The faith of a Flight Director - Gene Kranz

Lets take a look at one of the many examples from the Apollo project, where faith was actively applied by engineers and astronauts.

Senior Flight Director Gene Kranz. He had the watch in Mission Control when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, when Apollo 13 "had a problem" and was saved, and when the Hubble telescope was  repaired and made functional.

When Apollo 11 entered lunar orbit, on the 19th of July, 1969 after 75 hours of travel to the Moon, a day of preparations commenced as the crew started up, tested and tuned all the Lunar Module’s systems. The actual landing maneuver would be carried out on Gene Kranz’s team’s watch, and he confidently left the preparations to the other teams and took the evening off.

Kranz knew how important the coming day was. No matter what the outcome, it would be the most important day of his life. He had the ultimate responsibility not only for the lives of the three astronauts but also for ensuring that some four million man-years of preparation would bear the fruit it deserved. Whether or not he could live up to this responsibility would be of crucial importance for his country, for the Cold War and for the battle for the Free World of which he was fully aware. He was certainly aware of the importance of winning the Space Race as declared by John F. Kennedy 8 years earlier.

Such a heavy burden would have been enough to terrify any normal person out of his wits, but Gene Kranz was firmly convinced that throughout his entire life God had been leading him to the task that now lay before him. He had faith that God wouldn’t have done this without also giving him the capacity to carry it out. He trusted God, and was thus comfortable with his responsibility. This is a recurring theme in his autobiography, Failure Is Not An Option (hereby strongly recommended by yours truly).

So, how did he spend this rare Saturday night off? Running over the flight plans for the millionth time? No, he went to church:

"I go to Saturday evening mass. Blessed by my mother with strong faith, during almost every mission, I find a way to get to church and pray for wise judgment and courage, and pray also for my team and the crew. Our pastor, father Eugene Cargill, knows the risks and the difficulties of our work and the need for extra guidance. He knows that tomorrow is a special day, and he says a few words about it in his sermon. After mass he talks with me briefly, finishing with a thumbs-up. Then I go home, have a great supper and a couple of beers, and Marta keeps the kids quiet when I go to bed early. I sleep well." (Gene Kranz [1])

He slept well! Can you imagine that... All that importance, all that responsibility - and he slept well!

And let us not leave Marta unsung. Marta Kranz had not only served up a great supper and kept the kids quiet the night before the landing. She had also lived for years with a man who worked 60-100 hours a week during which time she had carried, borne, and raised six children. She had maintained a good, loving home on her husband’s modest government paycheck.

If the United States hadn’t had women of Marta’s caliber whose sacrifices were surely as great as their husbands’ in return for considerably less public acclaim, the Apollo project would not have been successful. If Gene Kranz and his men had had to pick up the kids at school and kindergarten, human beings even today would not yet have walked on the Moon. Marta Kranz and the tens of thousands of women standing behind their engineers and astronauts who kept the families and the homes running are truly the Apollo project’s unsung heroes.

Gene & Marta. If the US hadn’t had women of Marta’s caliber whose sacrifices were surely as great as their husbands’ in return for considerably less public acclaim, the Apollo project would not have been successful.

The next morning Gene Kranz and his team got to work before dawn, Sunday 20 July 1969. The great moment was approaching.  He called his anxious, young team together for the final pep-talk:

"We're getting ready to make history. You know what we're about to do. From the day that we were born we were destined to be in this room this day. I've trained, I've absolute confidence in everyone in this room, but I want you to know something: No matter what happens to us this day, I will stand behind every decision that you make. However it goes, when we walk out of this room, we walk out of this room as a team." (Gene Kranz [2])

"From the day that we were born we were destined to be in this room this day." (Gene Kranz)

Gene Kranz was actively using his faith to inspire his men with confidence in Providence and the faithfulness of God: He told his men, that they were all destined by God to carry out the task before them - and implied in this, because God never deceives and never fails, that they were also given the ability. This gave them the confidence and the peace of mind they needed to perform their best.

Take a look at this 1-minute youtube-clip from the fabulous 2003-documentary "Failure is not an Option" [2]. 

I say, it takes a heart of stone, not to be moved by this.

GUIDO Steve Bales, who was only 26 at the time, says about his Flight Director’s talk, in a clearly moved tone of voice:

"I can’t even say that today without getting choked up about it. That was the best, best thing he could have said to me."[2]

Stephen Bales at just 26, had his fair share of difficult decisions during the highly dramatic Apollo 11 landing. He handled all the problems that came his way with excellence and a clearly spirited concentration. The Flight Director's outspoken faith in God's providence was contagious.

During the next half hour Bales had to bear his share of the difficult decisions on his young shoulders. Gene Kranz had found the “extra guidance” he had sought in church and was the perfect leader for his men. He was a modern day version of the good king in the great adventures, who with divine inspiration leads his knights into battle against the powers of darkness.

"I said lock the control room doors and from that moment forth, no one would enter or leave this room until we have either landed, we had aborted or we had crashed." [2]

The doors to the control room were locked. The electric power systems in the control room were placed on “battle short” (which basically meant that all electric fuses were bypassed and disabled, like when a battle ship enters a combat situation and its survival is dependent on the continued operation of the equipment, an unnecessary power failure is more to be feared than a short circuit as a result of overload and missing fuses.)

The doors were locked to the Mission Control Room, powers system were in "battle short"-mode, the men were all ready in body, brain and spirit; the rest was left to God.

Everything had been thought through and optimized during the 10 years tirelessly spent gathering space travel experience. Each and every man had gone to the men's room right before the doors were locked – on Kranz’s orders! Each and every man was ready and raring to go, urged on by Kranz. Everything that was humanly possible had been done; the rest was up to God.

In fact the landing was highly dramatic, and demanded the utmost of men and machines. There were a number of minor problems and at least three major crisis (failing communication, computer-errors and fuel shortage) which put the engineers in the Control Room – and the astronauts in space - to the ultimate test.  They passed.

Gene Kranz' and his "White team" passed the ultimate test.

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[1] Gene Kranz, Failure is not an Option, ISBN:0743200799

[2] Failure is Not an Option. Dir. Rushmore DeNooyer and Kirk Wolfinger. Documentary. 2003.