Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond

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In 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik and the ensuing space race. Three years later, Gene Kranz left his aircraft testing job to join NASA and champion the American cause. What he found was an embryonic department run by whiz kids (such as himself), sharp engineers and technicians who had to create the Mercury mission rules and procedure from the ground up. As he says, "Since there were no books written on the actual methodology of space flight, we had to write them as we went along."

Kranz was part of the mission control team that, in January 1961, launched a chimpanzee into space and successfully retrieved him, and made Alan Shepard the first American in space in May 1961. Just two months later they launched Gus Grissom for a space orbit, John Glenn orbited Earth three times in February 1962, and in May of 1963 Gordon Cooper completed the final Project Mercury launch with 22 Earth orbits. And through them all, and the many Apollo missions that followed, Gene Kranz was one of the integral inside men--one of those who bore the responsibility for the Apollo 1 tragedy, and the leader of the "tiger team" that saved the Apollo 13 astronauts.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Eugene Kranz joined the NASA Space Task Group in 1960 and served as the Assistant Flight Director for Project Mercury, the original manned space missions. At the time of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, he was NASA's flight director. For his work leading the Apollo 13 teams, he received a Presidential Medal of Freedom. His autobiography, as energetic as it is authoritative, belongs in the library of anyone who ever dreamed upward.

ANNOTATION

A breathtaking, first-hand account of the early days of the NASA space program, through the eyes of the man who held it all together...

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race. He helped to launch Alan Shepard and John Glenn, then assumed the flight director's role in the Gemini program, which he guided to fruition. With his teammates, he accepted the challenge to carry out President John F. Kennedy's commitment to land a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s.

Kranz was flight director for both Apollo 11, the mission in which Neil Armstrong fulfilled President Kennedy's pledge, and Apollo 13. He headed the Tiger Team that had to figure out how to bring the three Apollo 13 astronauts safely back to Earth. (In the film Apollo 13, Kranz was played by the actor Ed Harris, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance.)

In Failure Is Not an Option, Gene Kranz recounts these thrilling historic events and offers new information about the famous flights. What appeared as nearly flawless missions to the Moon were, in fact, a series of hair-raising near misses. When the space technology failed, as it sometimes did, the controllers' only recourse was to rely on their skills and those of their teammates. Kranz takes us inside Mission Control and introduces us to some of the whiz kids -- still in their twenties, only a few years out of college -- who had to figure it all out as they went along, creating a great and daring enterprise. He reveals behind-the-scenes details to demonstrate the leadership, discipline, trust, and teamwork that made the space program a success.

Finally, Kranz reflects on what has happened to the space program and offers his own bold suggestions about what we ought to be doing in space now.

This is a fascinating firsthand account written by a veteran mission controller of one of America's greatest achievements.

FROM THE CRITICS

Houston Chronicle

A rich, behind-the-scenes account.

Baltimore Sun

An important addition to the chronicles of America's early space program.

Publishers Weekly

When the heroic American astronauts of the '60s and '70s inquired, "Houston, do you read?" it was often Krantz's team who answered from the ground. Veteran NASA flight controller Krantz (portrayed by Ed Harris in the film Apollo 13) has written a personable memoir, one that follows his and NASA's careers from the start of the space race through "the last lunar strike," Apollo 17 (1972-1973). Krantz's story opens in the world of the first U.S. space scientists, of exploding Mercury-Atlas rockets, flaming escape towers and "the first rule of flight control": "If you don't know what to do, don't do anything!" Its climax is Apollo 13, with Krantz serving as "lead flight director" and helping to save the trapped astronauts' lives. His account of that barely averted disaster evokes the adrenalized mood of the flight controllers and the technical problems ("gimbal lock," oxygen status, return trajectories) that had to be solved for the astronauts to survive. Elsewhere in these often-gripping pages we learn of the quarrels that almost derailed Gemini 9A's spacewalk; "the best leaders the program ever had," among them George Mueller, who revived NASA after a 1966 launchpad fire; the forest of internal acronyms and argot ("Go-NoGo," "all-up," EVA, the Trench, CSM, GNC, FIDO, RETRO, GUIDO); and the combination of teamwork and expertise that made the moon landings possible. Plenty of books (and several films) have already tried to depict the space program's excitement; few of their creators had the first-person experience or the attention to detail Krantz has, whose role as flight control "White" his readers will admire or even wish to emulate. Eight b&w photos. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

KLIATT

Eugene F. Kranz was just another frustrated and air-struck boy in the 1940s, too young to fight in WW II yet keenly aware of the dynamic world of aviation and the exciting possibilities that were already developing around him. One of his schoolboy essays, "The Design and Possibilities of the Interplanetary Rocket," could have been written by thousands of his classmates, and probably was. By the time Kranz finally took off in his first jet fighter the Korean War had come and gone, and he found himself in a frustrating aviation limbo where pilots were many and combat opportunities were few. But a new president had just committed the U.S. to an unusual and exciting quest that no one could foresee the end of. Almost before he knew it, a new outfit called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had hired him over the telephone, and he found himself in Langley, Virginia, trying to figure out what his new job was all about. At first, no one helped him much. NASA was beginning its frenetic and most energetic era when the first Mercury missions were being planned at a dizzying pace and anything seemed possible. Creativity and energy took precedence over organizational structure and budgets in the drive to create new technologies and integrate them into mankind's climb into Space. Kranz liked what he saw, stayed with the agency and rose to become flight director of the Apollo 11 moon-landing mission. At heart, though, Kranz remained a pilot and an engineer, and his life story is told in just the way one might expect: linear, straightforward, and full of descriptive detail. The style admirably fits the subject, making this a pleasurable and a satisfying read. Even if it were not,the subject matter alone would justify this book. The author was the ultimate "insider" during all of NASA's glory days, and he took part in all of the critical episodes of the early space era: the tragic electrical fire that killed three astronauts, the heart-stopping Apollo 13 mission, and of course man's first footsteps on the surface of the moon. In the present time, when NASA has lost its synergistic edge and evolved into a cautious bureaucracy, it is good to remember the days when the very stars seemed within grasp. Category: Biography & Personal Narrative. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000, Berkley, 415p. illus. index., Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Raymond L. Puffer; Ph.D., Historian, Edwards Air Force Base, CA

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