Failure Is Not an Option

“Dammit, Chris,” Deke snapped, “if we are not going to put my astronauts in charge, it was a waste to send them.” Kraft cut him off: “Deke, I don’t have time to argue. We will put Hunter in charge of the site operations and Conrad in charge during real time.”

The deal was cut. Kraft marked up the changes and I had the instructions Teletyped to the Carnarvon and Hawaii CapComs. The next day, launch minus one, the entire network was called up for a final review of the mission rules and procedures. At the end of the call, Kraft began polling the sites for any open issues. When Hunter came on the line, he said, “I’ve got Conrad here and I’d like to understand the Teletype you sent yesterday.” I passed Kraft the message and he briefly summarized the content. The whole world, at least our part of it, was listening as Hunter continued. “This message does not resolve anything. When I get back, I am going to frame it and hang it on the wall in my crapper.” Controllers around the world listened, stunned. Kraft was speechless, and Hunter knew he had said too much. At the limits of his patience, a furious Chris snarled, “You’ve got your orders, young man!”

Following the launch-minus-one-day briefing with the tracking stations, we adjourned to the beach house that had been provided for the astronauts by Life magazine, who had exclusive rights to publish their personal stories, approved reluctantly by NASA. Grissom and Young, totally unaware of the Carnarvon flap, had invited Kraft, the controllers, and astronauts Cooper, Shepard, and Gene Cernan for a brief get-together prior to launch. I was preoccupied with how I was going to save Hunter’s career when he returned to Houston. Since Slayton was not in the MCC for the L-1 briefing, he was unaware of the friction he had helped unleash. Now he walked in and greeted Kraft with a cheery “How’s it going, Chris?”

Kraft, still fuming from his discussion with Hunter, didn’t respond. Instead, he made it clear he had no interest in talking to Slayton and walked over to Grissom. The customary mixing between the astronauts and controllers was missing. Controllers were in a group on one side of the room, the astronauts on the other, hovering around Grissom and Young. It was like a wedding in which the bride’s side and the groom’s side were strangers to one another. You could almost hear the usher: “Friend of the bride? Friend of the groom?”

Approaching nightfall, the controllers, especially John Llewellyn, had had enough to drink, and, as we were getting ready to leave, their feelings surfaced. Llewellyn responded to some remark from Shepard. By the time I got there, the two were going at it, Llewellyn yelling, “You better hope that Hunter covers Conrad’s ass. If he doesn’t, you can kiss Carnarvon goodbye for this mission.”

I grabbed John, moving him toward the door with Shepard on our heels. Llewellyn, forever the Marine, then commented on Shepard’s Navy background and again, to his face, said, “I got more Purple Hearts than you’ll ever see in your lifetime, you SOB.” I corralled Llewellyn again and hustled him outside, where a very concerned Mission Control team jammed him into a car and drove him back to the motel. This was no way to run a mission, and I hoped and prayed that cooler heads would prevail the next morning when we prepared to launch. We needed Llewellyn, and we needed a united team—controllers and astronauts—at every site, in the control center, and in the spacecraft.

Living as we did in an environment that combined the temperament of a football training camp and the confinement of a submarine, with ego and pride all around, as well as relentless pressure, I sometimes wondered why an occasional bloody brawl didn’t break out.

March 23, 1965, Gemini-Titan 3

The first manned flight in a program evokes many emotions in me. Seated at the console next to Kraft, I was about to enter a new age, not unlike the leap from the Wright brothers’ Flyer to the fighter aircraft of the 1930s, bypassing two decades of normal development. With Gemini, we were stepping directly into the future. The incident involving Hunter and Conrad was far from my mind as the countdown progressed smoothly to liftoff. A brief hold just before launch was the only glitch and then the Molly Brown was on its way. Just as every fighter pilot gets to name his aircraft, Grissom and Young assigned that name to their capsule. (Since Grissom had lost his first spacecraft, Liberty Bell 7, when the hatch blew off at splashdown, Molly Brown, the “unsinkable” heroine of a Broadway musical who survived the Titanic disaster, seemed a logical choice of name for his second spacecraft.)

This astronaut combination proved to be a splendid one. Both had only the single desire to fly and were pure joy to work with. A three-orbit mission has to go by the numbers. There is limited time to experiment, troubleshoot, or innovate. Grissom and Young’s first orbit was devoted to abbreviated checks of the spacecraft, and the second included a brief series of experiments. In the third orbit, the propulsion and control systems were tested, gradually lowering the orbit so the deorbit maneuver could be completed with the reaction control jets, if the retro rockets failed. Fortunately, the deorbit was normal.

Molly Brown’s flight was flawless, with only minor technical problems to be worked out. The press and medics blew one item out of proportion. Just prior to launch, Schirra slipped Young a corned beef sandwich he had purchased at Wolfie’s restaurant. To our amazement, some were offended, up to and including members of Congress. Schirra had thought his catering service was a practical alternative to the bite-size freeze- dried chicken and beef pot roast provided by the medics.

The mission debriefing was held in the auditorium, attended by the staff of the program office, engineering, and the astronauts. After a meticulous walk-through of the pre-launch and flight periods on an event-by-event basis, we listed the open issues for the subsequent mission. At the conclusion of the debriefing, I asked the flight controllers to stay and when all visitors departed, we secured the doors. The room was silent as I again climbed the stairs to the stage. They knew what was coming. “Discipline. If you remember only one thing from this debriefing, I want you to remember one word… discipline! Controllers require judgment, cool heads, and they must lead their team. Leadership, judgment, and a cool head were not evident at Carnarvon. I understand how conflicts can raise tempers, but I also expect control. We are the last line of defense for our crews. We let a small incident escalate into a major flap that involved the entire operation. It was a distraction that we should have put behind us. We lost track of our objective.”

I took a breath and continued, “Our mission will always come first. Nothing must get between our mission and us… nothing! Discipline is the mark of a great controller. That is all!” The auditorium was silent as I stomped off the stage and left the room.

The military has long used the command and control principle and now it was formalized in Mission Control. The Hunter episode finally defined the role of Kraft’s organization. Provoked by the incident, Kraft sat down with Slayton and cut a new deal that gave the crew control of the spacecraft and gave the ground command of the mission. The overall mission responsibility now rested clearly with Chris Kraft, his flight directors, and the remote site CapComs.

Slayton sent his astronauts to the remote sites as observers for one final mission. Hunter transferred to Goddard Space Flight Center and performed as the Madrid tracking station manager during Apollo. Hunter had fought the battle and lost, but he helped to win the war for Flight Control.

7. WHITE FLIGHT

As we celebrated the success of Grissom and Young on Gemini 3, the Russians were also celebrating. We would soon learn that five days earlier, Lieutenant Colonel Aleksei Leonov had become the world’s first space walker, venturing outside the cabin and stepping into the void. On his return Leonov delivered a speech from the top of Lenin’s tomb, flanked by the Kremlin leadership. Leonov predicted that “The time is drawing close when people will pass over from orbital flights around the Earth to interplanetary flights, and will go to the Moon, Mars, and Venus.”

The United States had yet to set a manned space flight record. Every member in Flight Control was aware of our opportunity in the Gemini program to set records for rendezvous, docking, duration, and extravehicular operations. We were confident that our turn was coming.