Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsI Am A Great Admirer of Gene Kranz, But...........
Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2006
...I am afraid this book misses the mark. Kranz
is defintely one of the great heroes of the glory
days of the American space program and one of those
who "wrote the book", along with Chris Kraft
and John Hodge (the original "Red, White and Blue
Team flight directors!) defining the mission of
the flight controllers and directors. Unfortunately,
this book does not really give the reader a good idea
of what it is that the controllers and flight director
do. If it did, the reader would be in even greater
awe of these men who had intelligence, nerves of steel,
and the ability to make life-or-death decisions within
a split second.
In order to learn what is really involved in these
jobs, I strongly recommend the book "Apollo: The
Race to the Moon" by Murray and Bly-Cox. They give
a good description of what went on in the MOCR
(Mission Operations Control Room) and the various
jobs of the different controllers and the flight
director himself, and what qualities these men
had to have. Kranz unfortunately does not include
this in his book, probably feeling that the general
reader would not find it interesting, but this is
the kernel of what it was that made him the outstanding
personality that he is. He should have taken a typical
mission and given a sequential description of the things
he had to do and the decisions he had to make.
Having said this, the book is still worth reading, even
for someone who has considerable knowledge of the history
of the space program. What is particularly interesting
is his description of the major disagreement that occurred
on the Gemini 9 mission (flown by Stafford and Cernan) when
it was suggested to carry out an emergeny EVA (spacewalk)
in order to try to open the shroud that failed to open
on the Agena target vehicle which prevented docking.
Kranz vehemently opposed doing this, thinking that it was
too dangerous and being only the second EVA, they didn't
have enough experience. When senior management decided
to go ahead with it anyway, Kranz muttered to his boss,
Chris Kraft that he had enough and this would be his
last mission, if they weren't going to listen to him.
In the end, the EVA was cancelled and Kranz withdrew
his threat to quit. In Kraft's book, he blandly mentions
that it was decided NOT to carry out the EVA. Apparently,
Kraft (who does also mention some mild criticisim of Kranz
in his book) didn't want to remind people that he had
been on the wrong side of a potentially bad decision.