Failure Is Not an Option Page 4

  Kraft nodded and growled at his controllers, “That is the first rule of flight control. If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything!” We secured Mercury Control and the blockhouse gang got saddled with the unenviable job of nervously watching over the Redstone throughout the night. “Doing nothing” worked: by early the next morning, the batteries were depleted, the destruct system disarmed, and the pressure relieved. The capsule and the Redstone rocket had survived with only minor damages to the tail fins.

  This fiasco was the most embarrassing episode yet for the young engineers of the Mercury program. The history books call this mission, sardonically but accurately, “The Four-Inch Flight.” While the badly shaken booster engineers frantically worked on finding out just what had happened, I promised myself that when I returned to Langley I would use the same technique that had worked for me flying airplanes or flight-testing at Holloman. I would get to know as many technicians, designers, testers, and planners as possible and find out what data they had that would be useful to me. I would then compile a book that contained essential, carefully organized, and easily accessible information so in future emergencies we would have what we needed to know right at our fingertips. The engineers at Langley were tremendously cooperative and even gave me a drafting board where I could study blueprints. The learning curve of my first mission had been steep. But I had gained something precious. I now knew how much I didn’t know.

  We went back to Langley and regrouped. The launch team debriefed, fixed the launch umbilical circuit problem that had caused the premature engine shutdown, and a month later we sent the rocket aloft. Project Mercury closed out 1960 with its first successful Redstone launch.

  In January of 1961, our second mission gave the chimpanzee Ham a hell of a ride. The Redstone failed to shut down when commanded and went to fuel depletion, landing almost 120 miles downrange from the recovery forces. We wrote our reports and classified the mission a success; after all, Ham survived and the rocket had not blown up.

  In these early months, we were plain lucky that America understood there was no achievement without risk, and there were no guarantees in this new business called spaceflight.

  • • •

  To hurl a man into space and bring him back alive, we needed to wire the world. This meant stringing communications across three continents and oceans, building tracking stations, installing the most powerful computers we could lay our hands on, and learning the business of real-time spaceflight with our teams.

  We established the thirteen manned network stations, which provided optimal coverage only during the initial three orbits. Cable connections from the United States stretched to switching centers in London, Hawaii, and Australia. The Mercury voice and Teletype communications were controlled by Jim McDowell from the central switching center at Goddard. After logging thousands of hours at his end of the lines, McDowell had an instinctive feel for each of his communications links and was able to predict and anticipate problems to an uncanny degree, bringing alternate circuits on line moments before the prime circuits failed. It was common to lose communications because of construction workers severing cables, or cranes knocking down power lines, sunspot activity, or even fog.

  After only a few weeks of training, in March 1961 the controllers went to the most remote outposts, installations connected to Mercury Control by a communications system best described as brittle. Text messages were prepared by Teletype operators at machines that punched holes into a narrow paper tape. When the message was completed, the tape was fed into a machine and transmitted to the tracking stations. This took at least twenty times longer to transmit a data packet than a present-day $100 fax machine would take to transmit the same amount of information. The constant chattering of the Teletype machines provided the audible backdrop for virtually all of the work at a site.

  The CapCom was the remote site team boss and handled all air-to-ground communications. His systems monitor assessed the capsule status with a bank of twenty-one meters and a couple of eight-pen recorders, like those used on lie detector, or polygraph, machines. The team flight surgeon had even fewer displays, thirteen meters, a scope to monitor the astronaut’s electrocardiogram, and an eight-pen recorder. Each three-man remote site team, with their brief contacts of eight minutes or less with the capsule during each orbit, provided the global coverage for early spaceflight. They were our eyes and ears as the spacecraft passed overhead. Their charge was simple: stay out of trouble, keep the mission on track, and provide any needed assistance to the crew. Easier said than done.

  The Mercury remote site CapComs were all fresh college graduates; this was their first job. They were paired with systems monitors, also young, who worked for Philco, a high-technology (in those days) electronics company. The systems monitors had no more than two years’ experience working at the early global satellite tracking stations. Only the very young seemed to have the guts to volunteer for these assignments, living on their own in distant and remote places.

  The tracking stations were often fairly primitive corrugated steel buildings like the hootches I lived in while in Korea, housing the electronic equipment and consoles. The sites were easily identified by their myriad of antennas. Primary site communications were provided by sixty-word-per-minute Teletype and a radio voice link from relay stations at London, Honolulu, and Sydney. The system was a daily crapshoot, susceptible to a variety of problems. When communications failed, the remote site teams were on their own, improvising and taking any action necessary during the period the capsule was in view to restore contact.

  The key sites were located at the points for the major Go NoGo decisions, and the locations of the deorbit maneuver. These included Bermuda; Australia; Hawaii; Guaymas, Mexico; and the California coast. These sites were usually designated as critical, and the team was augmented with an astronaut CapCom. The more remote facilities were the Canary Islands, Nigeria, Zanzibar, Canton Island, and ships sailing the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. World War II cargo vessels had been converted into floating sites to track satellites. They were the length of a football field, manned by a makeshift crew recruited from the hiring halls at the local ports. Since the ships carried no cargo, a foot of concrete was poured on the top deck to make them ride lower, and the superstructure was filled with antennas and electronics.

  Chris Kraft developed the concept of Mercury Control and taught the first generation of controllers. Like everyone else, he was drinking from a fire hose and needed every bit of help he could get. I was the operations and procedures officer. The job description consisted of keeping anything from falling through the cracks before or during the mission. I wrote the countdowns, prepared all message traffic, made sure the communications were working, briefed the tracking stations on the mission, and gave Kraft any assistance he needed. In effect, I was the flight director’s wingman.

  I became the scribe of Mercury Control, originating and approving every outgoing Teletype message and most voice communications. Within weeks after I had come on the job in 1960, my relationship with Kraft was solid enough for me to take on responsibility to clear virtually all of the messages without having to bother him. On the first Mercury deployment this got me into big trouble with the U.S. State Department and President Kennedy’s Peace Corps. I sent out a message to one of our controllers requesting information on the health conditions at one of our sites in Nigeria. The controller replied that “a hospital of doubtful cleanliness is nearby” and noted that the local people were “extremely poor, local government performance rather feeble. There are no nightclubs or bars. Temperatures are as high as 115 with frequent dust storms.” The bad news? “When the rainy season begins it will get worse.”

  The Nigerian government intercepted the message and threatened to remove the Peace Corps unless the U.S. government apologized. The flap filtered down through the NASA chain of command until it got to me. The message from Kraft was clear: “You screwed up. Next time you’re gone.” The U.S. apology kept the lid on the
issue. The teams stayed on site and I got my first lesson in international diplomacy.

  On the last day of March 1961, five months after my arrival, the tracking network was declared operational. We had twenty-one sites, thirteen of which were manned. The total cost of the network, built in one year, was $60 million.

  2

  “LIFTOFF; THE CLOCK IS RUNNING”

  The Soviet Union was our rival in space. While we were blowing up rockets, they were impacting the Moon with a probe. They even photographed the far side. Each Russian breakthrough came as a shock. (Our “intelligence” on the Russian space program was pretty hot stuff—notebooks with newspaper and trade journal clips pasted in them. The military apparently didn’t feel that the civilians in NASA had a need to know whatever it was they knew.)

  Most Americans followed the selection and training and further adventures of the seven original astronauts. That was about all they really knew about our infant manned space program. The astronauts were instant celebrities, not so much selected as anointed. The public, as well as the Mission Control team, was caught up in the beauty pageant aspect of the first manned launch: Which astronaut would be first? Who was the best?

  April 1961

  In April, as we were deploying for a pair of missions, the Russians beat us again. Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, and in orbit to boot, and we neophytes in the Space Task Group viewed the Russian success with both frustration and admiration. We packed up our bags, kissed the wife and kids goodbye, and, a few hours later, were once again at Mercury Control. Marta was now expecting our third child. We were launching increasingly complex missions from the Cape every month. Over half of the year we were TDY, on temporary duty, at the Cape. Unlike the later years in Houston, our wives did not know each other and often lived pretty far apart, so it was a lonely time for them. Compounding the problem was the dispersal of so many of our people to far-flung remote sites. Working in Mercury Control, I was fortunate: I could easily stay in touch by phone—and I could share with Marta the excitement and pride that we felt as the program went forward.

  Following two successful Redstone launches, we moved on to the unmanned Atlas mission, which was designed to test the spacecraft and the global network. The mission that would follow was the one we had been waiting for. It was planned to launch the first American into space.

  After we arrived at the Cape, we found that the military, which actually ran the Cape and nearby Patrick AFB, as well as the recovery forces, had pulled the plug on our resources and reallocated them to deal with one of the worst crises of the Cold War. A force of 1,300 Cuban exiles, who had been trained and armed by the CIA and given decidedly insufficient American tactical support, had landed at the Bay of Pigs in Fidel Castro’s Cuba in the predawn hours of April 17. Initially planned under the Eisenhower administration, this ill-advised invasion had probably been doomed from the outset, but its fate was sealed when President Kennedy, only a few months into his term and ambivalent about the entire operation, withheld American air support. Castro’s small air force decimated the exiles bent on his overthrow. All this was happening a few hundred miles to the south of the Cape. We sat in our hotel rooms, anxiously waiting to recover the resources we needed for the next two missions, our eyes glued to the television sets.

  The combination of Gagarin’s flight and the U.S. humiliation at the Bay of Pigs provided a sobering background to our deployment. The press focused on America’s pitiful space record, while touting Russia’s successes. It was reminiscent of what had happened a year earlier, when Newsweek lowered the boom on the Mercury program: “To lose to the Russians all we needed to do was start late, downgrade Russian feats, fragment authority, pinch pennies, think small, and shirk decisions.” I don’t recall anyone disagreeing with that assessment. The message was understood in Washington, and it was taken to heart at the Cape.

  I find it difficult today to convey the intense frustration and near despair as we picked ourselves up after each setback, determined to break the jinx on the program. Now we were going for two back-to-back missions—launching an unmanned Atlas downrange and then carrying out our first manned Redstone mission. We tried not to think about the gaps in knowledge, experience, and technology in our program—they were big enough to drive a truck through—and we could never forget that while we were screwing around with baby steps in suborbital missions the Russians had put a man in orbit. So we would continue with our preparations at the Cape, tired of being one step behind. It seemed like no matter what we did, the Russians were always one step ahead.

  In those dark days our only thought was, “This time it has to work.”

  Testing went smoothly once we regained the test range and network resources. The Mercury network, operational less than a month when we deployed, was working beautifully. NASA, playing catch-up with the Russians, changed the Mercury-Atlas launch (MA-3) from a ballistic mission to an orbital one. We split the Canary Islands team and sent a small group to Nigeria and Zanzibar. We planned two launches in the next ten days: an unmanned Atlas orbital mission and America’s first manned mission on a Redstone.

  The simulation team was composed of another small group of controllers. Their task was to create what we now call virtual reality—to replicate, in chillingly convincing detail, every element of the mission, from countdown to completion. The simulation supervisor (SimSup) had five people playing the roles of thirty. They would supply a data stream—telemetry, command, radar tracking, voice reports—and our controllers would have to respond. SimSup’s team would provide the voice calls and responses of the three test conductors, range safety officer, recovery team, and everyone else involved in a launch. One guy might play a dozen different people responding to controllers’ calls. The SimSup’s objective was to test the judgment of each individual and the competence of the total mission team. How quickly would they recognize and solve problems? How well did the mission rules and the procedures used in the various facilities and the network function in real time? Were we ready?

  SimSup would prepare and send out magnetic tapes to each of the Mercury facilities. For instance, a single orbit takes ninety minutes. The tapes would be played in sequence, starting at the Mercury Control Center at the Cape. At four minutes after simulated launch, Bermuda would start playing their tape—so for about six minutes MCC and Bermuda could compare data—then MCC would lose data and a few minutes after that the Bermuda tape would end. There would be an eight-minute gap before the tape at the Canary Islands site would start running. Each of the tapes had to contain timing and data replicating what was expected to happen during the actual flight. The simulation team would introduce various malfunctions on the tapes sent out to each site and the controllers there would have to deal with them.

  While all this was going on, an astronaut sitting in the capsule simulator had to deal with the same malfunctions thrown at the controllers at the various sites. If either the astronaut or the site controllers wanted to take an action that conflicted with the data on the tape, then the whole simulation would start to fall apart.

  Few of the early simulations achieved their objectives. Everything was new and untested—new equipment, new procedures. Attempts to conduct “seconds critical” training often failed. Our final MA-3 training run was no exception. Our novices stumbled from the start, when the wrong tapes were selected. After several restarts, tempers flared as controllers at the separate sites began improvising in an attempt to complete the test. Later in the afternoon, a disgusted Kraft called off the exercise and told me to sort out what had happened.

  Three days before the Atlas orbital test launch, I prepared the Teletype daily advisory, critiquing the previous day’s run and offering an apology. The message to all the tracking sites was blunt:

  TODAY’S OPERATION WAS A COMEDOWN AND INDICATES WE STILL HAVE PROBLEMS. MISSION CONTROL’S PERFORMANCE WAS SUBSTANDARD. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE WAY WE CLOSED DOWN THE VOICE NETWORK. OUR DISCOURAGEMENT WITH THE DRILL LED US TO WALK AWAY UNCOMPLETED.


  LAUNCH FORECAST—NO DELAYS ANTICIPATED. BOOSTER, CAPSULE AND RECOVERY GO. FLIGHT CONTROL IS GO ASSUMING ADEQUATE TRAINING.

  It was customary to add the latest news headlines, which included these:

  U.S. WILL ACT AGAINST CUBA TO GUARD ITS SECURITY.

  KENNEDY’S ANTI-CASTRO INVASION STAMPED OUT.

  REPORTS CLAIM CASTRO SUFFERING FROM MENTAL COLLAPSE.

  MARILYN MONROE SAYS NO TO REMARRIAGE TO JOE DIMAGGIO.

  ALLISON AND MANTLE HIT THREE HOME RUNS.

  AT&T 126-¼, DOWN 3/8 BECAUSE OF PROJECT MERCURY SLIP.