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

I was first introduced to the idea of Gene Kranz when I first saw the film Apollo 13, and then again shortly after I saw the excellent HBO miniseries, From the Earth to the Moon. I found his steely-eyed, take-no-bull, calm and collected attitude, portrayed by Ed Harris in Apollo 13 and Dan Butler in the HBO series, to be an integral part of the NASA equation.So when this book, Failure is Not an Option, came up as a daily deal from Audible, I jumped on it. I couldn’t have made a better decision. This book is a personal memoir of Kranz, following his career at Nasa through the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. The beginning of the book is a bit awkward, as it starts out immediately with the Mercury program, then provides an entire section on his own background, qualifications and training, then resumes with Gemini. It is a bit jarring at the point where you read it, but once you’re past it, you don’t think of it again.The thing I like the best about this book is how it is not just effusive praise of the astronauts. This by no means diminishes their contribution, but Kranz seems to go out of his way to hammer into your head that everything was a team effort, and there were more people than you could possibly imagine who, working together, raced against the Russians to put a man on the moon. At one point, he says, “Chances are, you’ve never heard of Hal Beck.” This is just one of the many times he goes out of his way to describe the individuals who contributed to his team, praising their worth, their contribution and their ability.Kranz seems selfless to a fault. He says, “I think everyone, once in his life should be given a ticker-tape parade.” I have a feeling the statuary of his controllers are polished with a little extra shine, but you can tell that he is the type of man who wants to make sure that everyone gets recognized. He jokes about how Alan Shepard says, “More people remember that I’m the guy who hit a golf ball on the moon, than that I was the first American in space.” Shift that back a few levels, and try to name any of the Flight Directors other than Kranz, or CAPCOMs that were not former astronauts, and you can see how he wants to make sure people don’t get forgotten.And that’s the beauty of the book. It’s not about the astronauts; it’s about the people at Mission Control. The full name of the book is “Failure is not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond,” and it is absolutely a recounting of the people who make up Mission Control - not the engineers who built the spacecraft, and not the astronauts who flew it - but the people who solved the problems mid-flight and kept everything together. When talking about how his flight director colors were retired, he says the retirement proclamation is “written by one’s peers, the only people who matter in our business.”And problems there were, in spades. Apollo 13 stands out as one of the most celebrated successes pulled from the ashes of failure, but there were many other problems as well. All three Apollo 1 astronauts died before ever leaving the ground. Apollo 11 missed its landing zone by a large margin. Apollo 12 was struck by lightning before it ever left Earth’s atmosphere. It seems every mission had something that went wrong, and the Mission Control people worked the problems and fixed them with incredible efficiency.This book is THEIR story. And it’s a fascinating one.The book was written in 1999, and as such mentions the Challenger disaster, but was well before the Columbia disaster. It also is well before the privatization of space exploration, and the wonderful things being done by SpaceX. I would love to hear what he says about SpaceX, especially as the Afterword laments the current (1999) state of NASA and the country’s commitment to space exploration.Audiobook note: The audiobook was very nicely narrated by Danny Campbell, who does a nice job of making it sound like he knows and believes the technical jargon sprinkled copiously throughout the book. The only negative is his rather poor British accent, which is thankfully kept to a minimum.

I read almost all the astronaut books. This book was great explaining some of the ground control of Mercury through the Apollo program.We see Gene Krantz becoming a fighter pilot with the Saber's. Unfortunately the Air Force wanted Krantz to fly tankers. No way. He joins NASA and is mentored by Chris Kraft. He goes up the ranks working with various people and becomes a flight controller and then becomes "Flight" the head of the "white" crew. We see him working with telemetry members in the "trench". His wife makes him a white vest to wear on the missions with Gene at flight control.We see the first 4 inch launch, Al Shepard's first American in space launch and the rest of the Mercury shots. Then the Gemini and later the Apollo shots. Krantz and his white crew were in charge of the LM touching down and off the moon on Apollo 11. Krantz helps get Apollo 13 home after an oxygen tank explodes and takes out the entire side of the service module.The astronauts are so proud of ground control helping them. Ground control receives the Medal of Freedom award. After Apollo 17 Gene is promoted to a higher management level under Kraft so his days as being in direct control as "Flight" are over.Its incredible the pressure the controllers and Flight worked under. There was life and death decisions, and abort, go or no go decisions that had to be done sometimes in seconds. Only a select few had the mentality to function at this pressure level. Many washed out and those that were good many times got promoted to higher positions.What a great book. Much less ego busting and egotistical put downs like Chris Kraft did in his book Flight ( see my review 3 stars). Gene Krantz is a man that knew he needed help from other people who were smarter than he and was able to work in teams with hundreds of men.He learned much from many and gave credit to those who helped and were the best of the best in their job specialties. Gene was not afraid to tell people including Chris Kraft that he believed they were wrong in some aspects of a mission.Sometimes he was right sometimes wrong. We see the new breed of flight controllers trained that were faster and brighter with faster technology than the Kraft and Krantz generation.Krantz helped develop a degree of excellence and mission rules for the controllers and Flight that they must work through their problems, be prepared and have a deep mind set that "Failure is not an option". The torch is passed.A great ending of the book. Krantz tells us that NASA has deteriorated and does not have a clear direct to go deep into manned space. We need a leader like John Kennedy to set up a bold mission to go to Mars and beyond. Congress must get involved and support NASA.An excellent book that helps describe ground control in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo eras. Thanks Gene Krantz for your contributions to manned space. 5 stars