Gene Kranz

The human factor.
It’s what we must depend on
when all the glittering technology seems, suddenly, useless.


During a mission countdown, or even a flight test, so many things would be happening so fast that you did not have any time for second thoughts or arguments.
You wanted the debate behind you.
So before the mission, you held meetings to decide what to do if anything went wrong.

There was no room in the process for emotion,
no space for fear or doubt,
no time to stop and think things over.
A launch is an existential moment, much like combat.
With no time to think about anything,
you had to be prepared to respond to any contingency—and those contingencies had to be as fully anticipated as possible before you pushed the button.
You also had to be thoroughly knowledgeable about the responsibilities of launch control and range safety.

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.

From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words:
‘Tough and Competent.’

Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities.
Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for.

Competent means we will never take anything for granted.
We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills.
Mission Control will be perfect.

When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write ‘Tough and Competent’ on your blackboards.
It will never be erased.
Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.”

Apollo succeeded at critical moments like this because
the bosses had no hesitation about assigning crucial tasks to one individual, trusting his judgment,
and then getting out of his way.

Loading new software into new computers
and using it for the first time
was like playing Russian roulette.
It demanded and got a lot of respect.

To recognize that the greatest error
is not to have tried and failed,
but that in trying, we did not give it our best effort.

We've never lost an American in space, we're sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch!
Failure is not an option

The nature of flight test is working at the boundaries of knowledge, experience, and performance and taking the risks needed to get there.
There are times where the things you learn are things that you don’t expect. Often the plan you execute is different than the one you started.

It wasn’t going to be easy to carry out Kraft’s new marching orders,
but Apollo succeeded at critical moments like this because the bosses had no hesitation about assigning crucial tasks to one individual,
trusting his judgment, and then getting out of his way.

“Mission Control has two problems,
the software is not written
and the computers are not working.” Kraft’s action memo to me was clear:

“Get your damn systems guys to stop the gold-plating. I want you to personally justify every one of their requirements.”