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Review: A testament to courage, the minds that made the U.S. space program

book

Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond (Simon & Schuster)
By Gene Kranz
Hardcover 416 pages

April 7, 2000
Web posted at: 12:52 p.m. EST (1652 GMT)

(CNN) -- While promoting the movie "Apollo 13," its star Tom Hanks often remarked on the irony of the story. It was an adventure tale, he explained, about three men marooned in space a quarter of a million miles from home. "And it's a period piece," he concluded.

Many of us who lived through the "space race" of the 1960s remember those days with a mixture of excitement and regret -- excitement over the grand scale of the undertaking, and regret that it was over so soon.

The earliest days of human space exploration are receding from public memory. The ranks of those who first rode pillars of flame into the heavens are thinning. The stirring words of President John F. Kennedy that inspired the race for the moon echo more faintly with each passing year.

Gene Kranz already worked at NASA when Kennedy challenged Americans to reach for the moon. He had gravitated to the fledgling space agency from the field of aviation. A former Air Force pilot and flight test engineer, Kranz signed on for Project Mercury without quite knowing what his job would be. Over the course of a decade, he built his job -- and helped build the space program -- from the ground up.

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His memoir, "Failure Is Not an Option," chronicles the small steps and giant leaps that led to human exploration of the moon. It's an eyewitness account of the first feeble attempts to put an American in space (including what came to be known as "the four-inch flight," the November 1960 launch of the first Redstone rocket for Project Mercury) and of the crowning achievements that were the landings on the lunar surface.

"Failure Is Not an Option" covers a lot of territory -- figuratively and literally. Project Mercury, which put the first Americans in space, operated out of a fairly haphazard collection of facilities on Cape Canaveral in Florida.

"In 1960," Kranz writes, "the Cape looked like an oil field, with towering structures, dirt, and asphalt roads newly carved out of the palmetto scrub. The alligators were reluctantly surrendering to the onslaught of newly arrived civilization. If you didn't have a good sense of direction, you were in trouble."

Kranz matured along with NASA. Mentored by Project Mercury's legendary flight director Chris Craft, he worked his way up to the "big chair." By Project Gemini, he was one of three flight directors at the helm of ground control during orbital missions. By Project Apollo, he was the lead flight director for odd-numbered missions -- including Apollo XI, the first moon landing.

Gene Kranz
Gene Kranz, far right, celebrates with a cigar after Apollo 13 splashed down safely, April 17, 1970  

He became a familiar and easily recognized figure at Mission Control. His crew cut hair, the steely concentration of his gaze, and his trademark white vest set him apart from the crowd of controllers.

The vest was his wife's idea. She made a new one for each mission. Each flight director assembled his own team of controllers, who worked in shifts. Since Kranz headed up the white team (the others, initially, were red and blue), his wife made white vests to promote solidarity among his team.

"Failure Is Not an Option" may be about space exploration, but it is firmly rooted in terra firma. Kranz tells of the men (and the few women) who stayed on Earth. The astronauts who braved the void are important figures, but minor characters in his story.

Kranz says he didn't really have much personal contact with the crews of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. The astronauts flew in their own orbit, as it were, while the flight controllers pretty much kept to themselves. The two groups spent a lot of time working together -- in the endless simulations that prepared them for each mission and during the space flights -- but apparently didn't socialize much.

Kranz recounts each mission in which he participated. Every one had its moments of tension, its minor catastrophes. He played a small part in the major tragedy of the Apollo I fire.

And, of course, he was at the heart of the desperate effort to save the crew of Apollo XIII. His account captures the atmosphere of anxiety that pervaded the flight control team, and their unwavering determination to bring the astronauts home alive. It is a testament to courage.

His version of the Apollo XIII story does not, however, include the words "Failure is not an option." Kranz makes it clear that the line delivered with such fierce intensity by actor Ed Harris in the movie "Apollo 13" didn't need to be spoken during the actual event.

"Failure is not an option" wasn't a slogan. It was the creed by which Kranz and his team of flight controllers lived every time they walked into Mission Control.

Kranz offers an important record of the history of space flight. Moreover, he tells an absorbing story of the human drama that made space flight possible.

"Failure Is Not an Option" is, in some ways, "inside baseball" for space buffs. It's full of jargon and hardware. But it's also filled with the acts of ingenuity and grace under pressure that helped release humanity from its earthly bonds and propel it toward a new frontier.



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RELATED SITES:
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Simon & Schuster

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