Gene Kranz Quotes

To recognize that the greatest error is not to have tried and failed, but that in trying, we did not give it our best effort

You can not operate in this room unless you believe that you are Superman, and whatever happens, you're capable of solving the problem.

Faliure is not an option.

There is no such thing as good enough. You, your team, and your equipment must be the best. That is how you will win victories.

To recognize that the greatest error is not to have tried and failed, but that in trying, we did not give it our best effort.

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect.

It isn’t equipment that wins the battles; it is the quality and the determination of the people fighting for a cause in which they believe.

Apollo succeeded at critical moments like this because the bosses had no hesitation about assigning crucial tasks to one individual, trusting his judgment, and then getting out of his way.

Failure is not an option.

Tears were coursing down the faces of Kennedy’s moonstruck recruits. John Kennedy had inspired us with his vision. One by one, we left work to grieve in private. The flag was at half-staff in our hearts.

apogee

I mentally savored the moment of America’s triumph like a fine wine.

Loading new software into new computers and using it for the first time was like playing Russian roulette. It demanded and got a lot of respect.

always hire people who are smarter and better than you are and learn with them.

President Kennedy made his speech at Rice University that confirmed his commitment. This time I was more attuned to his words. On a makeshift stage erected on the fifty-yard line at Rice Stadium, Kennedy repeated the question that many had raised: “Some have asked, why go to the Moon? One might as well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why sail the widest ocean?

if you ask enough people, you’ll find someone who will disagree with the majority and give those nervous about risk a way out.

without the likes of him we would not have made it to the Moon.

High-risk leadership beckons many, but few accept the call.

Although our technical backgrounds were very different, we were both emotional about our work, perpetually optimistic, and gave our people unconditional support.

From its earliest days, NASA had followed a policy of maximum, though prudent, disclosure. We had to do everything openly—and soon under intensive, live TV coverage.

Leadership is fragile. It is more a matter of mind and heart than resources, and it seemed that we no longer had the heart for those things that demanded discipline, commitment, and risk.

The tools we used in Mercury were primitive, but the dedication of highly trained people offset the limitations of the equipment available to us in these early days and kept the very real risks under control.

My controllers, average age now twenty-seven, were asking themselves, “What do you do after you have been to the Moon?” They had come to us at the beginning of Apollo, in their early twenties. Now, with NASA limiting the program to only three more missions, they were taking it the hardest. Mission Control was their portal to the stars; they believed we had taken only that first “giant step for mankind” and could not understand why we were not taking the next leap forward. I knew how they felt.

The temperatures range from plus to minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit during the two-week-long lunar days and nights. This heavenly body has never seen an earthling, never felt a footstep. But, as the scientific evidence from Apollo will help confirm, Luna is our geophysical sibling, separated from us in the violent formation of Spaceship Earth.

When reporters asked Shepard what he thought about as he sat atop the Redstone rocket, waiting for liftoff, he had replied, “The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.” It was a funny crack, but with an edge. In marked contrast to the tiny Mercury capsule, Apollo was, in spaceflight terms, practically a luxury liner.

Gemini 4 helped create a media misapprehension that I was a Marine. Jim Maloney, a reporter for the Houston Post, a morning newspaper, always covered my late night press conferences. Since the Gemini 4 mission was the first flown from Houston and the first with three flight directors, he wrote an article on Kraft, Hodge, and myself. Adding some color he described me as “an ex-fighter pilot who you would trust with your life. Stocky, crew-cut and blond, Kranz is a bloodthirsty model for a Marine Corps recruiting poster.” The next evening after the press conference I corrected him, “Jim, you got it wrong in your article. I’m Air Force, not a Marine.” He corrected me, saying, “I didn’t say you were a Marine. I said you looked like a poster boy for the Marines!

I think everyone, once in his life, should be given a ticker-tape parade. The

Coffee was the substance that kept us going. Our surgeons had offered us something stronger, but we were all concerned about our performance deteriorating when the stimulants wore off.

I find myself crying unabashedly, then I try to suck it in, realizing this is inappropriate.

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.

We were blessed with a dedicated, well-informed, and highly professional press corps in the 1960s. (Unlike so many “reporters” today, they knew the difference between objective reporting of news and hyping things up to entertain the audience—and bump up their ratings.)

The story doesn’t end here, however. With no car pass and faced with a mile-long walk from the front gate, John came up with an alternative not covered by the regulations. The first day of his suspension, Llewellyn pulled his horse trailer into the parking lot at the Nassau Bay Hotel across from the NASA main gate. Mounting the horse with his leather briefcase, then showing his badge prominently to the surprised guard, Llewellyn galloped through the gate to Mission Control. For the remainder of the week we knew John was in the office or on console when we saw a horse hitched to the bicycle stand. Llewellyn’s legend grew once again.

How long the flight took on one of those old prop aircraft on any given day depended on the size of the bugs that hit the windshield and slowed it down.

I think everyone, once in his life, should be given a ticker-tape parade.

Probability said that someday we would run out of luck—as

All of them were white, all from small towns, all middle-class, and all Protestant. This was not the result of deliberate discrimination, but because at the time that was the kind of man who became a military test pilot. At this period it was hard for Americans from any minority to get into flight training. But the military, like the rest of the country, grew up and lived up to its fundamental commitment to equality, thanks in large measure to the civil rights movement that, like the space program in the same era, demanded conviction and courage.

Let's work the problem, people. Let's not make things worse by guessing.

(Unlike so many “reporters” today, they knew the difference between objective reporting of news and hyping things up to entertain the audience—and bump up their ratings.)

I had seen of Gus and the astronauts indicated that they had the “right stuff.

If the Apollo 8 controllers were showing the strain, however, today none of that mattered. Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz, Bob Gilruth, George Mueller, and the other members of the space agency brass barely left the Mission Control auditorium except to go home for a shower, a change of clothes, and, if absolutely necessary, a brief nap.

While we often moved to different cadences, our nation was alive with ideals. We were in motion. Violence was everywhere but so was a conviction that we must somehow make this a better world.

Monday begins with an exercise we call Start at the End: a look ahead—to the end of the sprint week and beyond. Like Gene Kranz and his diagram of the return to planet earth, you and your team will lay out the basics: your long-term goal and the difficult questions that must be answered.

Their day will come when we put men on Mars or accomplish some other feat where the human factor makes it possible to achieve something that technology, no matter how brilliant and advanced, cannot. We have “slipped the surly bonds of Earth” and our destiny will ultimately lead us to the stars that glow in our deep black night sky, like diamonds scattered on a field of velvet.

On July 20, 1969, at 9:56:20 P.M. Houston time, Neil Armstrong steps from the ladder to the surface and, as his boots touch the lunar dust, he declares, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It was worth every sacrifice for this moment. I remember President Kennedy’s words, “We choose to go to the Moon. . . . We choose to go to the Moon in this decade, and do other things . . . not because they are easy, but because they are hard!

Okay, listen up. When you leave this room, you must leave believing that this crew is coming home. I don’t give a damn about the odds and I don’t give a damn that we’ve never done anything like this before. Flight control will never lose an American in space. You’ve got to believe, your people have got to believe, that this crew is coming home. Now let’s get going!