Eugene F. Kranz

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Gene Kranz
Gene Kranz

Eugene F. "Gene" Kranz (born 17 August 1933) is a retired NASA flight director and manager. Kranz served as a flight director during Project Gemini and Project Apollo, and is best known for his role in saving the crew of Apollo 13. He is also famous for his trademark flattop hairstyle, and the wearing of vests of different styles and materials whenever his "White Team" was on duty during missions.

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[edit] Early years

Kranz was born in Toledo, Ohio and grew up on a farm that overlooked the Willys-Overland Jeep production plant. His father, Leo Peter Kranz, was the son of a German immigrant, and served as an Army medic during World War I. Leo died in 1940, when Kranz was only seven years old. Kranz has two older sisters, Louise and Helen.

His early fascination with flight was apparent in the topic of his high school thesis, entitled "The Design and Possibilities of the Interplanetary Rocket." Kranz graduated from Parks College of Saint Louis University in 1954, and received his commission as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, completing pilot training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas in 1955. Shortly after receiving his wings, Kranz married Marta Cadena, a daughter of Mexican immigrants who fled from Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. Kranz was sent to South Korea to fly the F-86 Sabre aircraft for patrol operations around the Korean DMZ.

After finishing his tour in Korea, Kranz left the Air Force and went to work for McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, where he assisted with the research and testing of new Surface-to-Air (SAM) and Air-to-Ground missiles for the U.S. Air Force at its research center at Holloman Air Force Base.

[edit] NASA career

After completing the research tests out at Holloman Air Force Base, Kranz left McDonnell-Douglas and joined the NASA Space Task Group, then at its Langley Research Center in Virginia. Upon joining NASA, he was assigned, by flight director Christopher C. Kraft, as a Mission Control procedures officer for the unmanned MR-1 test (dubbed in Kranz's autobiography as the "Four-Inch Flight", on account of its failure to launch).

As Procedures Officer, Kranz was put in charge of integrating Mercury Control with the Launch Control Team at Cape Canaveral, Florida, writing up the "Go/NoGo" procedures that allowed missions to continue as planned or be aborted, along with serving as a sort of switchboard operator between the control center at Cape Canaveral and the agency's fourteen tracking stations and two tracking ships (via Teletype) located across the globe. Kranz performed this role for all unmanned and manned Mercury flights, including the trailblazing MR-3 and MA-6 flights, which put the first Americans into space and orbit respectively.

After MA-6, he was promoted to assistant flight director for Flight Director Kraft for the MA-7 flight of astronaut Scott Carpenter in October, 1962. He continued in this role for the remaining two Mercury flights and the first three Gemini flights. With the upcoming Gemini flights, he was promoted to the flight director level and served his first shift, the so-called "operations shift," for the Gemini 4 mission in 1965, the first U.S. EVA and four-day flight. After Gemini, he served as a flight director on odd-numbered Apollo missions, including Apollos 7 and 9. He was the flight director for Apollo 11, during the moment when the LM Eagle landed on the moon on July 20, 1969.

Kranz is perhaps best known for his role as lead flight director during the Apollo 13 space mission. Kranz's team was on duty when the Apollo 13 Service Module exploded and dealt with the initial hours of the unfolding accident. His "White Team," dubbed the "Tiger Team" by the press, set the constraints for the consumption of spacecraft consumables (oxygen, electricity and water), controlled the three course-correction burns during the trans-Earth trajectory, as well as the power-up procedures that allowed the astronauts to use the Command Module for the trip home. In the Ron Howard movie, his speech to his team was "simplified into 'Failure is not an option,' " chuckles Kranz, who never actually uttered the now famous phrase during the Apollo 13 mission. Still, Kranz liked it so much, because it so perfectly reflected the attitude of mission control, that he used it as the title of his 2000 autobiography. He, his team, as well as the astronauts received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their heroic roles.

Kranz would continue as a flight director until Apollo 17, and then was promoted to Deputy Director of NASA Mission Operations in 1974, becoming its director in 1983. He retired in 1994 after the successful STS-61 flight that repaired the optically flawed Hubble Space Telescope in 1993. In addition to writing Failure Is Not An Option, which was adapted for cable TV for The History Channel in 2004, he also flies an acrobatic airplane and serves as a flight engineer for a restored B-17 Flying Fortress. He and his wife Marta, along with their six children (one boy and five girls) and several grandchildren, still reside in Texas.

[edit] Family

Kranz, a Catholic, had six children with his wife, Marta: Carmen (born 1958), Lucy (1959), Joan Frances (1961), Mark (1963), Brigid (1964), and Jean Marie (1966).

[edit] Kranz on film

Gene Kranz was portrayed by Ed Nelson in the 1974 TV movie Houston, We've Got a Problem. He was portrayed by Ed Harris in the 1995 movie Apollo 13; the actor earning an Academy Award nomination for his performance. In the 1996 TV movie Apollo 11 Kranz was played by Matt Frewer. In the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon he was played by Dan Butler.

[edit] Kranz in fiction

In Shane Johnson's novel Ice, Kranz is still the leader of White Team during the fictional missions Apollo 19 and Apollo 20. In one poignant scene, Kranz rips off his trademark vest and flings it to the floor of Mission Control after one man, instead of three, is recovered from the Apollo 19 splashdown.

In January 2007, Renegade Possums Productions released a parody of the film Apollo 13 entitled Thanksgiving With the Kranzes. Co-director Brian Finifter had the opportunity to meet Fred Haise, and presented him with a DVD copy of the parody. Haise passed the copy along to Kranz, who enjoyed the film and claims that watching it with his family is a new holiday tradition. Forum thread.

[edit] Teams, "The Human Factor" and "The Right Stuff"

Kranz was the leader of the "white team", a shift at mission control that contributed to saving the Apollo 13 astronauts. Though Apollo 13 was a mission failure, to Kranz its astronauts' rescue is an example of the "human factor" born out of the 1960s space race. According to Kranz, this factor is what is largely responsible for helping put America on the moon in only a decade. The blend of young intelligent minds working day in and day out by sheer willpower yielded "the right stuff."

Gene Kranz had this to say about the "human factor": "[they were] people who were energized by a mission. And these teams were capable of moving right on and doing anything America asked them to do in space." According to him, a few organized examples of this factor included Grumman, who developed the Apollo Lunar Module, North American Aviation, and the Lockheed Corporation. After the excitement of the 1960s, these companies dissolved into corporate mergings, such as happened when Lockheed became Lockheed Martin. Another example of the "human factor" was the ingenuity and hard work by teams during Apollo 13 that developed the emergency plans and sequences as new problems arose during the mission.

Gene Kranz, uncharacteristically wearing a dark vest (probably during a training drill) (NASA picture)
Gene Kranz, uncharacteristically wearing a dark vest (probably during a training drill) (NASA picture)

[edit] Response to Apollo I Launch Pad Fire

Kranz called a meeting of his branch and flight control team on the Monday morning following the Apollo I disaster that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. He made the following address:

"Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, 'Dammit, stop!' I don't know what Thompson's committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did. 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."

[edit] Feelings about life after the Moon

Kranz felt that much of the "human factor" unfortunately dried up after the moon landings, particularly due to the nation seeing the moon landings as a short-term goal against the Russians — and not much more. When asked in spring 2000 if NASA is any different today compared to the years of the space race, he replied:

"No. In many ways we have the young people, we have the talent, we have the imagination, we have the technology. But I don't believe we have the leadership and the willingness to accept risk, to achieve great goals. I believe we need a long-term national commitment to explore the universe. And I believe this is an essential investment in the future of our nation — and our beautiful, but environmentally challenged planet."

However, in his book Failure Is Not an Option, he also expressed disappointment that support for space exploration dried up after the Apollo program -- indeed, the last three Apollo flights were cancelled. His vision for renewing the space program includes:

"[R]evitalize NASA. Lacking a clear goal the team that placed an American on the Moon, NASA, has become just another federal bureaucracy beset by competing agendas and unable to establish discipline within its structure. Although NASA has an amazing array of technology and the most talented workforce in history, it lacks top-level vision. It began its retreat from the inherent risks of space exploration after the Challenger accident. During the last decade its retreat has turned into a rout. The NASA Administrator is appointed by the President and to a great degree represents the current President's views on space. If space is put on the national agenda for the coming national election [2000], a newly elected President will have the opportunity to select new top-level NASA leadership that is committed and willing to take the steps to rebuild the space agency and get America's space program moving again."

[edit] Trivia

  • He developed color-coded handbooks for his personal use as instant reference guides for the many technical problems that could develop during a mission. He feared that he would misplace one or more of these handbooks, so he used pictures from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition as book covers. The other controllers knew about this, so if a book went missing, the eye-catching cover would ensure its prompt return to Kranz.
  • Kranz is very good friends with Gemini and Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan. Despite different military backgrounds (Kranz with the Air Force, Cernan with the Navy), both Kranz and Cernan attended the same Roman Catholic parish. Throught pre-flight scheduling, Kranz served his first time as lead flight director for Cernan's first space mission Gemini 9A, with Kranz serving his last shift as flight director during Cernan's last moon walk on Apollo 17.
  • In addition to serving as the flight director that landed the Eagle onto the surface of the Moon in 1969, Kranz served as the flight director that oversaw the liftoff of the Challenger in 1972. That shift would be his last shift as a flight director.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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