engineers would do the best job they could. they'd hand us the spacecraft and it was up to us to live with whatever risk remained in the spacecraft, design of the spacecraft, design of the staff. >> and as the flight director of that team, it must have been an incredible amount of pressure on you to bring them back. >> well, the -- in retrospect, i could feel, yes, there was some form of pressure. but during the course of a mission, i think this is true, whether it be a surgeon, brain surgeon in an operating room, firefighter trying to rescue some person, during the course of the event, you never feel the pressure. you have a mission that must be accomplished. and you feel superbly trained, you feel superbly confident. you've got the trust of the people around you, you've got an incredible team helping you to accomplish this task and bring this group back, to get the objective so that you never think of the pressure.

it's -- i think the body feels it at times. there seems to be, whenever we get down close to launch, there seems to be an incredible urge to go to the restroom. and one of the things that i always get concerned about is when we call the launch hold generally at about minus nine we tell the controllers, we've got five minutes until we get the count that i'm going to lose the controller that's they're going to trample each over each other in the restroom. that is the only physical manifestation that i or other controllers have felt. i tend to have sweaty palms. all the controllers would kid me that i put my hand down on a piece of paper and they could see a perfect palm print, but it's something that is physical but not mental. you don't feel the pressure mentally. >> i think the word is focus. >> i think it's focus. it's -- we use in mission control, we use the term discipline morale, tough, competent. discipline is the ability to focus so intensely upon the objective that nothing, nothing

is ever going to prevent you from accomplishing that objective. and it might be to land on the moon or in the case of a later mission, apollo 13, to get this crew back home. >> well, perhaps we can now leave apollo 9 behind, the lessons have been learned and you're ready to start flying and next up was apollo 10. in this case you're not the lead flight director but you took an active role. >> at this time i was the division chief of flight control, so literally every mission was -- it was my mission. but from my standpoint, the key was to follow how well this mission was being executed, was the control team doing the right thing, were the procedures all proper and in place, because this was the dress rehearsal for the apollo 11 mission where i would be intimately involved, and i was -- i was concerned during the course of the translunar phase to take a look at how well the 11 spacecraft

held up to being unpowered, going through this voyage from the earth to the moon. then when they powered it up, were the checklists in place to power this thing up efficiently, rapidly, was the team capable of supporting these two spacecraft in the dock mode and staying on the timeline so that when the time came to separate and start the preparations for the, what i'd say, the pass across the surface of the moon was everything being executed 100% correctly by the numbers and on time? because once you get to the moon, you don't have too many options. you have very limited wave off options. you're either going to accomplish your mission or not. it's black or white. there's no compromise there. this was the dress rehearsal for the entire package.

and as an observer, i was watching everything that happened closely. i was also looking at the performance of my lunar module team, which was very critical, because the command module people, systems engineers in particular, had several missions to warm up. so they had a more experience in mission control and flying that spacecraft than the lunar module people did. by the time that we would land on the moon, the experience in the world was an unmanned mission, apollo 5, then i had the apollo 9 and 10, so the fourth time we would fly the spacecraft, they had to be ready to take that spacecraft to the surface of the moon. so i was quite interested in how my team was doing. >> and 10 was when they really rang it out and came pretty close to disaster, as i remember. >> well, i think there's a --

each mission leaves you with some very stark lesson that you learn. and again, the ability here we had a crew that had missed a step in a checklist. and configurating the autopilot. and again, the forcing function has to be such that the controllers are as exquisitely tuned to that checklist as the crew is. and if you see anything that is missed, without a second's hesitation, you have to make the call to the flight director and capcom to go up and make a correction to the situation. at times you tend to look at omitted checklist items. and you back off and say, well, we've got an experienced crew. who's going to get it? we made that mistake a couple times in previous flights. this is one where there was no question, i think, we could have made a call that would have

eliminated that problem. but again, it's the split second, this exquisite timing necessary between this crew and ground and, again, one of the reasons that you fly these missions, it's to address this process of achieving perfection in the business of space flight, and it's awful tough to get, because things are happening real fast. >> in this case, if that crew had not pulled itself back from the brink, how would you have felt about that decision, not having been rendered as rapidly as perhaps it might have? >> i think every mission that we've ever flown, i think we've found things that we could have done better. we have stepped up to assuming maybe even a greater responsibility. and our training people, interestingly enough, in the --

as we prepare for a mission, you spend a lot of time, hundreds of hours with the crew, going through the rehearsals over and over and over and over and over and you tend to get into a routine. you tend to get into what you would say is almost perfect synchronization here. what the training people would do to us, as we were approaching the time when the crew is going to go down to the cape and actually we're going to start the mission, they'd throw in a less-experienced crew from a downstream mission. so all of a sudden, we'd have to go back into the coaching mode with that team. we couldn't expect them to be totally familiar with that procedure so we'd have to talk a bit more about it. so it was a process of the ground assuming that we had to be totally aware and on top of every exact thing the crew did.

and then if the crew would then assume that the ground wasn't watching at all, you would have basically the conjunction where you'd probably have the best and most-effective operation. so it was to the point where the crew had to be capable of doing the job, and the ground had to assume for some reason the crew couldn't get it done. so you'd drive for this precise, incredible timing. a mission is like watching a super bowl class football team in operation. where you watch that handoff between the center to the quarterback, and one of his running backs, it's all split second. and you can't afford a miss here. that is the way that you must be focused for every event during the course of a mission. and it's really tough to maintain this level of proficiency, hour after hour after hour after hour for days at a time. but that's the nature of our

business. >> gene, it would seem that apollo 10 was the culmination of the flight planning operations that you and the crew of apollo 9 had put together, meaning, of course, you now had a flight plan, and everybody was on a reasonable facsimile of the same page. is that true? >> we had -- we had matured. the maturing process started after the apollo fire. we were still -- let me see if i can start this differently again. in mercury, basically, we found that the man could live in space, but we also learned a lot more. we learned a lot about ourselves. we found out that team work was a key element in achieving the objectives. always previously you had the flight test pilot, and you had the ground flight testing. but basically, the guy on board

the aircraft was the guy calling the shots as time went on. and that was principally the mode of operation for mercury. you got the crew up there. you'd provide them various voicing, but the point is we didn't have much insight to the space systems. the crew members really didn't have much of that confidence in the ground at that time. so it was a process of that space is somewhat different than the aircraft flight desk. in the gemini, we now got to the point where there was a very definite relationship between crew and ground. we had to provide the information for the maneuvers that the crew would perform or during a rendezvous we had various abort modes during powered flight. we had to control the target spacecraft, the aegean form. so now all of the sudden there is starting a convergence between crew and ground. and also we had acquired much more -- a greater insight into the space systems that we were flying.

for a change, we had more data than was being displayed to the crewmember. but again, this was a process of now of maybe going from the baby steps we were taking in mercury now to the point where we were in our adolescence. capable of getting an awful lot done, but periodically going off in tangents. one of these tangents was an associate with extra vehicular operations. we just kept blundering and blundering and blundering until finally after so many had failed, evas, we had to go back in and say what is it we're doing wrong. so then we moved from that phase, okay, into apollo, and were immediately bloodied by the apollo on fire. and i don't think anyone who was working on apollo didn't feel in some way responsible as a partnership that we made the wrong calls. and if we had done something

differently, maybe our crew would not have died. but at the same time, this fire set a resolve that says, we got to grow up fast. and i think this growing up fast resolve was kicked off after the fire. so by the time we got to apollo 10, we literally were as good as we would ever get in the business of space flight. we wouldn't stop learning. but from a standpoint of a team, from a standpoint of focus, from a standpoint of intensity. from a standpoint of perfection, we were great. and i'm saying this with no reservations whatsoever. this team knew what they were doing. and the next couple missions i would demonstrate that in space. apollo 10 demonstrated every part of the mission with the exception of three. the actual descent to the surface on the moon landing, the surface operations and the lunar ascent. so these were the only three

pieces that had to be put on the chessboard. and we were about to do it. >> you certainly were. the point at which this program had been literally moving along. apollo 11, you were lunar flight director. you were in charge of that. but you also took part in the whole thing, didn't you? >> yes. >> so let's go back over apollo 11. and what a thing to go back over. that's a big project. >> there are many things that stand out. the person says, where were you when? i sure had an awful lot of great breaks in my life. i mean whether they be in college, whether they be in flying airplanes. but one of the ones that i remember that is related to apollo 11 in a very direct fashion was the day that i got the assignment to do the landing phase. cliff charlesworth was the lead flight director.

and one of the responsibilities of the lead flight director is to identify which flight director is going to cover which phase of the mission. and moving in there, this was the first mission where in apollo now, where lonnie, charlesworth and myself, who had been flight directors on gemini were actually coming back together again. so you had probably the three most experienced people at the console. and it was a question of who was going to get to do what. and lonnie had been to the moon a couple times. charlesworth had launched saturns, and i had the lunar module experience. so you had no particular driver that says this person ought to be doing this phase of the mission. and i was division chief at that time and craft had been really

on top of us to nail down who is going to do what. until finally, after the apollo 9 mission, we all managed to get together, and charlesworth as lead had to make the calls. and i called him and i said cliff, we've got to make a decision on which flight director is going to cover which phase of the mission. and this is probably the most anti-climactic meeting that i've ever had in my life. he looked me straight in the face, and he said, well, i'm going to launch it, and i'm going to do the eva. so that not only leaves the landing and the lunar liftoff. i think glenn is going to do the lunar liftoff. so you got the landing. and it was all over in about 60 seconds. each flight director, i don't think there is any question, everybody wanted to do something for the first time.

and the beauty of the apollo program was there was enough firsts to go around for everybody. but when it came time for the first lunar landing mission, i really got to respect cliff for saying, hey, you take the job instead of me. and i think he gave me the job principally because i had spent most of my time with the lunar module people, and i just happened to have a little bit more experience in the lunar module than any of the other guys. and it was a totally unselfish decision. and i think this is the way the flight directors always worked. we're always trying to find out what is the best chemistry between flight director, team, and mission that is going give us the greatest assurance that the job is going to get done. >> and it worked. but it had to work, didn't it? >> there was no question every mission in apollo had a large number of firsts. and every mission had a very visible profile from a

standpoint of the media. if you even missed the slightest thing. yet there was always this question somebody would ask you at a press conference, is the lunar landing in jeopardy? and fortunately as we went through these early missions, and we only had a single shot at one of these, so they all had to work. you could look them straight in the eye and say, no, we're on track. we're going to get the job done. by the time you got to apollo 11, however, the media coverage, the external pressures were incredibly high. but again, this is one area where cliff charlesworth, again, as lead flight director, one of their roles was to try to provide the external focus. so he covered the majority of the mission briefings of a technical sense. he covered many of the media briefings. so basically, he kept the

pressure off myself and lonnie so we could get ready for the jobs that we needed to do. there was no doubt as we were approaching july 20th, that we were doing something no one had ever done before. >> feel a lot of pressure? did it worry you? >> again, in retrospect, i would say yes. but when you start feeling the pressure, what you do is you find some way to keep your focus so that basically, the pressure moves into the background. and there was so much to do. to get ready for this first lunar landing that you just immersed yourself in the job. and the pressure faded into the background. the only time i ever felt pressure during the -- i mean felt intense pressure. maybe i can say this. we had had -- it was a result of our training. and the consoles here in mission control, there used to be a

phone directly behind the flight directors. and routinely during training runs, program managers and chris craft throughout the center had two small squawk boxes in their offices. and if they ever wanted to hear what was going on on mission control they would turn on the squawk boxes and they could hear the crew talking to the ground and the flight director talking to his team. it was reasonably customary that you would turn up these squawk boxes. it's always going along in the background while you were having your meetings or making your telephone calls or whatever. and training, the first month of preparing for the lunar landing really went pretty well. it seemed we had a hot hand. we had come off the apollo 9 mission. we had achieved all of our objectives. the lunar module people had done

well on apollo 10. we proceeded into the training in the training process and seemed every time the training folks through us a curve, we would pick it up, run with it, come up with the right conclusion, et cetera. and then the training boss, dick, must have said that team is too cocky. they need to get a few lessons, and he called his team up and let's put the screws to these guys. we ended up now, in our second month of training and we're really only training one day a week, second month of training we had a particularly bad day where we couldn't seem to do anything right. we would crash. and learning to land on the moon you have a time delay of three seconds, so anything you see and by the time you can respond and voice up instructions to the crew you're three seconds behind what is happening on board the

spacecraft. and as you get down close to the surface of the moon, there's what you would call a dead man's box, every airplane landing there is some point no matter what you will do, you can pick the throttles to the engine, you will touchdown before you will come back off the ground again. we really had not defined very well the dead man's box as you're coming down to the surface of the moon because it's a very complex geometry, it's tied in how fast you're descending, what is the altitude at this rate, what kind of attitude are you and so have many parameters. it can get bad pretty quick. we went through a bad, bad, bad day. we had crashed and we had crashed, and then to avoid crashing, we became unnecessarily conservative and abort when we could have landed. by the end of the day, we felt

pretty bad and about that time, chris craft calls up on the phone. and from his initial comments, i knew he had been listening to the simulations and i knew he was -- he was watching us struggle. and he said is there anything i can do to help you? well, there wasn't anything he could do to help me. i mean, it was my team had to find the right answers, we had to find the right time, the right chemistry, down the line. for the first time in this entire process i felt the pressure that hey, maybe our bosses were starting to lose confidence in this team that they assigned to do the mission, that is when i felt the pressure. my response was very straightford, i put a switch on the phone so it wouldn't ring anymore, he could call all day and get a busy signal. but we proceeded to dig ourselves out of the pit that we

had somehow dug for ourselves, we sat a different set of parameters in defining this dead man's box, we became more conscious of the clock. piece by piece, we put it back together again. until we felt not only were we going to get the job, hell yes, we would get the crew down to the surface of the moon. and the training process then, i mean we just seemed to be on top of everything until the last day of training. and this was again, i think a very fateful exercise that to this day i think kous for giving it to us. we have a game plan we call the mission rolls. they are basically pre-planned decisions where the controllers

and the light of day will look at all the things that could happen, in the spacecraft, or on the trajectory, on a phase-by-phase mission. there is a lot of phases to the lunar mission, you end up with a book of rules literally four inches thick, thousands of rules. but the controllers have come to the point where we've exercised these, we've proved them right, the training people looked and they saw one entire area that wasn't treated in the rolls. and it was associated with various alarms transmitted from the spacecraft computer down to the ground. and on the final day of training, which i had expected would sort of like be the graduation ceremony. they would give us problems, tough problems, wouldn't give us anything that would kill us. well, that wasn't their approach to doing the job. and in the final training

exercise, they gave us a set of problems on board the spacecraft, we started off high. and on the way down we started seeing a series of alarms coming from the spacecraft, there are two types of alarms. one said hey, i'm too busy to get all the jobs done so i'm going to revert to an internal priority scheme and i'll work off as many things as i can in this priority scheme, until a clock runs out then i'll go back and recycle to the top of the priority listing and it's going to get the guidance job done, may not be updating displays, may not -- then if these type alarms continue for a sustained period of of time it goes to a much more critical alarm which we call poodu. the computer will go to halt and await further instructions. if this happens up and away you won't land on the moon that day. they gave us the series of

alarms we had never seen them before. my guidance officer steve bales was flustered, he calls the abort. i feel we executed the right decisions. and in the training debriefing they come back and said no, we don't think you exercised the right decisions we think you could have landed. we think you should have looked beyond that alarm to see if you could figure out what was happening in the guidance, navigation, were the displays updated, et cetera. you acted prematurely. we didn't believe it. but steve bales, you never leave anything untested. he says hey, flight, i'll look this overnight i'll call together a bunch of people from mit, draper labs, we'll find out what we should have done here. i got a call about 10:00 that evening that said the training people were right, we had made the wrong decision, and they wanted to do more training the

next day. so these were two episodes associated with the training for the mission. one where they got involved when we were struggling, when i felt pressure, the second time was when i found out that hey, we didn't have everything wrapped up as well as we should have. we had loosen ends the crew was going down to the cape, we were weeks from launch. these were two times i felt president bush you a pressure during the course of the mission. >> they launched, they were coasting out toward the moon, crew was still operating getting ready for the big event. what was happening during that time? >> several interesting things. this is first experience with the trans lunar phase of the mission. i had worked 7 and 9, we never had continuous communication.

it was absolutely marvelous to sit in mission control now, and see the spacecraft 24 hours a day throughout this entire transit period. so, from my standpoint, we used this to continue binding ourselves together as a team. i would go through every one of the telemetry measurements, talk to the controllers about it, let's go through the mission rolls one final time. dusted off all the loose ends. the translunar phase of the mission is the final period to pull all the pieces together to go over any of the little items maybe you didn't close out as well you should have, to maybe go through the final discussion on the mission rolls, will we do this if this happens, kind of thing. it's a time to continue to build this chemistry that must exist between flight director and team

and crew when you have to make a very short term rapid time-critical, irrevocable-type decisions. once we got to the surface of the moon -- once we got to the point we were getting ready to land on the moon, there are only three options. you're going to land, abort or crash. and those options are awesome when you think about it that hey, we're not only in this particular mode of operation now, we're going to be doing it in front of the entire world. and it's now to the point where you look to each other for this confidence you need to work through any times when you might have just a slightest tinge of doubt and generally the slightest tinge of doubt cops when you're tired. comes when you're tired. that is the magic of the flight control team, it is so