Failure Is Not an Option

by Gene Kranz

  Buried in the dungeons of the auxiliary computing room was Hal Beck, an early entrant to the Space Task Group. Now he was the chief of the lunar mission design. His work of almost a decade was about to come to fruition. This was payback for the years of freezing at his desk, thermostats turned down to cool the computers in their office complex. Wrapped in sweaters with a heater at his feet in the midst of a broiling Houston summer, Hal represented the labor, the frustration, and the exuberance of almost eight years of work by the mission planners.

  Chances are you have never heard of Hal Beck, who grew up, as many of us did, believing in Buck Rogers. He was one of the unsung heroes of Apollo, of whom there were many. It may not stretch the truth to say that without the likes of him we would not have made it to the Moon.

  The next morning, shortly after dawn, I found myself in Mission Control, wearing a green vest hand-tailored by Marta (on occasion I wore a vest the color of the other leads for their flights). In the Trench, FIDO Jay Greene, RETRO Chuck Deiterich, and Gran Paules—the GUIDO—were racing the clock. The three had joined Flight Control after Gemini and had grown in their skills during the Apollo unmanned missions. Greene and Paules flew their first manned mission on Apollo 7. When the countdown resumed after the planned hold, Jay Greene finished configuring his displays for launch. After he gave the command, “Flight, FIDO is Go for launch,” he muttered a silent prayer that it all worked. In Mission Control, for a few moments, time seemed suspended, everything happening in slow motion. Then in a collective fashion, the momentum built and Mission Control surged forward. Today we would go to the edge of the Moon.

  It was at moments like this that we counted on “Captain Refsmmat,” our imaginary mascot. In the Trench a “refsmmat” is shorthand for “reference to stable member matrix,” a set of equations used among controllers, crews, and flight designers as the mathematical means to determine angles with reference to navigational stars. It is the one constant that ties together all of the other reference systems used during a mission, often as simple as a line drawn from the center of the Earth through the launch pad. With data from navigational stars and a refsmmat, the crew can determine the spacecraft’s position and velocity in space with the spacecraft computer. The guidance officer at the control center is the keeper of the refsmmats during the mission, synchronizing the ground and spacecraft updates so that the computations will always agree.

  The Captain was born during a discussion between John Llewellyn and a newcomer to the Flight Dynamics Branch. Standing by the coffee pot, the rookie asked Llewellyn the name of a controller who had just placed an IOU in the cup next to the pot. Llewellyn responded instantly, “Sheeet, man—that’s Captain Refsmmat, the ideal flight controller! He’s the best we’ve ever had in the Trench.” The new guy nodded knowingly, glad to pick up the name of his new working partners, especially one considered the model for the Trench.

  Ed Pavelka, a gifted FIDO of the Gemini era, heard of Llewellyn’s joke and decided to sketch a picture of Captain Refsmmat for the branch. Within days, a two-foot cartoon was hanging in his office. Almost immediately, ideas from other Trench inhabitants poured in and Captain Refsmmat was outfitted in the tools of his trade. He wore a pot helmet with a hinged top opening to a radar antenna and truth-seeking glasses with a black line inscribed across the lens showing the correct deorbit attitude. He had a supply of refsmmats in a pouch on his belt and a variety of awards and decorations, consistent with his august status as the ideal controller.

  The Captain was a patriot. He wore a crisp military jacket with captain’s bars on the lapel and a pair of khaki shorts. With knobby knees, tennis shoes, and a broad military brassard, he was an apt replica of the ideal. For all of the things wrong in the world, Captain Refsmmat stood for what is right. Pavelka hung the cartoon on a gray metal locker in the hallway, and within days graffiti started to appear, expressing the various controllers’ thoughts, opinions, gotchas. Over the weeks and the months, the graffiti provided an outlet for the working guys’ feelings about their work, their bosses, and life in general.

  Captain Refsmmat lived in Flight Control during the Apollo and Skylab years. He flew our missions, earning his medals for tough assignments and new worlds he had conquered. Today he was the fourth member sitting with the trajectory team in the Trench.

  At 6:51 A.M. Central Standard Time, less than an hour after dawn, Apollo 8 lumbered skyward with Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders on board. The earth orbital check-out and maneuver injecting the spacecraft onto a lunar trajectory was uneventful.

  I was just an observer for this mission but I remember the feelings of pride and relief the instant the Apollo 8 crew left Earth for the Moon. After the launch, my feelings hit a new peak when the translunar injection time came and went. Then when I heard the crew report the maneuver’s completion, it really hit me. I had to get up and walk outside because I was so happy I was crying. Being a bystander in Mission Control is tough—and doubly tough on a flight director and new division chief who had nothing to do except wait and hope and pray.

  Observer status for me was a living hell. I never liked the viewing room, which was reserved for families, politicians, and the wheeler-dealer contractors. I have never felt comfortable with the high rollers, so if I was not on a console I roamed the back rooms, looking for a place to plug in my headset.

  Apollo 8 was one of the best spacecraft ever produced by North American. The systems controllers continually searched their telemetry for the slightest fault, constantly reassuring themselves and their flight directors that, “No, Flight, we don’t have any funnies.” On the second manned flight of the CSM, only seven spacecraft discrepancies were noted. None was major.

  In the early afternoon of December 23, after a brief countdown, a Mission Control wall clock clicked over to 00:00:000—“all balls” in the controllers’ idiom—and civilization crossed another boundary. Now only 30,000 miles from the Moon the Apollo 8 crew had left Earth’s gravity field. At 2:29 P.M. Central Standard Time, mankind for the first time was captured by the Moon’s gravity. The celebration was brief; the pressure mounting, the controllers were already computing the critical lunar orbit insertion maneuver to be executed in fourteen hours.

  During their journey, the crew had not seen the Moon, trusting the computations developed by the Trench. The two midcourse corrections set the conditions for the precise point and time to enter lunar orbit. The numbers were flawless, and as the early afternoon passed in Houston the tension mounted.

  The two midcourse maneuvers had nailed the final trajectory and CapCom Gerry Carr’s call, “You’re Go for lunar orbit insertion,” did not surprise the crew. The spectators in the viewing room hunched forward and the usual buzz of communications ceased. Borman had maneuvered Apollo to the burn attitude. In the control room, the computers had been rechecked and the pregnant waiting continued, with brief moments of banter. As the final minutes counted down, cigarette smoke hovered above the consoles, the room silent.

  “Apollo 8 you’re looking good . . . good all the way . . . ten seconds to loss of signal.”

  After a quick “atta boy” from Bill Anders, the final words came from Jim Lovell: “We’ll see you on the other side.” To the split second, a burst of static marked the expected signal loss. The first humans to see the “far side” of the Moon were now on their own. It would be thirty-two minutes until we saw the crew again and we would know the maneuver result.

  After the time passed for the first of the lunar orbit injection (LOI) maneuvers the controllers scattered to the rest rooms. On their return the Trench changed the ten-by-twenty-foot projection display stretching across the front of the mission control room. For all previous missions the display was the ever familiar track of the spacecraft tracing its path across Earth’s continents and oceans. During the translunar coast period the trajectory from the Earth to the Moon had been depicted as a skinny, stretched-out horizontal S. Now the display screen for the first time in a mission showed the pockmark
ed lunar surface.

  Unable to bear the tension, Cliff Charlesworth stood and muttered to Lunney and Kraft, “I gotta get out of here.” Walking down three flights of stairs, he emerged from Mission Control, lit a Lucky Strike, and began a brisk walk around the two duck ponds in the central plaza of the Manned Spacecraft Center. Frustrated at his inability to control his emotions, he finished his second cigarette, and then purposefully strode back to Mission Control.

  The controllers sat in profound silence, watching the clocks, waiting to see if the burn had come off, reviewing the few options available if it did not. Pavelka no longer checked and rechecked the data. He knew it was right. He also knew it was too late now to make any changes. Every controller’s mind focused on the one event we could only now see in our minds. Was the Apollo engine burning? Did we get a full burn? Did the crew wave off the LOI maneuver and were they now on a return path to the Earth? The minutes never seemed to end. It was like one of those dreams where you have to fight to wake up. Two clocks were counting down to spacecraft acquisition, the moment when we would reacquire communications and data from the CSM and astronauts. The clock now approaching zero was the one all eyes were watching. If the crew waved off, and the maneuver had not been performed, Mission Control would have an early signal acquisition and it would come when the clock reached zero.

  The time came and went, so we knew Apollo 8 had performed the LOI maneuver. The next question was, did we get the planned full burn? Eyes now switched to the second clock. Again, time seemed to hang suspended, unmoving. Suddenly the other clock’s numbers were all zeroes, and within a second of the time predicted, the ground controller announced, “Flight, we’ve had telemetry acquisition.” The controllers murmured in relief, and a brief cheer broke out in the room. Apollo 8 was in the planned lunar orbit.

  While the spectators in the viewing room continued their buzz, Lunney’s controllers heaved a collective sigh of thanks to the trajectory gods, then hunkered down to review the telemetry and tracking data, giving it a meticulous reading. Borman, Lovell, and Anders were in lunar orbit—another event in the sequence of firsts, a new plateau achieved.

  With the tension and anticipation relieved, the Mississippi Gambler, Cliff Charlesworth, lit another Lucky, reached for his coffee cup, and said, “Anyone want any coffee? I’m buying!” I have never seen a broader smile on his face. As the lead flight director, he had pulled the planning, teams, and mission together and he had done it well.

  The rest of us could only wonder, or guess, at how it felt to be the first humans to see the far side of the Moon, coasting silently, now barely sixty miles above the surface. (The Russians, it should be noted, had photographed the “far side” using an unmanned probe.) Kraft, Gilruth, and Low on the back row of the control center could hardly contain themselves. The viewing room was overflowing and the people gathered there stood and cheered wildly before making their own dashes to the rest rooms. Missions are tough on kidneys and bladders.

  During the two revolutions after the burn, the crew excitedly described the craters of the Moon, giving them temporary names to honor the leaders who got them there: Low, Gilruth, Kraft, Paine, Slayton. Craters were named for Grissom, White, and Chaffee, then for Ted Freeman, Elliott See, Charlie Bassett, and C. C. Williams, astronauts who were killed in aircraft accidents, as the Apollo 8 crew called the roll of the courageous test pilots who with their lives provided the foundation for this mission on Christmas Eve 1968.

  Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders were like explorers from ancient days, seeing a new land for the first time and reporting almost constantly during the portion of the orbit on the Moon’s front side, where we could communicate with the crew. Borman, concerned as the crew day approached its twenty-fourth hour, grabbed a two-hour rest break, then demanded that his compatriots get some rest before preparing for their final orbit and the critical trans-Earth injection maneuver that would conclude the lunar phase of the mission and start the homeward-bound leg of their journey.

  I was sitting at the console, reading the flight plan, when, on their ninth orbit of the Moon, Anders began reading from the book of Genesis. It was a surprise, beautiful and timely for this achievement and this day. I felt a chill as Anders said, softly,

  “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

  “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep . . . .

  “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

  Now I was really grateful that I was not working the mission. I was enraptured, transported by the crew’s voices, finding new meaning in the words from Genesis. For those moments, I felt the presence of creation and the Creator. Tears were on my cheeks.

  One orbit later, on the tenth revolution of the Moon, early Christmas morning, the crew left lunar gravity for their return to the planet Earth, forever changing our world, opening the door to a new generation of explorers.

  We grabbed for the lunar prize and we got it on our first shot.

  There was a postscript to this perfect mission. For years we had kidded the recovery team to stay away from the landing point or else we would hit the aircraft carrier. As the guidance system performance improved, this actually became a possibility. The Trench did such a good job for Apollo 8 that Bill Tindall dispatched a letter to the head of the Recovery Division: “Jerry, I’ve done a lot of joking about the spacecraft hitting the carrier, but the more I think about it the less I feel it is a joke. The visual reports of the landing indicated the spacecraft flew right over the carrier and landed only 4,572 meters [2.8 miles] away. This really strikes me as too close. The consequences of hitting the carrier would be catastrophic. I seriously recommend that you relocate the recovery forces at least 8 to 16 kilometers [approximately 5-10 miles] from the target point.”

  14

  1969—THE YEAR OF APOLLO

  There have not been many years in American history to rival 1969. Richard Nixon moved into the White House and across the globe from Northern Ireland to Southeast Asia it was a dangerous world. Senator Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick, probably ending his chances for the presidency. Even more amazing, the Mets won the World Series. Yet it really was the Year of Apollo. The ecological movement kicked into high gear. Apollo 8’s stunning images of the Earth in vibrant color, images never before seen by man until we pushed our way into space, brought home the reality of what we had accomplished in sending men to the Moon. It provided the environmental movement a powerful visual expression of the concept of “Spaceship Earth.”

  Now the images indeed seemed real to those of us who had helped send this craft to the Moon. For a brief moment in December 1968 we had united all humanity. In the coming months, in the greatest adventure of mankind, we would attempt to place two Americans on the surface of the Moon.

  The fast-track effort for Apollo 8 put us behind for the Apollo 9 launch, now just two months away. Our holiday celebrations were brief. My White Team began training two days before the new year. We faced two missions before we could make the landing attempt. I had the Earth orbital flight test of the lunar module, and then on Apollo 10 Lunney would pull the pieces together in a full dress rehearsal of the lunar landing. These were the final months of the campaign to reach the Moon. Although we had few details, the death of the cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov in the flaming crash of the Soyuz 1 capsule in Central Asia in 1967 indicated that the Russians were having problems with their space systems. After an eighteen-month hiatus, the next Russian manned missions, Soyuz 2 and 3, in October 1968, accomplished a rendezvous, but the spacecraft were unable to dock. Docking, an essential technique for space operations, was finally accomplished in January 1969 on the Soyuz 4 and 5 mission. It looked like the Russians were almost three years behind us in operational manned capability.

  My staff kept the division humming as my team prepared for Apollo 9, the last in Earth orbit. It was like Wally Schirra’s flight in many ways, but this time it was a shakedown c
ruise of the lunar module, the last test before we went to the Moon. The lunar module had no heat shield; it could not return to Earth. The test required the CSM and LM to separate to test the LM engines and practice rendezvous, then the two spacecraft had to re-rendezvous and dock for the crew to transfer back from the LM to the CSM for return to Earth. We practiced solo rendezvous with Dave Scott in the CSM in case we had to rescue the LM crew. We had two manned spaceships to operate, a lengthy rendezvous, and a lot of engine testing. As the flight director I would be working with a team of twenty-one personnel, the largest MCC control room team in history. I was concerned that the span of control might be too large for rapid and correct decision making.

  From now through the lunar landing, the missions were on two-month intervals with both MCC control rooms on the second and third floors operating simultaneously. We had a great Apollo crew, and the delay due to moving Apollo 8 into our slot let us get much better acquainted. Our crew consisted of Jim McDivitt, Dave Scott, and Rusty Schweickart. McDivitt and Scott were Gemini veterans and had spent time as CapComs in early Gemini. With the advent of dual spacecraft missions, we referred to the commander of the mission, McDivitt, as CDR; the lunar module pilot, Rusty Schweickart, as LMP; and the command module pilot, Dave Scott, as CMP. Since Scott, like McDivitt, had come up through the program as a CapCom in Mission Control, he was close to the controllers and sent them his pilot’s notes drawn up during preparation for the mission. The controllers would check them for accuracy. Their review helped him create a damn good handbook for future CMPs.