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.
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