Mission Control: Behind the Scenes

Brian Balogh: So today on BackStory, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 by launching into the history of America’s race to the moon.

Nathan Connolly: You’ll hear from the Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic Earthrise photograph.

Brian Balogh: We’ll learn about a kind of Apollo nostalgia that has crept into movies and other forms of pop culture.

Nathan Connolly: And stay tuned for more listener stories throughout the episode.

Nathan Connolly: What are the names you associate with the moon landing? Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin. Well, in 2010, a survey by the Space Foundation ranked as a number two most popular space hero a man who had never set foot on the moon. Gene Kranz was flight director of the white team for Apollo !!, and he recorded this oral history about what went on in mission control the day of the moon landing and how the team there dealt with the pressures of the job.

Gene Kranz: You’re pacing. You got all this energy and you don’t have anything to do with it. You got no focus. You can’t sleep. Heck, we had six kids and Marta’s trying to figure out some way. “Gene, when are you going to settle down? When are you going to sleep? Are you going to go out the mission control center to sleep? What are you going to do?” You don’t know. You’d haunt mission control again and you’d fidget a bit to make sure your procedures are all ready. And then you have the most wonderful eight hours sleep that you have ever seen in your entire life. This is the last time because you’re going to walk into a mission control in a few hours and your team is going to write the book about landing on the moon.

Gene Kranz: In mission control when you walk into the room, you’re getting the feeling for what’s going on. You can feel the atmosphere immediately. This room is bathed in this blue light from the … a blue-gray light that you get from the screen. So it’s almost like you see in the movies kind of thing. And then the rest of the room atmosphere, it’s the smell of the room. You can tell people have been in there for a long period of time. There’s enough stale pizza hanging around and stale sandwiches and wastebaskets are full. You can smell the coffee that’s been burnt into the hot plate in there. That’s it. But you also get this feeling that this is a place something’s going to happen at.

Gene Kranz: I mean this is a place sort of like the docks where Columbus left and he sailed off to America or the beaches when he came on land. So it’s a place where you know something is going to happen. You feel the energy of the room because as you walk in, you pass little groups where there’s little buzzes of conversation. You don’t waste too many words in mission control. You speak in funny syllables and acronyms and short, brief sentences. Sometimes you use call signs. Other times you use first names, depends upon what the mood of the room is.

Gene Kranz: There’s certain things in mission control and there are two of them happened, one now and then one later on, that really now indicated that this was not a normal day. The first one, and this was one of the triggering events that got it. The spacecraft is now behind the moon and the control team, the adrenaline, no matter you how you tried to hide it, the fact is is that you were really starting to pump. It seems that every controller has in common a set of characteristics is they got to go to the bathroom. I mean it’s just to the point where you just need this break. That’s all there is to it. I mean you just get out there and it’s literally a rush to get to the bathroom.

Gene Kranz: You’re standing in line, and for a change there isn’t the normal banter, no jokes, et cetera. I mean the level of preoccupation in these … These are kids. These are the average age of my team was 26 years old. Basically I’m 36. I’m 10 years older. I’m the oldest guy on this entire team. This preoccupation is the first thing that hits you. I mean it just all of a sudden this is different. Then you walk back into the room and you hear the voice of the mission commentator. He talks and he’s commenting that the mission control team has returned from their break and they’re now going to be in the room through the lunar landing. Immediately that triggers my thought that this team this day is either going to land, abort, or crash. Those are the only three alternatives.

Gene Kranz: It’s really starting to sink in and I have this feeling I got to talk to my people. So I called the controllers, told my team. “Okay, all flight controllers. Listen up, and go over to FAD conference.” All of a sudden, the people in the viewing room are used to hearing all these people talking and all of a sudden, there’s nobody talking any more. But I had to tell these kids how proud I was of the work that they had done and that from this day, from the time that they were born they were destined to be here and they were destined to do this job. It’s the best team that has ever been assembled. Today, without a doubt, we are going to write in the history books and we are going to be the team that takes an American to the moon and that whatever happens on this day, whatever decisions they make, whatever decisions as a team we make, I will always be standing with them.

Gene Kranz: No one’s ever going to second-guess us. That’s it.

Apollo 11 Crew: Okay. 75 feet. There’s looking good. Down a half. Six forward. 60. 60 seconds. 60 seconds. Lights on. Down two and a half. Forward. Forward. 40 feet down. Two and a half. Picking up some dust. 30 feet. Two and a half down. Faint shadow. Standby for 30. Four forward. Four forward, drifting to the right a little. 30. 30 seconds. Four and a half. 30 seconds. Forward drift.

Gene Kranz: Then we hear the crew saying, “Contact.” Well, what happens? We have a three-foot long probe stick underneath each of the landing pads. When one of those touches the lunar surface, it turns on a blue light in the cockpit. When it turns on that blue light, that’s lunar contact. Their job is to shut the engine down, and they literally fall the last three feet to the surface of the moon. The crew is now continuing this process of shutting down the engine. Now the viewing room behind me, and this is again one of these other things in training, that just there’s nothing that training ever prepared you for that second, because the viewing room behind me starts cheering.

Gene Kranz: Our instructors, which are over in the sim room over to the right, they start cheering. But we got to be cool because we have to now go through all of the shutdown activity, but we have to go through a series of what they call, stay/no stay decisions because 40 seconds after we’ve touched on the moon, we have to be ready to lift back off again. Every controller, I think, went through his emotional climax that second. I was so hung up by this cheering that coming in the sound from the lunar room that I could not speak. Pure frustration because I had to get going on the stay/no stay. I just rapped my arm down on the console there. I was absolutely frustrated. I broke my pencil, pencil flies up in the air.

Gene Kranz: Charlie Duke’s next to me and he’s looking and wondering, “What the hell has happened here?” All of a sudden, it hurt so much that I got back on track and started to go, “Okay, all flight controllers. Stand by for T1 stay/no stay.” We went through this. I think every controller went through his climax at that second.

Apollo 11 Crew: Contact right. Okay. Engine stopped. ACA out of detent. Out of detent. Remote control both autos, descent engine command override off. Engine arm off. 413 is in. We’ve had shutdown. We copy you down, Eagle. Okay. [crosstalk 00:13:48]. Standby for T1. Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landing. Roger. Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.

Gene Kranz: You hear Armstrong talk, “The Eagle has landed,” right on down the line. “Houston. Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” These are seeping in. In the meantime, we’re just busier than hell. Throughout this whole period of time, except for the instant you hear the cheering, you never got a chance to really think we’ve landed on the moon. We get handed over to Charlesworth’s team. It was then I’m going over to the press conference. It was walking over to the press conference with Doug was the first time you actually really had the chance to unwind and think about today we really landed on the moon.

Nathan Connolly: That interview was conducted on January 8, 1999 by Rebecca Wright, Carol Butler, and Sasha Tarrant. Special thanks to the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project for sharing the audio. You can find a link to their archive on our website at backstoryradio.org.