by Gene Kranz
Risk is normally highest during the launch phase. Decisions must be made rapidly and the teamwork must be precise, for the results are irreversible. With Kraft closely monitoring us, Hodge and I worked up to the position of launch flight director by demonstrating our skills at risk judgment and rapid and correct decision making under pressure. Working with Kraft in Mercury and early on in Gemini I had been an understudy for the flight director’s part. On occasion during training or testing for these early missions Kraft gave me the helm at Mission Control. Hodge had launched Gemini 8 and now he assigned me to launch Gemini 9. He made me the lead flight director. Kraft, the teacher, was now handing over the baton to the new generation of flight directors.
A Gemini launch took about six minutes. The launch simulation begins with the final five minutes of the countdown, the Mission Control Go NoGo, and then liftoff. Some launch simulations might end only seconds after launch with a call for a crew ejection. Other exercises might be hours in duration if we screwed up and got into orbit when we should have aborted. In those situations we were required to solve the problem we had created.
The launch phase of the mission was the toughest to prepare for. The flight director, the Mission Control team, and the astronauts had to be tuned to perfection for this phase to make the most fundamental decisions—continue the mission or abort. The real-time decisions were made with the entire world listening and watching. So our simulation dress rehearsals had to come as close to reality—and the unpredictable—as possible. We took a quantum leap forward when we got digital computers and systems that worked faster and faster with each new upgrade. They brought us into that virtual reality that made simulation training almost indistinguishable from the real thing, particularly as the missions became more complex. This technology also replicated the atmosphere—the tension and intensity—that prevailed in actual missions.
Technology and training were pushing us to the ultimate standard: failure was not an option. In simulation and in real time controllers knew that if the team made the right decisions, we would accomplish the mission and bring our men home safely. If we were wrong in real time, we would ruin the mission and the crew might be killed.
In the course of an abort training session, for example, eight to ten simulated launches were run in a six-to eight-hour day. Some sessions might be only seconds in duration, demanding instant decisions for an on-or near-the-pad abort. These were perhaps the most intense. I remember one when Kraft, in the middle of a training run, his nerves and reflexes set at a hair-trigger level, unexpectedly threw the abort switch and shouted “Abort! Abort!” After the crew in the capsule simulator got the abort information from Control and responded right on the money, Chris got on the intercom and asked, “Who said ‘abort’?” In a somewhat embarrassing postmortem debriefing, it turned out that no controller had called and there was no reason to perform an abort. The only voice Chris had heard was his own. We kidded him about this for years afterward—but we all knew that any one of us, when we were primed and on edge, could have done the same thing. Not doing it was an important part of what a simulation was all about. As a Catholic, I found debriefings were almost like confessing my sins to a priest—except that this was done over a microphone, so the whole “congregation” heard my mea culpas, particularly when I had to say what all of us learned to say: “I don’t know.” Knowing what we didn’t know was how we kept people from getting killed.
May 1966
The Gemini 9 mission was a brute, and the two-month turnaround went far too swiftly. Gene Cernan and Tom Stafford were my crew. Cernan was the easiest of the third group of astronauts to know. On the first four Gemini missions, he worked as the booster tanks monitor or a CapCom.
In the eyes of the controllers, Gene was one of us. I knew Cernan in a different way. The Catholic priest at my church, Father Eugene Cargill, was also Gene’s chaplain. The padre was invited to the Cape for launches and was a familiar face at the crew’s splashdown parties. Father Cargill followed our missions closely and always gave a special blessing at the morning mass before my missions as flight director.
Although I knew Cernan, Stafford, with a wide smile and a perpetual hoarseness to his voice, was a bit harder to get a fix on. He kept his opinions to himself, generally letting Cernan talk. Tom was in the second astronaut class, out of the Air Force, studious and balanced, while Cernan’s antics were characteristic of Navy pilots who land airplanes on aircraft carriers. Cernan was my favorite for his carefree and jovial attitude, unabashed patriotism, and close personal relationship with the controllers. He was also a skilled systems guy.
Gemini 9 had virtually everything packed into the first seventy-two hours of the mission—three different rendezvous techniques being tested for Apollo, a docking, and a space walk by Cernan with a jet backpack. The Air Force proposed that Cernan fly the jetpack without being tethered to the Gemini. Slayton and Kraft made their position clear: “He will fly without a tether over our dead bodies.” The Air Force lost that argument.
May 17, 1966, Gemini 9
Things did not go well on the Atlas/Agena launch. Twenty seconds before cutoff, we lost control when the Atlas engines swung abruptly to the side, spinning the rocket. For the second time, the Agena target was reduced to junk as bits and pieces crashed into the Atlantic. There was no question the controllers were beginning to feel snake-bit as we passed the word to Stafford and Cernan and scrubbed the Gemini countdown. Before we left Mission Control, we had received orders to develop a backup mission. There was no party that night at the Singing Wheel, but by now our team had developed a resilience that we believed could overcome this and any other difficulty.
The Gemini program office had directed McDonnell Aircraft to develop a backup rendezvous target. The target was called the augmented target docking adapter (ATDA). It was assembled using the nose (aerodynamic) shroud, docking collar, and command system from an Agena and a reentry attitude control package from a Gemini. The whole lashup was launched on an Atlas rocket. The backup could perform every Agena function except on-orbit maneuvering. The most distinguishing characteristic was the ten-foot aerodynamic nose shroud that opened like a clamshell and was jettisoned after launch phase to expose the docking system. My control team, aware of the backup option, had developed procedures, rules, and plans for the mission. The remote teams were advised to remain at their sites and we began a two-week turnaround for the backup mission. To keep the paperwork straight, the mission was renamed Gemini 9A.
June 1, 1966, Gemini 9A
The ATDA launch on June 1 went well, reaching the planned circular orbit at an altitude of 160 nautical miles. I passed the good news to Stafford and Cernan on Pad 19 and continued counting down to the second launch. As the target passed in its orbit over Bermuda, the ATDA controller, Jim Saultz, passed a warning on to me. “Flight, I think we’ve got some problems with the ATDA. We’re using the attitude control fuel like crazy, and I did not see telemetry indications of the nose shroud separation.” Five minutes later, after reviewing the target’s telemetry data, the Canary Island CapCom advised me, “Flight, we’re really hosing out the fuel. I recommend we secure the attitude control jets before we lose it all.” My response was brief, “Go ahead, shut it off.” In less than twelve minutes of flight we had used one of the two tanks that supplied fuel to the ATDA attitude thrusters.
I turned to Saultz and ordered, “Jim, keep me advised of any further developments. I’m going to follow the Gemini-Titan launch countdown from now on.” The mission rules for launch were simple: as long as the ATDA was in an orbit suitable for the three planned rendezvous demonstrations we were Go to launch the Gemini 9. Docking with the ATDA was considered a secondary objective.
The Gemini countdown entered the scheduled hold at launch minus three minutes, while waiting for the precise liftoff time needed to set up the orbital conditions for rendezvous on the third orbit. During the brief hold in the countdown, the ground test equipment computed the exact steering information to guid
e the Titan into the ATDA orbit. When the countdown resumed, the ground support equipment failed to provide the update to the Titan guidance. The launch was scrubbed for forty-eight hours.
During the two-day turnaround period, we conducted several tests with the ATDA using ground commands to extend and retract the docking mechanism and fire the attitude control jets to kick the shroud loose. We concluded that the target nose shroud was only partially deployed. While we regrouped, the Titan team fixed the electronics box that had failed to send the update.
The crew, the control team, and myself were briefed by the team at the Cape that had installed the shroud. They concluded that a safing pin had not been removed from the band and as a result the sequence had started but the band had not separated, leaving the shroud unopened.
June 3, 1966, Gemini 9A
Second Launch Attempt
The countdown was virtually perfect for our third try at getting Stafford and Cernan off the ground. After giving the launch team the word, “Mission Control is Go for launch,” I stood up and put on my vest. By now everyone was used to the bit with the vest. But this one was radically different from any I had worn previously. All earlier vests, while different in style and material, were solid white. After my second Gemini 9 launch scrub, Marta made a splashy vest of gold and silver brocade over white satin. She thought I needed a bit of good luck for my third launch try.
When I put this vest on, Kraft made a few wry comments. Looking up and through the glass into the viewing room, I could see people pointing. The vest had made a hell of an impact on the visitors; now I just hoped it brought my team and the crew a bit of luck.
There is no feeling in the world like a launch day. The controllers, launch team, and crew are a single entity bound by a mission, the atmosphere brittle and electric. The clock provides the cadence as we grind through the procedures, events, and tests. In the final minutes prior to launch, I began the flight director’s ritual, locking the doors of the control room after the final status check.
For the last sixty seconds the voice calls are all programmed, there is no superfluous chatter, all reports are crisp and formal. We were like sprinters in our blocks, waiting for the starter’s gun. Alas, the automatic launch update again failed, so my GUIDO (guidance officer) manually transmitted the commands, ramming them home in the allotted forty-second window.
In the final seconds, it turned eerily quiet in the control room. The controllers scanned their displays, absorbing and assessing hundreds of pieces of data. The only sound was the incessant finger tapping against the consoles or the nervous clicking of ballpoint pens. Relief from the tension comes only when the launch team calls, “Auto sequence start . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one and engine start!” Approaching zero, I felt like I was flying an aircraft for the first time. My adrenaline reached a peak, and then there was icy calm at the moment of commitment. I was ready and I felt great. In a few moments, when the rocket cleared the launch tower, the ballgame was ours. I never had a controller get the shakes during a mission—the nervous types were weeded out or else looked at the job and knew it wasn’t the right one for them.
“Flight, liftoff, 13:39:33 [7:39 A.M. CST]. The clocks have started.” Recording the liftoff time, I decided this new vest was really lucky. We were finally on our way, the crew and controllers crisply reporting launch events as the Titan accelerated, arching skyward, reaching for its target orbit in space. The work, sweat, and frustration now paid off with a perfect orbital cutoff. After separation, and then another maneuver, Stafford and Cernan were racing toward their rendezvous target. Their maneuvers inexorably closed the distance between the two spacecraft, the crew and ground perfectly executing the procedures, the team harmony and rhythm fluid and dynamic. Approaching the end of the third orbit over Hawaii, Gemini 9 slid smoothly into position, flying formation with the target.
As Stafford maneuvered, Cernan gave a running commentary during the approach, finally confirming our suspicion that the shroud had not separated. From a distance of a few feet away Stafford said, “The clamshell is open wide, the band holding it together is at the front. I believe the rear bolts were fired, and we can see the springs. The band is holding the whole mess together. It looks like an angry alligator.”
While the crew remained as observers, I directed my team to send a series of rapid attitude maneuver commands to attempt to shake the shroud loose. The crew saw the target’s motion as the thrusters fired, then reported, “No joy. It’s not doing any good. You might as well save the fuel.” With this new data, and to buy some time to develop other alternatives, we passed the crew maneuver data for the second planned rendezvous of the mission. This maneuver thrusted them away from the Earth and, if perfectly executed, placed them onto a football-type trajectory, returning to the target in exactly one orbit.
My Agena controllers left the console to attend a meeting with engineering to assess any reasonable shroud jettison alternatives. (Just to make life more confusing, we continued to have our controllers use the Agena call sign, despite the fact that on this mission the target vehicle was not an Agena rocket but a target made up of spare parts from Agena and Gemini.) After an hour and a half, they returned, reporting no one saw any way to separate the shroud. With Gemini’s orbit moving toward the area of sparse network coverage, I felt it was time to call it a day and get the crew moving toward the sleep period. A maneuver was passed to separate from the target and set up the conditions for the third and final rendezvous on my shift in the morning.
Lunney had been standing by during the second rendezvous, and at handover his Black Team took to the consoles in Mission Control. During my press conference most of the correspondents tried to engage me in speculation about a comment made by Stafford to Cernan that, “We might be able to nudge the target shroud off with the nose of the Gemini.”
During my shift I quickly discouraged Stafford from contemplating such a maneuver, and I did not want to give it any more credibility via the media. I advised the press, “Our priorities are to accomplish the three rendezvous, a complex EVA, and a bunch of experiments. Docking, while an objective, is now only frosting on the cake.” I paused, then added, “There is a lot of energy still stored in the thrusters in the shroud. When and if that band comes loose, I want Gemini long gone.”
After the press conference I went home for supper and some fresh clothing, then returned to the sleeping quarters above the lobby of Mission Control. Prior to hitting the sack, I went to the control room to check in with Lunney. I was surprised to find Cliff Charlesworth in Lunney’s chair. Cliff said, “They called Glynn to a meeting in the controller ready room to discuss tomorrow’s EVA.” I hit my boiling point in a second as I exclaimed, “What EVA?”
Cliff responded, “They want to do an EVA to release the shroud.”
Next to the sleeping quarters was a ready room for the controllers to observe TV mission status and listen to the other controllers and crew communications while relaxing before or after a shift. The lounge is on a floor midway between the two control room floors and I took the stairs two at a time in my haste to get there.
When I opened the door, the ready room was loaded. Present was an array of NASA’s top leadership: George Mueller, NASA associate administrator; Chuck Mathews, program manager; Robert Gilruth, center director; as well as Kraft, Slayton, Dr. Charles Berry, and assorted astronauts. Glynn Lunney, the only flight controller present, looked up as I entered, rolled his eyes, and silently raised his hands in exasperation. Standing up, he walked over and said, “They’re talking about doing an EVA to release the shroud.”
I was livid. The last word I had left was that in no case would we plan to try to release the shroud. Kraft saw my expression, walked over, and said, “Dammit, control yourself and settle down. No decision has been made yet.” As I watched, I concluded that astronaut Buzz Aldrin was the principal proponent of the gamble, since he was animatedly discussing possible procedures to release the band. William Schneider, the G
emini 9 headquarters mission director, motioned me to the corner, briefed me on the discussion, then asked me for my opinion. My response was tart: “Bill, there is little to gain, the risk is high, and I don’t want to compromise the planned objectives. This is nothing I will support.” Kraft, standing, was studying me, wondering what else I was going to say when my turn came.
I had been expecting some wild scheme since we first learned of the shroud problem. While politics was not my long suit, I knew enough to address my comments to the real players, Mueller, Mathews, and Gilruth. They seemed to be the swing votes. I could not yet figure out who was for the EVA besides Aldrin.
It was obvious that the top brass knew little about the shroud mechanism, so for about ten minutes I briefed them on the details. Then I talked about what the ATDA EVA would require Stafford to do—station-keeping with the ATDA while Cernan, free-floating on the umbilical with no handholds or footholds, tried to cut the band or pull the safing pin. Summarizing my argument, I said, “There is a lot of stored energy in the ATDA shroud mechanism. It is cocked and ready to fire and I don’t see any way to safely get it loose. When it separates I don’t want an astronaut or even the spacecraft in the vicinity. This is only our second EVA and it is already sporty enough. When we return to the target tomorrow morning, we will have completed our primary rendezvous objectives. The planned EVA is long and complex and Cernan should do the one he trained for. When we get this done, we will have done damned well on this mission.”