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

Very enjoyable read! I saw this recommended and I'm always a sucker for a book, so I bought it on a whim, listened to it, and got sucked into NASA history. I loved all of the history and details and leadership lessons it contained. Now I'm looking for more on the subject.

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

"Failure is Not An Option" is not a bad book, but it is not a great one either. Kranz provides certain insight into the role of NASA Flight Directors and the book is interesting to the extent it serves that function. However, Kranz occasionally gives major events fairly short shrift, while writing at length on an array of banal topics which are of limited interest. The reader is often left wanting greater details about events that shaped the space program and less information on subjects such as Kranz's management style or his trademark vests. Moreover, Kranz's writing style is a little too compact and terse to make this book a consistently engaging read. Kranz uses the word "crisp" in seemingly every other paragraph. His writing style might be described in the same way. Unfortunately, it can make sections of "Failure Is Not An Option" a bit tedious at times. Lastly, although a small point, Kranz makes no attempt to hide his political bent. The book is replete with praise for Kennedy and obvious (though unarticulated) disdain for Nixon. Kranz speaks with almost boy-like ardor of Kennedy's far-sightedness and vision for the space program despite the fact that many regard Kennedy's interest in space to have arisen solely out of a political desire to beat the Soviets - not for scientific or human advancement as Kranz would have the reader believe. At times, the political commentary proves irritating and distracting and Kranz's idolatry of Kennedy excessive and simplistic. That said, this book is worth the read for the information it does impart and to supplement other texts on the space program, but it is not as gripping or engaging as "Lost Moon" or a host of others.

This is a clear and thorough telling of the development of America's venture into space. Lots of interesting side stories. What comes through is the dedication of everyone associated with every aspect of space travel. The author describes his part of growing with NASA and always adhering to the belief that "Failure is not an option." Readers may also enjoy Alone Across the Arctic, where failure also was not an option and is available right here on Amazon.

An Amazon book! Highly recommend it to anybody who wants to learn about the early days of the space race!

When it comes to the space program, most books focus on the astronauts, but the readers do themselves an incredible injustice by skipping the other 95% of the action. This book covers those heroes. I had always thought of Mission Control as similar to Air Traffic Controllers. If the tower isn't open, planes can still land on their own with a specific set of procedures. But Mission Control is just that - they are as integral to the mission as the astronauts and the rockets - every one of them. For every action of the astronauts - from docking, to EVAs, to even taking a poop, there was someone on the ground whose job it was to worry about that specific aspect of it and how it impacted every other part of the mission. These amazing specialist controllers worked and trained with the primary and the backup astronaut crews to develop the specific procedures for performing every action (potential and planned) the whole team might foreseeably encounter. When it came time to perform those actions, the makeup of the shift of controllers would be the specialists in those areas. So when the action changed from launch to docking rendezvous, the controller shift changed, too. The Apollo 14 mission is one great example. Paraphrasing a chapter, one of the controllers had detected a problem with the ABORT switch. After a quick conference with other specialists, they called a backroom of other experts who was there to specifically back him up. Behind that back room of specialists was a software team from MIT on the line waiting just in case. While the astronauts were preparing and proceeding with their lunar descent, the MIT team had written a software patch, the back room team had tested it with the backup astronaut crew in the SIM and then transmitted to the crew. Without their efforts, the landing would have been scrubbed. As another example, every time the launch was put on hold, there was a trajectory controller who performed the calculations for the new trajectory and upload it to the computers. You have to think, every minute or so means a new trajectory! The Apollo 13 movie only hints at the immense pressure these guys were under. No rocket was perfect and every mission required troubleshooting (and fixing) one set of problems after another. Live. Thanks to Gene for giving these guys their due. Another book that I think of as essential is Deke Slayton's book, "Deke!" This bridges the gap between astronauts and admin and how many of the decisions were made (such as who was first in space or on the moon).

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.

Great read and quick service

ジーン・クランツ氏は映画アポロ13でエド・ハリス氏が好演し、偉大なリーダーとして存在を知りました。本書は、ヒロイズムに彩られた単なる成功体験では無く、クランツ氏本人による、アメリカ宇宙開発の黎明期から黄金期に至るまでの、数々の試行錯誤や苦い失敗、職場の人間関係も垣間見え、苦悩や喜びの記録が本人の言葉で淡々と回顧された良書である。

Das Buch wurde in einem Film erwähnt. Das Buch hat meine Erwartungen übertroffen. Abgesehen davon, das es ein Stück Raumfahrtgeschicht erzählt und eine Fülle von Hintergrundinformationen und Einblicke in die Geschichte des Raumflug liefert, gibt es einen Einblick in die Führungsstruktur, das Leadership und das Teamwork das dahinter steckt. Die damaligen Stars (wir wollten damals alle Astronauten werden) treten in den Hintergrund. Man bekommt deutlich gezeigt wieviel Manpower nötig war (- und ist- ), um die paar Leute in den Weltraum zu befördern. Wie viele faszinierenden Persönlichkeiten mit genialen Ideen, Wissen, Können und Risikobereitschaft unter einen Hut gebracht werden mussten. Wie man mit (auch katastrophalen) Fehlern umgeht und daraus lernt. Was in Mission Control abgelaufen ist, wie optimiert und knapp im entscheidenden Moment die Kommunikation abläuft - Dinge die man damals im Fernsehen nicht vermittelt bekommen hat. (Astronaut? Mission Control! Das wäre mein Platz gewesen) Das Buch vermittelt nicht trockene technische Fakten. Wer sich dafür interessiert ist hier nicht richtig. Wer sich für die Geschichte hinter der Geschichte interessiert, findet hier ein spannendes Buch und wer sich für die Führung eines Unternehmens oder Kommunikation interessiert, für den gibt es Einblicke in den Führungsstil von Gene Kranz. Wie man Wissen und Können mit der geeigneten Führung zum Ziel führt - einfach faszinierend und bei bei meiner Arbeit sehr hilfreich. Mir persönlich hat der Schreibstil von Gene Kranz zugesagt. Die Art, wie er die Dinge auf den Punkt bringt, gefällt mir. Die Erzählungen privater Ereignisse lockern das ganze nett auf. Trotz 400 Seiten war ich mit dem Buch superschnell durch. Damit ich immer wieder darauf Zugreifen kann, habe ich mir auch die Kindle Version gegönnt. Die Bestellung und Lieferung bei Amazon perfekt wie immer. Fazit: Einer meiner besten Käufe bisher - eigentlich würde ich gerne 10 Sterne vergeben.

Epic story, couldn't stop reading until the end.!!

The book quality is not good, not worth the money, but the content is so great.for the content 5 star,for the quality 1 star.

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