NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director, part 5 of 5

instead of being able to carry it. So, give me the big picture of Gemini. How important was it? How many goals did you have to accomplish and how successful was it? Gemini's job was to develop, test, improve the technologies we needed to go to the moon. It was the essential stepping stone. It was the key stone of the Apollo program. From a standpoint of success, it was 100% successful. We developed the systems technologies. We developed the confidence in our ability to use these technologies. We demonstrated the ability to fly for long durations, to run to do two spacecraft. Probably the most difficult one was the one associated with extra vehicular operations because we were completely almost taken aback. We had the very successful Gemini IV EVA with Ed White. And then I had the Gemini IX EVA and we fell flat in our face. We found out we didn't have the proper positioning aids, restraints, training, the suit technologies. We didn't have the anti-fog compounds

to keep moisture off the faceplate. And yet we still didn't learn our lesson there. We went through a very difficult Gemini X, Gemini XI, XI, XI and then we had one of these science groups come in and say, hey, you're doing it all wrong. Go back in and look at the fundamentals of the job. And this is how you ought to train and the concept of neutral buoyancy training came in. So the last block to fit into this matrix we had to develop for Apollo was extra vehicular operations and we closed that out in our final mission. Perfect. I want to ask you that because we talked about it last time I interviewed you. You were essential and you were part of the team in space walking. I call it that space walking. How misleading was Ed White's success? Ed White's success and the Gemini IV mission was probably one of the, let me start off. It's hard to explain shortly. But then why did EVA success? We were all in a high. We had been successful and virtually everything

that we had done to date in space occasionally. We'd have a step back, but then we'd always have two steps forward. The actual vehicular operation we thought was going to be a piece of cake. We knew that man was in a very dangerous environment and as long as we protected the man with the suit and the suit systems, we'd be OK. We found out we were entirely wrong. After the Gemini IX EVA, Gene Cernan came back and he said, you know, Gino, EVA is a tough nut to crack. And we, our near lost Gene Cernan in that EVA because we had a blinded crewman in the wrong end of the spacecraft is face plate fogged over, totally exhausted, trying to work his way back into the cockpit. This is no way to operate in space. And we learned that lesson the hard way and we learned it again in the next two missions. Thank you, perfect. How was Buzz Aldrin instrumental in getting it right? What did he do differently?

I believe that the... I think Buzz was the instrument for getting it right. It was the science community as engineers. We started saying, look, we've had three missions where the EVAs didn't go well. What was wrong? Then we had a science advisory team step in and say, look, your entire principles of EVA are wrong. How you train, how you prepare the crew, the kinds of tools and instruments that you use. Let's go back to fundamental. So if you compare the Buzz Aldrin, he was the test subject. He was the test pilot for that activity, but the ideas came in from outside. Now, let's talk about... Let's talk about... Gemini 8 for a second. That's another one. Why was Ed White's first space walk so secretive? I think there were a variety of reasons. The first thing was we really didn't know that we could pull it off on the early Gemini program.

We had to develop the suit and the suit systems we had to get a crew trained. In addition, we were trying to set a space record. The Russians had beat us in everything else associated with manned space flight. And we were out trying to beat them in the actual vehicular operations. While we found out, we were still second best in space when the Russians, just prior to the Gemini 3 mission, conducted their space walk. But at that time, we knew that we were close to the Russians. This... Many of us were cold war warriors. We were about two and a half years behind when we started. And as we stepped into this activity, I was brought into the team between the Gemini 3 and the Gemini 4 mission. I formed up a small group of individuals to prepare the data packs that we would need for the remote site control teams at Australia and Hawaii, and as it came across the United States. So basically, the principal secrecy was A, we didn't know we could do it and B, we were still trying to beat the Russians at that time. Now, Gemini 8, how important was rendezvous

to the Gemini success, the Apollo success? Are you talking rendezvous or are you talking docking? Because we had already rendezvous at that time. OK, got it. 67 was there, 76 was there. All right, docking. How important was docking to it? And what went wrong in Gemini 8? Oh, boy. Lots of questions there. The... There's no way we were going to get to the moon unless you could basically merge your docked spacecraft. We had to accomplish what we call the transposition and docking for the lunar program where the command module would leave the S4B, turn around, come back in, and extract the lunar module. So it was an essential element. It had to be done. It had to be done perfect. It had to be done 100% of the time. So the Gemini mission was the first mission that gave us the opportunity to demonstrate this principle of docking. I had no real concern about it because by this time here,

pilots had been refueling with tankers from their fighter aircraft for many years. And if we knew from the ground standpoint, if we could get the crew in close enough, this crew could fly formation and then very gradually come in and dock with the spacecraft. So the basic principle, the need for docking, was all established within the program. So Armstrong and Collins, what happened? They docked Showme, what happened? Basically, the Agina, which was our target spacecraft. Armstrong's got it. Our Agina was a stable spacecraft. It was our target. It was the upper stage for a booster that was used by the military to place satellites. It made modifications to allow the engine to be restarted. But it was basically the upper stage of a military rocket. The Agina was basically yawed crosswise to the orbit plane. And the Gemini spacecraft came around,

flew formation for a period of time, and then very slowly came in and docked with the Agina spacecraft. There is a series of electrical contacts, an umbilical that is plugged in as part of this docking process. And then once this was completed, the ground prepared a maneuver load to send up to the Agina, and Dave Scott onboard the Gemini spacecraft, sent the commands through this umbilical to yawed back into the orbit plane. So it was moving in the direction of orbital travel. Everything was normal through the docking process. Again, it was, as I said, once we got the crew in close enough, we knew I knew they could dock. Very shortly, however, after the docking, the spacecraft started to exhibit a what appeared to be a rolling off tendency. And Scott and Armstrong looked and they saw basically their attitude indicator on board the Gemini spacecraft was cocked off at an angle.

And they knew they had not commanded any maneuver. So the first thing they did was disable the attitude control system for the Agina spacecraft. As soon as this occurred, the rolling off tendency occurred even more, and they'd take control, they'd bring it back to the proper attitude, and they'd determine, hey, my problem, the problem that's occurring is somewhere in this Agina vehicle. So they separated from the Agina at that time, after which the Gemini spacecraft spun up very rapidly. Now, what happened is that while they were docked, you had some kind of a thruster. Some activity was trying to turn the spacecraft, but as soon as they undock the weight change, the mass change of the spacecraft changed very dramatically. So now you had a much lighter Gemini spacecraft, and as soon as they undocked, they knew immediately the problem was in the Gemini because it started spinning very rapidly, and it spun up almost

about 360 degrees per second, which is just about the limit of human consciousness before they reached up and pulled all of the circuit breakers that controlled the attitude jets. Then they turned on one of their entry RCS control rings that they knew used for the entry process. And they used over half of the fuel in the process of slowing down the roll right now to the point where they could regain control. Were they lucky to survive that one? I think they were very lucky to survive. The kind of lessons we learned out of this, though, I think were very important to us. The first thing was, is there wasn't as much trust. There was the quality of the training on the Agina that was necessary that we gave to all future crewmen. It was a new guy in the block. Secondly, we didn't trust this Gemini as much as we should. And if you don't trust a piece of space hardware, you go out and fix it and you find out why you don't trust it and you reestablish that trust. But what was most important to the ground control team

is that we were treating the Gemini and the Agina spacecraft as two separate vehicles. When they're docked, they are one spacecraft. And in training and in writing our procedures, we never addressed that one dock spacecraft, one spacecraft docked. It's one spacecraft rather than two. So you have to treat everything as an entity. We didn't do that. During our mission debriefings, we recognized the seriousness of our air in both training and in writing the procedures. We fixed it. And from then on, every time two spacecraft came together, they were one spacecraft. We treated it procedurally in training and in mission control in that same fashion. We were very successful from that time forward. It was essential to the return of the Apollo 13 spacecraft. The crew bringing it back because we had this integrated set of procedures. Great. Terrific. Could it have been, if it wasn't time strong? This look. Great. Great control.

No, let's keep moving on. Yeah. That's great. Any crewman would have done that. Yeah. Oh, well, I want to say any crewman. I don't know. I don't know. You'll never know about some of these things here. I mean, you can sit there and all you could do is speculate. And that's it. The officer told me that Armstrong was able to respond in 10-20 seconds. The commands and a lot of the engineers had said that. Well, I don't know. The one that amazed me was really Dave Scott, because Scott, forever the test pilot, recognized that he had to get one command in to allow the crew to regain control of that at Gina and continue troubleshooting. And if he hadn't got that command in, we wouldn't have been able to troubleshoot it and determine, you know, beyond the shadow of that. That's right. It's a real test pilot. Yeah. So it was really getting that one command in. Okay. Okay. That's great. Okay. Yeah. 50p. Okay. I have a question here about, you know, that you weren't. Why weren't you simmed for this event?

And I think, do you already answered that? Inge by saying, we never know. Okay. That's... I thought that was the answer to it. Well, I mean, it's simpler. See, we all... We assumed explosions as failure modes, primarily the rocket engines, but they were catastrophic. So if an engine exploded... See, that's... We were... We had an explosion and we were still sitting there breathing. And it wasn't supposed to be. Okay. Let me get that out. Okay. Right. Roll it. Terrific. Okay. Change, Max. Great. Um... Okay. Yeah. So, do we're outside? Yeah. You want to go shut that? Yeah. So, I can get this out. What was the next highlight of the... of that particular trip? Actually, the burn around the back side of the modes. When you say the next highlight, you just mean the next major event? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The next major event was the speed-up burn. Yeah. Okay. I want to ask about that. Where's the capsule? Where is it? It's in Hudson, Kansas, at the Cosmodrome. They asked for it. It was sitting outside of Paris in the Air and Space Museum, or Science Museum, and the people in Kansas there at that Cosmodrome made most of the stuff in the movie. Their technician has made the capsules and lamb mission control even. They built that. So, they've set up a whole other area they had an add-on. It's just Apollo 13. Describe for me, Fred, if you would, the big event of the burn behind the mode. You know, kind of in layman's terms. What was coming up? All right? Ready to go? Roll it. Speed? And the market? What was a moment where you were all holding your breath? Speaking of cine.

We got a cine. Okay. I want to take you back on it, because Jim told me a very funny story about you. Gentlemen, what are your plans here? Yeah. I think Jim's embellished that over the years, but that's all right. Still sounds good. Y'all going to talk to Frouc Al-Baz? Yeah, we've talked to them. You've already talked to him. We're going to interview him at Boston. You're going to, or have? We're going to. You might ask him about the pictures we took. I'm going to. I'm going to ask you about them too. Well, as I understand it, and I got this more second hand. We just by chance shot the path we were going by. Shot Siakosky and the Sea of Moscow. Both there were named by the Russians. And I'm told they were the best pictures of those features that were had been shot during the program. Maybe it just got came back to me, make me feel good. Thank you.

Okay. Okay, here we go. Okay, tell me about how that event, that burn coming up, you know, you had to prepare a lot for it. And you guys also were taking pictures, so. Okay. And the science of any kind was the objective just to get to the moon. Let me tell you where we're ready to go. Yeah. For you. Yes. Back in the day when we were at Langley, but became any essay at Langley in the early days of any essay. In fact, it's almost immediately after we created any essay. We started thinking about going to the moon. But that was, that was not to see the knackered days before 1958. And we did nothing but aeronautical research.

Okay, well then let me talk about Kennedy's mandate. But no, it was not. It was much before Kennedy. You got the times went wrong. Okay. And the winner of 1957. Excuse me. Let's go ahead and roll on this. Ready? Sean? Sean, how tight are we going for him, can I get it? Let's burn. Okay. You know that. Let me just sit here. Breathe in. Okay. And we're going to carry 2,000 pounds. This is capable of maybe making 2,800 pounds, which is a big increase in weight. Good. Okay.