<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The 1995 movie adaptation of Jim Lovell\u2019s book <\/span>Lost Moon<\/span><\/i> spawned a catch phrase that took on a life of its own.\u00a0 In <\/span>Apollo 13, <\/span><\/i>Tom Hanks (who portrayed Lovell) repeated the famous, \u201cHouston, we have a problem\u201d after the explosion on board their Moon bound spacecraft was first called in by his fellow astronaut Fred Haise (Bill Paxton).\u00a0 It seems everyone decided that Lovell\u2019s declaration was the perfect fit for any and all problems.\u00a0 Personally, my favorite line in the movie comes from Flight Director Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) who informs the Mission Control team that it is their job to get the crew back home safely and that, \u201cFailure is not an option.\u201d\u00a0 Growing up in the heyday of NASA\u2019s push to get us into space and then to the Moon, I was very familiar with the Mission Control set up that guided the space flights.\u00a0 I did not realize at the time that just about all the events I watched unfold in that room during those missions were being guided by the people who invented the art of \u2018Mission Control\u2019.\u00a0 One of the prime movers and shakers in this period was one Christopher Columbus Kraft (2\/28\/1924 – 7\/22\/2019).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In his excellent book (<\/span>Flight – My Life in Mission Control – <\/span><\/i>2001 – Dutton Press), Kraft recounted the monumental effort that the Space Task Group (STG) put forth to give birth to America\u2019s Space Program.\u00a0 The United States\u2019 first efforts to reach space were being handled by the Air Force and the Navy.\u00a0 Their lack of success and inter-service rivalries were part of the reason that the USSR managed to launch the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik.\u00a0 Even the Russians were rather surprised at the world\u2019s reaction to their success.\u00a0 Moscow\u2019s <\/span>Pravda <\/span><\/i>newspaper made a brief mention of the launch buried at the bottom of page one.\u00a0 Even the Soviet Union\u2019s leader, Nikita Khruschev, had gone to bed after their rocket scientists had reported the successful launch and orbit to him (and were satisfied but not overly excited about the whole event).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The entire concept of a Space Race didn\u2019t actually start until the Western press plastered front page headline banners (accompanied by long stories and analysis of the Soviet launch).\u00a0 The London and New York papers broke the news to the world and immediately began asking questions like, \u201cDo the Russians realize they had a technical marvel on their hands?\u201d and \u201cIs the United States that far behind the Communists’ technical abilities?\u201d\u00a0 Congress was enraged and demanded hearings so they could at least pin the blame for this \u2018missile gap\u2019 on someone.\u00a0 The alarmists in the press ignited feelings of fear and rage in the general public.\u00a0 The secrecy under which the USSR developed its space program kept the rest of the world in the dark.\u00a0 The key details of their space efforts and even the name of their main rocket program designer were kept secret for many years.\u00a0 Without the full truth being reported, the western world did indeed undergo moments of panic.\u00a0 A general feeling of dread was voiced openly;\u00a0 \u201cIf the Reds can launch a satellite, can they also put nuclear weapons in space?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the scientific world, nobody was overly surprised that someone had launched a satellite.\u00a0 Both the United States and the Russians had announced plans to launch an instrumental package as far back as 1955 when the International Geophysical Year (IGY) was announced.\u00a0 This 18 month scientific program to study the Earth and upper atmosphere was going to be carried out in the U.S. by the Army.\u00a0 The team they were relying on to get the job done was headed by Wernher von Braun and his team of German rocket scientists.\u00a0 They had been the prime developers of the German rockets that terrorized England and came close to changing the final outcome of WWII.\u00a0 Von Braun and much of his team had been secreted to America near the end of World War II in a clandestine project code named \u2018Operation Paperclip\u2019.\u00a0 President Eisenhower wanted the American satellite launch to portray a more peaceful image so he had the project initially\u00a0 transferred to the Naval Research Laboratory and not to von Braun\u2019s team.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0NRL\u2019s Vanguard rocket fizzled on the launch pad.\u00a0 For some reason, the Pentagon had deliberately restricted von Braun\u2019s Jupiter rocket in 1956 fearing he would \u2018accidentally\u2019 put a nose cone in orbit (these facts only resurfaced years later via declassified documents so the reasoning for this action is lost in time).\u00a0 A month after the October 4, 1957 launch of Sputnik, the Russians launched a larger payload (<\/span>Sputnik II<\/span><\/i>) with a dog named Laika on board.\u00a0 The public now added their voices to the furor over America lagging behind the Soviets. \u00a0 Animal lovers joined the fray when it was learned Laika was sacrificed for propaganda purposes (the dog died in oxygen deprived sleep before the capsule burned up on re-entry).\u00a0 The country demanded answers and action.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The President finally realized the Vanguard rocket was not going to get the U.S. in orbit.\u00a0 Ike\u00a0 authorized the launch of a small satellite (a 31 pound object named Explorer) built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California aboard one of the Army\u2019s Jupiter rockets on January 31, 1958.\u00a0 A few weeks later, Vanguard finally put another small payload in orbit.\u00a0 The director of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, Hugh Dryden, recognized that NACA needed to begin preparations to transition from aeronautics to space flight as well.\u00a0 NACA formed the Space Task Group (STG) which was a forward looking step on Dryden\u2019s part.\u00a0 On October 1, 1958, NACA was rechristened NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) by order of President Eisenhower.\u00a0 NASA was to be a civilian agency in charge of the American space program.\u00a0 As a NACA employee, Chris Kraft was already appointed to the STG and this group began to formulate NASA\u2019s plan to put men in space.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Chris Craft was born in Phoebus, Virginia in 1924 but his hometown was long ago swallowed up by the urban sprawl of Hampton and Newport News.\u00a0 He was an active child who overcame serious burns he received after falling into a trash fire at age three.\u00a0 The burns to his knees and left hand were less severe than the damage done to his right hand.\u00a0 It remained weaker for the rest of his life (but not enough to make him become a lefty).\u00a0 He first studied mechanical engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and felt somewhat overwhelmed by the subject until he enrolled in a class called Introduction to Engineering.\u00a0 This class introduced Chris to the phrase, \u201cIt is not fatal to change your mind,\u201d and it not only helped him find direction in his studies, it would become a guiding thought throughout his career in aerospace.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Craft would be part of the Class of 1945, but World War II began to siphon both instructors and students into the war effort (the entire Class of \u201842 entered Officer Candidate School).\u00a0 A good number of \u201845 decided to apply for Naval Flight School but Chris\u2019s injured right hand sent him back to VPI.\u00a0 As one of the first to receive a degree in aeronautical engineering from VPI, he was given an opportunity to work for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) at Langley Field, but he felt it was too close to home.\u00a0 Instead, he accepted a job offer at Chance Vought, a major aircraft manufacturing company in Connecticut.\u00a0 He never worked a day for them and in the end, it was a move that opened a much better and exciting world for Kraft.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Chris arrived at Chance Vought, a gatekeeper receptionist stonewalled him because he did not have a birth certificate with him (which no one had mentioned he would need).\u00a0 \u201cSecurity reasons – you can\u2019t enter without a birth certificate,\u201d she told him.\u00a0 She cited the same regulations when she refused to let him talk to the men who had interviewed him at VPI.\u00a0 Thus stymied, he went back to his hotel and called NACA to see if their offer was still on the table.\u00a0 He recalled, \u201cI asked if\u00a0 their job offer was still valid.\u00a0 They said, \u2018It sure is!\u00a0 How soon can you be here?\u2019\u00a0 \u2018Next week,\u2019 I said.\u00a0 \u2018Make it Thursday, see you then.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 He packed his bag, wrote Chance Vought a short note why he wasn’t joining them, and then set off on the first leg of his journey into aerospace.\u00a0 NACA was a good job even though he had no way of knowing then that when President Eisenhower created NASA from NACA, he would become a vital cog in the United States space program.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After twelve years with NACA, Kraft was becoming increasingly unhappy with is position.\u00a0 He lived for the action involved in gathering true flight data testing aircraft and saw his job becoming more and more administrative.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t taking good care of himself and suffered from several health issues.\u00a0 Little did he know his wife, Betty Anne, was praying he would find a different position.\u00a0 When the Russians flew Sputnik, the wheels turned,\u00a0 NACA became NASA, and Kraft\u2019s career changed very quickly.\u00a0 When he joined the 35 member Space Task Group, his area became \u2018flight operations\u2019 – it was a new frontier and nobody knew exactly what they were doing.\u00a0 \u201cThe job ahead had never been done before.\u00a0 We would learn by doing.\u00a0 So we got started,\u201d he recalled.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The engineering at Langley Field was pretty straightforward stuff:\u00a0 if they needed a new instrument, for example, they simply made one.\u00a0 With NASA, they were introduced to a whole new level of organization via a device called an RFP.\u00a0 Request for Proposal was a governmental tool that compelled them to outline with exacting detail what they needed, how it would do the job, and how much it would cost.\u00a0 These RFPs were then sent out to private contractors who would compete for the job by returning their plan.\u00a0 The old joke around the astronaut corps went something like this:\u00a0 \u201cHow do you feel about flying in a spacecraft built by the lowest bidder?\u201d\u00a0 Naturally, the details and timeline to put out an RFP and get the completed proposals back from the contractors meant there were no \u2018instant fixes\u2019 – government jobs took a long time to complete.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The United States would not even launch its first successful satellite until January 31, 1961 when Explorer 1 went into orbit.\u00a0 Never-the-less, the STG were already laying the groundwork to put a human in space.\u00a0 Before there was a rocket or a capsule to accomplish this mission, Chris Kraft and his Flight Division began working on what the flight plan would look like.\u00a0 They simultaneously began working on how these missions would be guided and the design of \u2018Mission Control\u2019 also began to take shape.\u00a0 They built Mission Control before there was a mission to control.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0People often asked Kraft what Werhner von Braun\u2019s work for NASA was at that time and the answer was \u2018nothing\u2019.\u00a0 Von Braun was still working for the Army\u2019s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama and wanted nothing to do with NASA.\u00a0 This changed when he finally got wind of what they were planning.\u00a0 The Huntsville group would eventually be charged with developing the rockets NASA needed, but von Braun never got to fulfill his greatest ambition.\u00a0 He wanted to run the whole show but as Kraft pointed out, he was a \u2018rocket guy\u2019 and his talents would have been wasted anywhere else but designing and testing NASA\u2019s rocket fleet.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Kraft never took credit for being \u2018the guy who did it all\u2019.\u00a0 In his book, he singles out key people like Bob Gilruth, Max Fagat, Caldwell Jones, and Chuck Matthews for doing the multitude of needed tasks.\u00a0 \u201cOur part is simple,\u201d Matthews said, \u201cChris, you come up with the basic mission plan.\u00a0 You know, the bottom-line stuff on how we fly a man from the launch pad into space and back again.\u00a0 It would be good if you got him back alive.\u201d\u00a0 That was the mission in a nutshell and as the rocket power to do that was tested launching satellites, the planning to put a man in space was already well underway – it was called Project Mercury..\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Watching the workings of both NASA and SpaceX control centers today makes it look, not exactly simple, but routine.\u00a0 In the late 1950s, there was no routine and most of the procedures employed today have their origins with the STG.\u00a0 Kraft points our that vital questions had to be addressed:\u00a0 \u201cHow do we measure the trajectory during launch so that we know when to abort if the rocket goes haywire?\u00a0 How do we know the capsule reached orbit?\u00a0 What kind of radar beacons do we need?\u00a0 What do we need on the ground to track them?\u00a0 What instruments, dials, and gauges does the guy in the capsule need?\u00a0 How much does he need to know and how much do we need to tell him?\u00a0 How do we track the health and performance of the capsule and the guy inside?\u00a0 What kind of electronic aids do we need to find the capsule after it splashes down in the ocean?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The questions asked spawned more questions and everyone of them needed to be answered for a mission to succeed.\u00a0 The answers would influence the design of the space capsule and the design of the recovery efforts.\u00a0 For a company to bid on this project, the RFP would have to contain information about all of the nagging questions that kept Kraft and his team awake at night.\u00a0 The STG gave the contractors four weeks to submit their proposals and on December 11, 1958, Charlie Donlan divided the group into teams to review them.\u00a0 On January 12, 1959, the contract for Project Mercury were awarded to McDonnell with a (hoped for) deadline to get it done – three years.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the interim, the group wanted to learn everything they could about the Air Force\u2019s Atlantic Missile Range at Cape Canaveral.\u00a0 To their surprise, they were stiff armed by the Air Force – the boys in blue resented NASA for \u2018shoving them aside in the manned space business\u2019.\u00a0 The officers there saw the NASA guys as rookies and the recovery people at Patrick Air Force base were especially hostile.\u00a0 Just to use the Air Force facilities required reams and reams of paper work (\u201cmounds of gobbledygook,\u201d Kraft called it). \u00a0 The STG had to hire extra clerks to wade through it all.\u00a0 A trip to Los Angeles to figure out the logistics of ordering the Atlas rocket they needed from the Ballistic Missile Division of the Air Force was also an eye-opener.\u00a0 At least the Space Technology Laboratory folks and Air Force personnel who worked there felt some responsibility to be helpful – they had to ensure the rocker\u2019s success.\u00a0 As Kraft summed it up, \u201cThere is no such thing as a money-back guarantee in the missile business.\u00a0 [The BMD] knew if the rocket blew up, it was their fault.\u00a0 If it didn\u2019t, everybody\u2019s attention would be on that Mercury capsule up there in space.\u201d\u00a0 Kraft knew that once launched, the survival questions became Mission Control\u2019s perview.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Such was the state of affairs of the newly christened \u2018Manned Space Program\u2019.\u00a0 The idea of getting an astronaut in space by the end of the 1950s wouldn\u2019t pan out.\u00a0 In Part 2, we will pick up the story as Kraft and his colleagues began putting the pieces of the MSP together in the early 1960s.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 It had to be\u00a0Rocket Man –\u00a0<\/em>right?\u00a0 From 1972 at Royal Festival Hall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The 1995 movie adaptation of Jim Lovell\u2019s book Lost Moon spawned a catch phrase that took on a life of its own.\u00a0 In Apollo 13, Tom Hanks (who portrayed Lovell) repeated the famous, \u201cHouston, we have a problem\u201d after the explosion on board their Moon bound spacecraft was first called in by his fellow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3341"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3344,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions\/3344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}