each successive mission increased in complexity, duration, and risk. The computers and television displays gave the controllers instant access to hundreds of Gemini measurements. The trajectory data was instantly available to users, and the pneumatic tube eliminated the need for runners—and the distraction caused as they raced around the control room. But most of all, we liked the new Mission Control Center because we no longer had to travel to the Cape and live in motel rooms for day after day.

  Summer 1965

  The Gemini 5 mission was scheduled to last eight days, twice as long as the previous one. It would break the Russian record for endurance in space. Both inside and outside NASA, doctors had expressed doubt that man could adjust to life in zero gravity. Some went so far as to predict that exposure for a long period would probably be fatal, but the astronauts continued to confound the physiologists and the doomsayers. The concerns of the medical communities had been increased by a string of reports coming from the Russians at medical conferences, citing problems in adaptation, crew performance, and post-mission recovery.

  The key to the long duration of Gemini and Apollo flights was replacing batteries with fuel cells for the orbital phase of the missions. Fuel cells represented the leading edge of the science of electrochemistry. They produced electricity from oxygen and hydrogen and, in the process, generated heat and pure water. The oxygen and hydrogen fuels were stored on the Gemini spacecraft in separate thermoslike insulated spheres at temperatures as cold as minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

  The fuel cell technology was so new there were no textbooks and little engineering data. These devices were a good deal more complex than batteries, and when we took this technology into space for the first time I suspected that we would have problems. I began a crash course on fuel cells and cryogenic technology. I was fortunate to have John Aaron as my EECOM. Aaron tutored me relentlessly on “his” electrical systems. Frustrated at trying to absorb the arcane details of the cryogenic systems, I asked, “John, if I opened up one of these tanks, what would I see?” Thinking a few moments, he looked up, his eyes glinted, and he said, “Gene, it would be like trying to look through a super-dense ice fog.”

  The principal unknown member on my team was a new astronaut, Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin. Most of the CapComs in the new groups approached their job with an attitude th
at said, “I’m here, how can I help you?” They learned the people, positions, and prerogatives through the process of training with the teams. Buzz was different, more assured and opinionated from the start. The good news on Aldrin was his pedigree as an Air Force veteran and an F-86 pilot. Four years later I would give him the Go to land on the Moon, but for now he was just a rookie CapCom.

  Returning to my office from the final day of Gemini 5 simulations I was surprised to find several of the controllers standing and talking in my office. As I turned to speak to them I saw a spectacular American flag standing in the corner. The brilliant red, white, and blue contrasted with the gunmetal gray desk. Gold fringe and tassels hung from the eagle at the top of the dark oak staff. I was speechless. I had tried to requisition a flag from NASA many times, but all my requests were ignored. The flags were reserved for the top NASA brass. As I admired the flag, Don Bray, a young controller with the talent of an Army supply sergeant, stepped forward. “Flight, this flag was requisitioned for Mission Control. You’re gonna have to carry it over when we fly. Between missions I think it should stay in your office.” I carried the flag to the MCC for each of the Gemini missions, returning it to my office after splashdown. At the beginning of Apollo we finally acquired a permanent flag for the MCC. The original flag remained in my office and at retirement it became one of my most treasured gifts.