Talk:Gene Kranz/Archive 1

Archive 1

June 2004

In case anybody is confused, I was a little too hasty in moving to "Gene Kranz" (by far the name he's best known by, check Google), and made weird circular redirs. I'll now back off and let the editing settle down a bit first. Stan 17:16, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I was confused, yeah.  :) I think it's fixed now. All the "what links here" links to Eugene, which probably caused the confusion. I'm glad this article is being written though and hope the author continues. - Hephaestos 17:18, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I was the original author of this article, but didn't have an account and didn't do much editing afterwards. I should really fill more of this in from Kranz' book. But that would explain why (at the time) I had problems editing the article. ;) -Joseph 01:39, 2004 Jun 26 (UTC)

I've been doing some updates, expect more to come. Thanks! Gump 02:14, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

The first 2 sections have slightly strange names. Could anyone come up with better titles? Dr Gangrene 16:29, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

On the vest issue. I recall that, in his book, Gene says that his wife made him a vest for each launch. I did not get the impression thyat they were always white, or even always light colors. He only wore white for Apollo 13 because his shift was the "white team." I don't have his book handy... perhaps another wikipedian could check this and correct the article if necessary. Xlation 11:11, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I just left the German wing of WP. So my English must be refreshed ab bit, not written longer texts for years, but I wil do my very best to improve the acticle. On the German wing of WP I upgrated the Apollo 1 article. But please give me some days time to read all I can find about him in my books. --Grabert 21:43, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup

I have attempted a first pass at cleanup. I moved biographical stuff up and rephrased the beginning. All of my changes are above "Kranz speaks about his portrayal" under "Kranz in the Movies"... the stuff below that is still out of Wikipedia format/style and still needs cleanup. Georgewilliamherbert 06:05, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

NASA Career

The penultimate paragraph mentions his famous quip in one sentence but the next sentence contradicts this by stating he did not utter it. Which is it? Or did Gene write the quip down and not say it? Also the movie sentence is really confusing, are some words missing?

His "White Team," dubbed the "Tiger Team" by the press, set the constraints for the consumption of spacecraft consumables (oxygen, electricity and water), controlled the three course-correction burns during the trans-Earth trajectory, as well as the power-up procedures that allowed the astronauts to use the Command Module for the trip home (among the marching orders given to his personnel at the time was his famous quip "Failure is not an option."). In the Ron Howard movie, his speech was "simplified into 'Failure is not an option,' " chuckles Kranz, who never actually uttered the now famous phrase during the Apollo 13 mission.

Secondly, the last paragraph in the section Feelings about life after the Moon appears irrelevant to Gene Kranz. Did Gene Kranz pose a question? Was the Vision for Space Exploration sent in some form to Gene as an answer? It looks like OR or misplaced commentary. -Wikianon 11:28, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

It is indeed a very contradictory paragraph. Gene Kranz never did say "failure is not an option". The writers of the movie took it from a paraphrased statement by Jerry Bostick, another flight controller who was a consultant on the movie. However, Kranz liked the quote so much that he used it as the title of his autobiography. I'll try to take a little time to get that paragraph into shape sometime soon.

As for the last paragraph, I agree that it's misplaced commentary. In my opinion it can just be removed without any loss to the article. MLilburne 14:00, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I also agree that the article would be better off without that last paragraph. I've gone ahead and removed it. --Matthew 19:34, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Feelings About Life After The Moon / Quote

Hello!

I think that's just the first part of Kranz's quotation: "No. In many ways we have the young people, we have the talent, we have the imagination, we have the technology."

Then there is something missing and after a new introduction about when he gave that statement the end of the actual quote is added: "I believe we need a long-term national commitment to explore the universe. And I believe this is an essential investment in the future of our nation -- and our beautiful, but environmentally challenged planet."

However, the whole quote ist taken from an Interview on www.space.com (read):

[...] CHAIKIN: Do you feel that NASA has changed since the Apollo days? Do you feel it's the same place that you remember?

KRANZ: No. In many ways we have the young people, we have the talent, we have the imagination, we have the technology. But I don't believe we have the leadership and the willingness to accept risk, to achieve great goals. I believe we need a long-term national commitment to explore the universe. And I believe this is an essential investment in the future of our nation -- and our beautiful, but environmentally challenged planet. [...]

I changed the section using the quotation as a whole because in my opinion, by omitting the metioned sentence, the meaning of the statement is not the same.

--62.203.94.67 16:43, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, the quote's meaning is definately changed by the exclusion of the second part. --Matthew 17:37, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Me, I don't agree. The quotation is still misleading since the question is not correctly stated. Original: Is NASA the same place?. A: No!; Wiki: Has NASA changed? A: No! See the difference? Thyl Engelhardt 213.70.217.172 (talk) 11:59, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

When Did His Father Die?

The article says: "His father, Leo Peter Kranz, was the son of a German immigrant, and served as an Army medic during World War II. His father died in 1940, when Eugene F. was only seven years old." Since the US didn't enter WWII until December, 1941, Kranz's father could not have died in 1940 AND served as an Army medic during WWII. Could he have served in WWI?Mmyers1976 (talk) 16:16, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Name mis-spelled

Eugene Kranz spells his name "Krantz" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.216.160.75 (talk) 01:24, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I've looked at the Nasa website, and his name is spelt Kranz throughout. Do you have a reference for that? Apepper (talk) 09:02, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Copyright problem

This article has been reverted by a bot to this version as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) This has been done to remove User:Accotink2's contributions as they have a history of extensive copyright violation and so it is assumed that all of their major contributions are copyright violations. Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. VWBot (talk) 14:15, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

His edits were clearly infringement free, in this case, so I'm going to revert the bot. Mlm42 (talk) 16:29, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Especially needed new image

Could anyone find a new image of Gene Kranz. Thanx. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.181.87.215 (talk) 04:50, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Dead or alive?

Someone who has not contributed since 2006, just edited the article with Kranz's "death date". There seems to be no evidence of this on the internet; in fact, DeadOrAliveInfo returns that he is alive (is that a circular link?) Sources? JustinTime55 (talk) 19:41, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Not dead - "death date" is merely a listing in the infobox that is common on all people and is currently blank so nothing shows up on the actual page. Ckruschke (talk) 21:02, 21 February 2014 (UTC)Ckruschke

I know we keep the placeholder, but this person actually put in a death date (May 6 last), but I reverted it. JustinTime55 (talk) 21:22, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Oh - ok - well then my answer is "some people are trolls"...  ;-) Ckruschke (talk) 18:20, 22 February 2014 (UTC)Ckruschke

Opposite attitudes section

There is no apparent opposition between the attitude expressed by Jerry Bostick (which prompted the tagline "failure is not an option") and the attitude expressed by the flight directors, engineers, and administrators in the second block quote. I'd like to hear anyone else's opinions on this matter and how the section might be improved.

Bostick talks about how controllers and engineers responded to contingencies: "...when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution." Bostick's use of the word "option" indicates that he is talking about the choices available to Mission Control. Therefore, his use of the word "failure" is in reference to their performance of their jobs; they would never choose failure. In the case of the Apollo 13 mission, this meant that they would not resign themselves to losing the crew unless every last possible solution had been run down and they had no options left to choose from.

Tindall and Kraft talk about failure of systems and equipment, not of a mission or of themselves. It should be clear that Kraft's statement that "we recognized failure, we knew it was there, we always looked for it" is a practical application of Murphy's Law; expect failure so that you're prepared for it. A perfect example of this in NASA practice would be John Aaron's initiative in learning about "SCE to Auxiliary" (see John Aaron). The definition of "failure" in this context is made even clearer by Kraft's reference to the Challenger disaster. Recall that the decision to launch the shuttle on that morning - over the concerns of engineers and contractors - was made based on the experience that the O-ring seals hadn't failed in previous launches after being exposed to temperatures below their safe limit. This is what Kraft meant when he said "Their decisions were based on success." This same critique is repeated in the Report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (V.I pg.9, "reliance on past success as a substitute for sound engineering practices (such as testing to understand why systems were not performing in accordance with requirements)," pg.181, and others).

All this to say that the concluding statement of this section, "Tindall followed this point by asserting that a person with the exact opposite attitude, one who would hide a problem '...was the worst kind of person to have around - absolute worst" is false because the attitude Tindall criticizes is not at all the opposite of "Failure is not an option". The two interviews refer to completely different kinds of failure. Furthermore, at no point does Bostick advocate hiding problems; he is describing Mission Control's response to a systems failure which has already happened.

The exact opposite attitude of "failure is not an option" would be "besides, there's nothing we can do" (see the Columbia accident again). The exact opposite of the attitude Kraft and Tindall describe would be "it won't be a problem" (present in both Challenger and Columbia).

So again, I'd like to hear the opinions of people more experienced with Wikipedia than I (this is my first edit) on how this section might be restructured.

108.4.106.251 (talk) 19:44, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

What specific edit are you suggesting? I see alot of your opinion here, but nothing specific about what needs to be added, subtraced, or changed on the page. Without this, we can't comment. Ckruschke (talk) 18:29, 5 March 2014 (UTC)Ckruschke

Fair point. I was reluctant to pop out of nowhere to lay out a major change to an article.

The specific edit I suggest is that the portion of the "Failure is not an option" section which begins with "In 1989, six years before..." and continues to the end of the section be removed in its entirety. The point which it argues is based upon a flawed understanding of what "failure" and "options" are in their proper context of engineering and spaceflight operations. If someone who wondered where "failure is not an option" came from and what it meant read this article, they would be either confused by the fuzzy contradiction within the section or left with the impression that, as Flight Director, Gene Kranz was "was the worst kind of person you could have around," which contradicts the entire article. Therefore, discussion on "the exact opposite attitude" leads the section astray with a false argument, does not contribute to the section nor the article as a whole, and should be removed.

108.4.106.251 (talk) 23:54, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree with you, 108. I believe the editor who put this in has done what we call WP:SYNTHESIS, which is forming a conclusion from two or more different sources and making a connection which none of the sources actually makes. The only thing in common seems to be the word "failure". I think the oral history discussion, while very interesting to the history of the Apollo program, is not really related to Gene Kranz (I don't believe he was included in this panel), or the Failure Is Not an Option page, on which the exact same thing appears.

I think the oral history discussion is of enough value that it should be kept somewhere, but is not really related to the topic of Gene Kranz (I don't believe he was included in this panel), or the Failure Is Not an Option page, on which the exact same thing appears. It should probably be moved somewhere else, such as (maybe?) the Apollo program page, but not associated with "Failure is not an option", of course. Perhaps as a first step, we should move it here pending further discussion?

I looked up the edit histories, and this was added by User:Tdadamemd, who should be invited to join this discussion. Not to poison the well, but he seems to have an axe to grind about decisions made by NASA management when things went wrong; see his posts in Talk:Apollo 13#Persistent problems with the "explosion" story and abort mode decision,Talk:Space Shuttle Challenger disaster#It is improper to conclude that the primary cause was O-rings, and Talk:Space Shuttle Challenger disaster#Accountability for the crew not being given an ejection/escape option. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:00, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Actually, inviting him is probably moot, as I see he was indefinitely blocked on January 1. JustinTime55 (talk)

The section in question

(With recommended parts stricken which indicate a connection to "Failure is not an option"): JustinTime55 (talk) 17:38, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

In 1989, six years before the movie during a roundtable discussion commemorating the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11, six key leaders gathered and [discussed the attitude] expressed unanimous agreement that the exact opposite attitude was a main reason behind the success of the Apollo Program:

John Logsdon (moderator): Dr Gilruth, by this time were you beginning to be convinced that this was going to work? I say that a little facetiously, but...

Bob Gilruth: I was always a great worrier.

George Mueller: We all were.

Bob Gilruth: I felt it was much better to be a big worrier than a person that wasn't and have the trouble. And of course a person that either worries or he doesn't. Some people don't worry about things. I happen to be one that worries, very very much, especially on things like flying men to the Moon, I tell you. We had a lot of worriers in there and most of them hid it quite well. And I hid it pretty well too, except when I'd be all alone with some close friends.

Bill Tindall: The kind of work I was doing, they called me a professional pessimist.

Owen Morris: Yes, right.

Chris Kraft: You know, That's another profound thing in my opinion. I think the thing that we learned on and the thing that made us strong was that we knew about failure. We recognized failure, we knew it was there, we always looked for it.

Owen Morris: That's right.

Chris Kraft: And everything we did was based on decisions on failure (OM?: right) rather than success. (OM?: right) And if you want my opinion, that's what happened to NASA in the Challenger accident. Their decisions were based on success, and the people sitting right here's decisions were based on failure. And that may sound crazy as hell, but I believe that's the way we did it.

Owen Morris: That's what we spent our time on.

Unknown 1: That's right.

Unknown 2: Right.

Unknown 3: Right.

Unknown 4: Yeah.

John Logsdon: And the attitude clearly is very different today.

Chris Kraft: Yes.

Tindall followed this point by asserting that a person with the exact opposite attitude, one who would hide a problem "...was the worst kind of person you could have around - absolutely the worst."
(Chris Kraft was NASA's first Flight Director, and Kranz had trained under him as Kraft's assistant. Houston's Mission Control Complex (MCC) building would later be named in honor of Kraft.)

References

---

end of moved section ----------------------------------------- JustinTime55 (talk) 17:38, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

JustinTime55 - Agree. I thought I had been watching this page pretty close - not sure why I didn't flag something like this a long time ago as it clearly has nothing to do with Kranz and is all about poor decisions being made by "today's NASA". Ckruschke (talk) 20:28, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Ckruschke

His education

What was his major at St. Louis U.?CountMacula (talk) 06:23, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Gene Kranz/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

This is a pretty good article. The central biographical summary is sound, decently comprehensive, and well sourced. There are a few problems of grammar and phrasing, however. The major problems are with the introduction, which is a bit awkward, and the two sections at the end: "Teams" and "Life after the Moon". They don't fit very well into the structure of the article and seem tagged on. They contain valuable information, so they shouldn't just be deleted, but the information needs to be better integrated into the main flow of the article. MLilburne 20:41, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Last edited at 20:41, 12 August 2006 (UTC). Substituted at 15:53, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Vest colour

I removed the assertion that his mission vests were always white. I didn't add any sources for this because I was removing incorrect content rather than adding anything new (and the existing assertion was unsourced); but some sources for it not being true are this page about his striped Apollo 17 vest and these NASA pictures of him in a dark vest during Gemini VIII reentry. TSP (talk) 17:59, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

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FD during STS-51L?

After reading the article, I've come across an error. Not sure if anyone wants to confirm it before I change it.

The summary at the top says Gene served as Flight Director during the launch of Challenger (STS-51L). This is incorrect. Jay Greene was the actual Flight Director during the launch of that mission. This is well documented on the STS-51-L page and external sources. Gene Kranz was Director of Mission Operations in 1986. The article actually states this later on. He was not the Flight Director but he was indeed present in the MOCR during the accident. Ok to change? — Preceding unsigned comment added by DarkLight753 (talk • contribs) 22:01, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

• Gone ahead and changed this error. I've added Flight Control Room because the Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR) was referred to as the Flight Control Room (FCR) for STS flights.--DarkLight753 (talk) 14:35, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Recent images

There are some newly released and therefore very recent images of Kranz (see for an example). More can be found via the search tool. I am currently working on another project now or I would find the best candidate and add it; feel free to do so if you can find the time. Kees08 (Talk) 19:05, 30 June 2019 (UTC)