European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - July 17, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse Cover Story Man directed it All by Robert Lee Hotz los Angeles times f the sounds humanity has made on Earth Only a nuclear explosion is loud or than the in throttled Thunder of the Saturn rockets that carried men to the Moon. On july 16,1969, when a Saturn lifted the Apollo 11 capsule free of Earth on its historic journey to the Moon one Man hundreds of Miles from the launch pad in Florida Felt its apocalyptic Energy reverberate in. His marrow National aeronautics space administration flight director Gene Kranz on the Edge of his seat in the windowless a a Trench of nasal a Mission control in Houston. Neil Armstrong the Apollo 11 commander was the first human to walk on the Moon a 25 years ago wednesday. Kranz was the Man who guided him the last Miles onto its Dusty pockmarked Armstrong a the Apollo astronaut whose features were masked by his mirrored helmet a was the Public image of american space prowess Kranz a the hard charging flight director a was its private face. Armstrong was a Paragon of test Pilot Cool terse aloof unknowable. He was a Blue eyed Eagle scout with a hesitant lopsided Grin so shy that there Are almost no Clear pictures of him standing on the Moons surface Only photographs of his footprints and his Shadow. He declined to be interviewed for this Story As he declines almost All interview re quests. A a a a a a a a Kranz was Nahas Hedly sentimental a fierce Agency loyalist who played Sousa marches in his office to pump up his adrenaline. He relished his in House reputation As a relentless taskmaster who earned the nickname a general Savage a. Today a 25 years after the Moon Landing a Armstrong is still a National Folk hero. Kranz is virtually1 unknown outside an inner Circle of Nasa veterans. What they share is the stuff of history a a a journey Given Only once to the human race. They were never so close As when they were far Thust apart a when Armstrong 240,000 Miles from Earth was searching for a Safe Landing site Only a few Miles above the Moon with capsule emergency alarms flashing the on Board computer on the verge of a breakdown and Only scant minutes left before the Landing fuel ran out. For those 13 minutes of the lunar descent half a billion people held their breath. The efforts of 300,000 technicians the labor of eight years at a Cost of $25 billion a cold War rivalry and a murdered presidents Promise Hung in the bal. Ance. A when Armstrong set the lunar Lander Down safely the National Victory was so Complete that for decades the soviet government would officially deny that there had even been a race to the Moon. It was Kranz a in a locked control room with a dozen Young engineers relaying data buzzing in the earphones of his Headset a who decided to override the alarms and give Armstrong the Chance to land the spacecraft on the Moon. A a. Gene Kranz had a style All his own. A Quot i was the most emotional of the flight directors a Kranz 61, said in a recent interview. A space really got me All honked As a boy in Toledo Ohio Kranz never cared much about rocket ships of spaceflight. But As a military Pilot in the Pacific in 1957, he was impressed by the Way the launch of the russian sputnik galvanized people around the world. A a i just Felt that space was the next thing coming in a aviation a he said. A it was higher faster. It had the Anasa the tracking screen left at Mission control in Houston signifies touchdown of the Apollo 11 lunar module he found himself on a plane headed for Cape canaveral fla., with orders to prepare for the first unmanned test of the Mercury Redstone rocket that would later carry the first american a Alan Shepard a into space a they said a go Down to the Cape and write us a they put me of an air plane. I had never written a countdown Quot Kranz said referring to the Complex engineering procedures that Lead up to a rocket launch. A handed at Patrick air Force base and did no to even know which Way the Cape was a there was a Guy there in a Chevy Malibu with a surfboard in the Back. He says a what Are you looking for a i said t got to go out to the he said a hop so Boom off we Goi i did no to even bother to ask who he was. A a about two thirds of the Way out there i found out it was Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper. That was my introduction to the original seven astronauts a he said. When Kranz signed up for the space race he was. 27 Yean it old. Nasa was still in the making. There was no organized civilian space program to speak of. There was no such thing As Mission control people like Kranz his Mentor a a Short icy Engineer named Christopher Columbus Kraft the Agency a first flight director a and operations chief Walt Wil hams built it from the raw material of their own personalities and engineering styles. ,. At the Apex of the Structure they created through trial and error stood the flight director a a single person with absolute authority Over operations during a space Mission. And in the 1960s and Early 1970s a the years of Apollo t Kranz thought there was no better Job in the world. A no Way can you Ever Ever Ever evidence confusion concern Lack of understanding a he said. A you have to be in charge. You Are the Guy. You have to be cooler than Cool smarter than smart. A a at the Johnson space Center in Houston the Mission control room Kranz and his colleagues used for Apollo has changed Only slightly since .1969. Today As Nasa juggles space shuttle missions and prepares to operate a manned space station its vocabulary and work habits mimic the obsessive at Lention to detail and studious nonchalance of flight. Operations engineers Tike Kranz and his Apollo col a leagues. Sprawling at their consoles the new generation of Nasa engineers flirted with simulated disasters. They handled each crisis in cryptic murmurs a language of nods glances and engineering acronyms. The movements were exaggeratedly casual the tension so internalized As to be invisible. The Calmer things appeared the worse they must be. Milt Heflin Lead shuttle flight do actor watched the exercise from an unused console patched into the conversations by a frayed Headset Cable. Heflin selected As a flight director by Kranz 11 years ago has handled 19 shuttle flights including the Hubble space Telescope repair Mission in december a hailed As the most Complex space operation since the Moon landings. At the time of the Apollo 11 Mission Heflin was a Junior Nasa technician fresh out of College. Kranz was 36 and had for the purposes of flight operations become common sense personified. With just 10 minutes remaining before Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin or. Were scheduled to swing Back around from behind the Moon and begin their descent to the lunar surface Kranz did the one thing no flight director was allowed to do. He went off the Loop. Nasa was so concerned with capturing every aspect of the Apollo missions that All communications Mcvety a in the control room were to be officially monitored and recorded history wanted to listen. A but Kranz had set up a private circuit where he could talk to his flight controllers out of official earshot and now he called them together for a confidential a pulse Stephen Bales then a 26-Ycnr-Oid, $7,000-u-Ycar Engineer from Iowa manned the guidance console for the lunar descent. To Vonty five years later he sat Down at the same Gray console and recalled Kranzy swords As Best he could. A we Are getting ready to do something no one else has Ever done. You Are trained. You Are prepared. We will do Well. No matter How it turns out when we walk out of this room i will walk out with then aboard the Eagle As the lunar Lander was named Armstrong and Aldrin emerged from the radio silence caused by orbiting behind the Moon. Alone aboard the orbiting command capsule astronaut Michael Collins wailed for them to Start the descent. Then the problems started. Communications were unusually distorted and Static filled. Could they get enough data to allow the flight to continue Static drowned out All critical data for 30 seconds. When the signals picked up again radar readings revealed the Craft was moving Loo fast. If it Contin cd to accelerate it might overshoot the Landing zone and Kranz would have to order an abort Bales recalled. A on Board the spacecraft a Power meter failed. No sooner had the ground team responded to that problem than a computer program alarm hashed in the a capsule and on the meters in Mission control that sunday july i 1m1
