by Gene Kranz
Griffin and I decided to do it a bit differently, handing over to the new generation of flight directors in lunar orbit. We felt it was important to pass the torch so that a new generation, born in Apollo, would lead the teams into the future. Griffin’s Gold Team became Neil Hutchinson’s Silver Team for the return journey to Earth.
Chuck (Skinny) Lewis, one of five college students in the first class of flight controllers, a graduate of the Zanzibar site and my wingman for many missions, assumed command of my White Team, now dubbed the Bronze. Just as Kraft had passed me the baton in real time, I now passed it to Lewis.
On occasion, flight directors take over the CapCom’s job in selecting the crew wake-up music. For Lewis’s first prime shift, bringing the crew home from lunar orbit, Griffin and I selected “Light My Fire,” by the Doors (listed as the Lettermen in the flight director’s log), to welcome a new generation of flight directors. It was time for Lewis to fly solo, so I moved to the viewing room as he gave his Go to bring home the command module, America.
• • •
For the splashdown, I continued a tradition established in Gemini 9. If my team had done especially well I would wear a celebration vest. Splashy, gaudy, it was my way of saying, “Thanks, well done.” Marta knew how I felt about leaving the console. We both shared the pride in my work, in the Mission Control teams, and in America.
Marta made a surprise vest, my final vest as a flight director, for the Apollo 17 landing. It was a spectacular creation, and the favorite of all my vests, made of a metallic thread with broad red, white, and blue stripes, the colors of our flag and also the colors of the first three flight directors. For me the vest stood for America, President Kennedy, outer space, the many firsts, and the Brotherhood of Flight Control.
Proudly displaying my resplendent vest, I said thanks to my bosses and my teams, and, “Thanks, America, for the privilege of serving you.” When the crew’s feet hit the deck of the carrier, I lit the traditional cigar and cried like a baby. I cried for hours.
Flight directors’ colors are retired just like numbers on football jerseys. At retirement, a proclamation is read declaring that the color will never be used again. The proclamation is hung on the wall of the control room in which the flight director last served.
The words of the proclamations are written by one’s peers, the only people who matter in our business. Mine read,
Whereas his leadership and inspiration molded the flight control team, which was vital to the first rendezvous, manned lunar exploration, and the study of man, Earth, stars, and technology.
Be it resolved that on behalf of the personnel of the Flight Control Division, the color “White” be retired from the list of active flight control teams to forever stand in tribute to “White Flight,” Eugene F. Kranz.
My proclamation now joined with those of the pioneer flight directors on the wall of the third-floor Mission Control room at the Johnson Space Center. Over the years other proclamations would be added, including one recognizing the honorary Gray flight director, Bill Tindall. We were all members of the Brotherhood who opened the door to space.
EPILOGUE
The success of the early American space program was a tribute to the leadership of a politically adept NASA Administrator and a relatively small number of engineers, scientists, and project managers who formed and led NASA in the early years. This team, with the technologies it created, reached for and attained a goal that many of its peers thought impossible. A clear goal, a powerful mandate, and a unified team allowed the United States to move from a distant second in space into a preeminent position during my tenure at Mission Control.
Entering the twenty-first century, we have an unimaginable array of technology and a generation of young Americans schooled in these technologies. With our powerful economy, we can do anything we set our mind to do. Yet we stand with our feet firmly planted on the ground when we could be exploring the universe.
Three decades ago, in a top story of the century, Americans placed six flags on the Moon. Today we no longer try for new and bold space achievements; instead we celebrate the anniversaries of the past.
In the 1960s just beyond the midpoint of the twentieth century, we were a restless nation when a young President, John F. Kennedy, awakened us to our responsibilities and the opportunities we had to make our nation and our world better. Overnight it seemed we became a nation committed to causes. Young and old marched for civil rights, or journeyed to foreign lands in the newly formed Peace Corps. Pictures of Earth from space gave new emphasis to the environmental movement, and again people marched. While we often moved to different cadences, our nation was alive with ideals. We were in motion. Violence was everywhere but so was a conviction that we must somehow make this a better world.
Thirty years later I feel a sense of frustration that the causes that advanced us so rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s seem to have vanished from the national consciousness. We have become a nation of spectators, unwilling to take risks or act on strong beliefs. Since I grew up in the world of manned space exploration, I am particularly frustrated that we have abandoned the frontier that was opened in the 1960s. The American space industries and the NASA team that built and operated the spacecraft no longer exist. The proud spacecraft design and manufacturing teams at Grumman, North American, and McDonnell are only a memory.
Since my retirement from the space program in 1994 I have spoken to over a hundred thousand Americans in hundreds of business, professional, and civic forums. The story of our early years in space, of tragedy and ultimate triumph, has awakened Americans to the power of a dream and of clear goals. I believe there is a widespread interest in space that can be focused to support a public mandate for space exploration. The four steps needed to return to a visionary space program are:
First, put space on the national agenda. Space is not currently deemed a priority. There is no established constituency to lobby on behalf of space exploration. No current candidate for President has taken a strong position on space.
NASA, its contractors, and the technical space societies represent a sizable asset that with proper leadership and a single voice could bring space back onto the national agenda. As a federal agency, NASA is prohibited from lobbying on its own behalf. It can, however, provide appropriate information and educational materials that its employees and contractors need in order to make the case for a new and long-term effort in space.
A large corps of NASA and contractor alumni exists in every state in the union. The space technical societies and the NASA Alumni League must assume the leadership, and they must be supported by the rank and file of NASA and its contractors. We must all move into the public arena, speak at business and civic forums, and go into the schools in order to reach every sector of American society to carry the message of space. Unless every person who has ever worked on or dreamed of probing far into outer space is willing to make this commitment we cannot succeed.
Second, revitalize NASA. Lacking a clear goal the team that placed an American on the Moon, NASA, has become just another federal bureaucracy beset by competing agendas and unable to establish discipline within its structure. Although NASA has an amazing array of technology and the most talented workforce in history, it lacks top-level vision. It began its retreat from the inherent risks of space exploration after the Challenger accident. During the last decade its retreat has turned into a rout. The NASA Administrator is appointed by the President and to a great degree represents the current President’s views on space. If space is put on the national agenda for the coming national election, a newly elected President will have the opportunity to select new top-level NASA leadership that is committed and willing to take the steps to rebuild the space agency and get America’s space program moving again.
Third, develop a long-range plan for space. The last set of clear goals for space was produced in 1986 by a national commission that included Neil Armstrong, Chuck Yeager, Gerard O’Neill (CEO, Geostar Corporation), Jeane Kirkpatrick (f
ormer U.S. ambassador to the U.N.), Thomas Paine (former NASA Administrator), and many others. The report, entitled Pioneering the Space Frontier, was developed through a series of fifteen public forums held across the country and represented the opinions of a substantial portion of the public on the future of the civilian space program. The goals defined in 1986 are as good today as they were a decade and a half ago. We do not need to engage in another round of studies. We must establish a plan to meet the goals of the National Commission on Space.
The report, which was written shortly after the Challenger accident, projected the next fifty years of the space age and deliberated on NASA’s goals for the next twenty years. It articulated A Pioneering Mission for the Twenty-first-Century America:
To lead the exploration and development of the space frontier, advancing science, technology, and enterprise, and building institutions and systems that make accessible vast new resources and support human settlements beyond Earth orbit, from the highlands of the Moon to the plains of Mars.
Fourth, engage Congress in the space program. NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin, responding to a Clinton White House foreign policy initiative, brought Russia into the space station program as a major program element without the support of the U.S. Congress. The subsequent redesign of the space station, abrogation of existing contracts, and program delays cost NASA valuable support within Congress. Reinvigorating the space program entails significant costs and cannot happen without strong congressional leadership and support. NASA needs a new Administrator, someone who knows how to represent the space program in the political arena, someone like its second administrator, James Webb, who was a master of the bureaucratic process and a skilled builder of support alliances. A new Administrator with a clear set of goals, supported by an energized and vocal space alumni, can build a mandate for space.
A long-term national commitment to explore the universe is an essential investment in the future of our nation—and in our beautiful but environmentally challenged planet. An American-led program of multinational space exploration is a critical test of our intention to continue as a world leader in the twenty-first century. Only through such commitments will we inspire the youth of the coming century to step forward to preserve and protect the future of our nation and the rest of mankind. Only in this way will we develop new and difficult technologies, and make the scientific discoveries required to sustain our way of life and to make our world better.
This book began with the dream given to my generation, but I believe that President John F. Kennedy was addressing all generations to come when he said:
The United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward, and so will space . . . .
Well, space is there and we are going to climb it, and the Moon and the planets are there. And as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.
Our work is unfinished.
My wish as I close this book is that one day soon, a new generation of Americans will find the national leadership, the spirit, and the courage to go boldly forward and complete what we started.
Eugene F. Kranz
Dickinson, Texas, December 1999
WHERE THEY ARE
The original astronaut Class of ’59 went their separate ways. Four survived to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the first lunar landing in July 1999. Astronauts present at the Cape for two days of commemoration and celebration on July 16 and 17 included Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, Wally Schirra, John Young, Charlie Duke, Al Worden, and Walt Cunningham, as well our leader, George Mueller. Duke, Young, and Armstrong joined us for the celebrations in Houston.
Others were at a funeral that took place the day before the thirtieth anniversary. Pete Conrad, one of the astronauts from the second group selected, was killed in a motorcycle accident. He was deeply missed, another “missing man” in the formation, a formation that included gallant men like Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton (who died of brain cancer in 1993) as well as Ted Freeman, Charlie Bassett, C. C. Williams, and Elliott See, who died in aircraft accidents before they could get their chance to reach for space—and the three others who would live in our collective memories forever, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.
In 1988, after the Challenger accident, we made a change in the Mission Control emblem, inserting a comet, a symbol of risk and sacrifice that served as a reminder of the individuals who gave their lives for space exploration. We lost astronauts and we lost controllers, among them Cliff Charlesworth, Dick Thorson, Tec Roberts, Carl Huss, Ted White, Scott Hamner, and many others. We also lost Bill Tindall and many others who, though not flight controllers, made our work possible. Like comets, they all swept through the sky casting brightness in their wake—and then they were gone.
For those that remained the years were good to us.
• In 1974, I became deputy of NASA Mission Operations and in 1983, director. I continued my work in Mission Control with the controllers, flight designers, planners, and instructors and was assigned additional responsibilities for all aspects of Shuttle flight operations including design and development of MCC and simulation facilities and preparation of the Shuttle flight software.
• My final hours in Mission Control came during the December 1993 Shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. I retired from NASA in March 1994 and have never returned to the Mission Control room.
• In retirement I returned to aviation. I constructed an acrobatic biplane and flew as engineer on a B-17 Flying Fortress. I speak on the space program to at least sixty to seventy professional, civic, and youth groups each year.
• Chris Kraft retired from NASA in 1982. He served in many corporate and civic roles including as director-at-large of the Houston Chamber of Commerce, on the Board of Visitors of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and on the board of the Manned Space Flight Education Foundation. He now serves as a consultant and corporate board member and is currently writing his memoirs of the space program.
• Glynn Lunney was program manager for the Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous mission, Space Shuttle program manager, and, after NASA retirement, president of Rockwell Space Operations-Houston.
• John Hodge left NASA in 1970 to study advanced transportation systems while working for the Department of Transportation. Twelve years later he reentered NASA as director of the Space Station Task Force. He retired in 1987 and founded a high-tech management consulting firm.
• Gerry Griffin became director of the Johnson Space Center, president of the Houston Chamber of Commerce, consulted on the Apollo 13 movie, and as an actor has appeared in several space-related movies.
• Jerry Bostick became Space Shuttle program deputy manager, and after NASA retirement, vice president of Grumman Space Operations. He consulted on the Apollo 13 movie and the TV miniseries From the Earth to the Moon.
• Arnie Aldrich was named the NASA headquarters director of the Space Shuttle program after the Challenger accident. He led the efforts to return the Shuttle to flight status. He then served as the associate administrator for Aeronautics, Exploration, and Technology. After retirement in 1994, he joined Lockheed’s Missile and Space Company as vice president for commercial space programs.
• John Llewellyn opened and operates a cattle and sugar cane ranch and a riverboat touring company in Belize. For a while he owned two satellites recovered during a NASA shuttle mission and today works in the telecommunications industry.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing This Book
During my thirty-four years with NASA I kept notes of meetings, mission logs, voice tapes, and post-mission reports. The materials filled seven file cabinets and numerous boxes and bookshelves. When my agent, George Greenfield, approached me to write a book in the summer of 1995 I was well into the construction of an acrobatic biplane and was reluctant to divert my attention from the effort. George p
ersisted and during a trip to Houston convinced me to commit to writing a book. George kept me moving through some difficult times and introduced me to Jim Wade and Bob Bender, who made this book a reality.
Andy Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon, and Al Reinart, one of the scriptwriters for the Apollo 13 movie, got me started. They coached me on writing a book proposal, developing an outline, and using a storyboard.
The completed outline showed me where I needed more information to write a book on the highly complex events that occurred four decades ago. To fill the gaps I began corresponding with the controllers of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.
Ted White and Arnie Aldrich provided Mercury remote site team reports, technical manuals, photos, and copies of mission messages.