aerospace

Gene Kranz was a flight director for most of the U.S. manned space program, and was on duty for some of the most critical events - including the first moon landing, and, of course the Apollo 13 accident.

In "Failure Is Not an Option," Kranz tells the story of Mission Control from the begining (he wrote some of the intial procedures manuals) through the Space Shuttle program. He shows how the ground controllers developed into a team, not only with each other, but with the astronauts on board the spacecraft.

Kranz may not be the most polished writer, but this is a first-person account from someone who helped make history. One of the things I really liked about the book is that Kranz not only took detailed notes during the missions (that was his first flight assignment), but he held on to them and used them to provide a more detailed account than I have seen before of the key missions from the perspective of Mission Control. He doesn't pull punches, and he's not afraid to admit mistakes, and this gives this book an air of honesty that you don't always find in an autobiography.

A fairly good description of the manned space program up to the end of Apollo from the Mission Control side, this book still leaves the reader wanting greater perspective on the overall effort to reach the Moon. Yes, the writing is unpolished, but the style does capture the man who played a critical role in the early years of the NASA Mission Control--Gene Kranz is a true American original. There is little new material here, but there are a few interesting anecdotes. More discussion of the post-Apollo era would have made this book a much better tome. Furthermore, some of the criticism of NASA today is a bit off base. The NASA of today is a much different place than the one Kranz was a part of in the Cold War era, and warrants a different vision than the space agency of 30 years ago. I enjoyed this book, and recommend it for space buffs. A better book for the casual reader, however, is probably "Moonshot" by Deke Slayton and Alan Shepard.

Gene Kranz's book tells a similar story, as told in books by Eugene Cerman, Scott Carpenter, and Chris Kraft, without being dominated by the author's ego. The others wrote good books. But Kranz avoids using personal attacks to tell his tale. The antidotes differ from those in other stories, as Kranz does not have a Boy Scout image to preserve. However, Kranz covers mission control only through Apollo 17.

This book is an excellent story of the space race from the ground.