early in the mercury program, he was remote site engineering. he sort of became the model for the system engineers that we used in mission control. so arnie was given the job to sort of be the individual who would maintain the master set of checklists for the remainder of the entire mission. john aaron, a new controller, had joined us in the gemini program, was given the responsibility to sit on top of all consumables, all resources available on both space crafts. and john aaron had absolute veto authority over any checklist entry. so they were almost welded at the hips with aaron being the guy who had the veto authority. a third one -- it was obvious we needed -- was some guy to figure out how to turn the lifeboat into a survival vehicle. bill peters, one of my limb controllers got that. basically these were the three key individuals and i told these

three people to look around the room and anybody that they didn't think they needed for the next few hours to send them back to their consoles and get them out of there sew so we could focus on a smaller team. we did a blackboard exercise that quickly listed the majority of the issues that had to be worked and who would work them. john aaron who was the power guy came and said, gene, one of the things we got to do is we got to get powered down immediately. i said, john, i'll work on this but we got to figure out new ways to navigate because we can expect the navigation system to continue drifting and we have to find some way to re-align it so we gave phil shaffer the responsibility to come up with ways to use the -- i'm sort of getting ahead of myself.

one of the things that was giving us a problem was that this explosion that occurred had set a cloud of debris around the spacecraft and frozen particles of oxygen. and we normally navigate with stars and we couldn't see stars anymore. all we could see was the sun, the earth and the moon. so phil shaffer was given the responsibility to come up with techniques to check our spacecraft attitudes for maneuvers and those kind of things using only the sun, earth and moon and to continue to refine the techniques of aligning the navigation system on-board the lunar module once we did have to shut it down. i took my team offline and tried to figure out ways to cut down the return trip time because john aaron said there's no way we're going to make five days with the power in the lunar module. we got to cut it down to at

least four days. maybe three and a half. so i now had the team split up and moving in several different directions. i had one team working power profiles. i had another group of people that was working navigation techniques. i had a third one that was integrating all the pieces we need. my team picked up the responsibility to figure out a data to -- way to cut a day off the return trip time and we set up formal tag-in ties. we set up working areas down in the control room proper. and it was amazing how literally presidents of corporations would respond to these 26, 27-year-olders i had in charge of these teams. but again, i think that was one of the real miracles in mission control here is that not only the team structure but the relationship between program manager, designer, flight controller, crew was one of absolute and pure trust and once a person was given a responsibility to do the job, everybody would snap to and support them. once decisions were made, you

never second-guessed those decisions. forhe first 24 hours and my team came back on console again to execute a maneuver that goes back to during apollo nine we did a lot of testing of the lunar module engine while the two spacecraft were docked together. and immediately as soon as we recognized we had to perform a maneuver to speed up our return journey, that's the set of procedures we fell back to. we updated these procedures based on the situation at hand. my team came back on console and executed these procedures and increased our velocity on return by almost 1,000 feet per second. changed the landing point from the indian ocean now to the south pacific. sent the aircraft carrier iwo jima to the landing location. now with this maneuver behind us we could power down for the first time. and then the power level, can you explain it very simply.

it was about the equivalent of two 100-watt lightbulbs in your house, or about a quarter of what today's microwave uses. that what we had to sustain. it was a survival level to get the crew all the way back to earth. once we started this, got into this power-down process, we had only one major management flap. they wanted me to get the crew to sleep and they were very forceful about trying to get the crew to sleep. i said, no, we're going to keep them up and awake until we get the spacecraft in a passive thermal control mode. kraft wanted to power down even more. i had to tell him, chris, no, we're not going to power down completely until we get this passive thermal control. we had to invent a rotisserie-type maneuver to spin the spacecraft on its axis because the only energy we had was the sun. and it took quite a while to do this.

the first attempt was unsuccessful and again we had kraft and others grousing, they thought they had the right take on things and thought we could solve this problem later and basically i was the guy in charge and said, no we're going to set up this ptc. there were emergencies, contingencies all the way through this process of returning to earth. there was no such thing as a free ride. we had to perform a couple of emergency maneuvers because our trajectory was flattening out. we didn't know why. we had to correct that. the crew was suffocating. we had to invent techniques of using the square -- chemical scrubbers we used for the air from a standpoint of the command module and be able to adapt those over to the lunar module. finally as we were approaching the final phase of entry, the procedures weren't coming together quite as nicely as we would have liked to. the crew wanted to see how we intended to accomplish this final sequence. basic problem we had was we had

a command module that was our re-entry vessel. it had the heat shield but only had about 2 1/2 hours of electrical power lifetime. the service module, where the explosion occurred was virtually useless. lunar module attached to the other end of this stack through a small tunnel and that was our lifeboat. we had to come up with a game plan to move this entire stack into an attitude where we can separate all three pieces in different trajectories so they wouldn't collide with each other at entry. then the crew had to evacuate from the lunar module lifeboat at the very last moment, power up the command module, get its computer initialized and separate the pieces and get into attitude for reentry. so this was the game plan we had come up with. we didn't really get all the pieces put together and get them verified in simulators until about ten hours prior to the time we had to execute this plan. and the crew was quite concerned that they could see the earth

continuing to grow in the wind screen of the spacecraft and they still didn't have the game plan at hand. this was another time when deke came in and said hey, they're work on the plan. they're going to have it. cool down. he had just the magic of being able to work with the crew, like kraft had the ability to work with us. i think those were the two real pioneers of space flight op races. they set the mold for everybody else that would come from that day on. we got the procedures up to the crew. about the time we were voicing up these procedures we realized how desperate it was on-board the spacecraft. it was in the high 30s, low 40s. the crew had cotton cover-alls, flight suits they had. very moist. fred hayes by this time had developed a high body temperature, about 104 degrees,

severely dehydrated, bad urinary infection. he had the shakes and we had to voice the instructions up to him so he could do the lunar module part of the procedures. we kept working back and forth. throughout this entire process two other guys come to mind. it is ken mattingly and joe kerwin. ken had been very instrumental in looking at troubleshooting all the piece parts of these procedures, game plans, et cetera. joe kerwin would be the voice of mission control during the final hours and he's a medical doctor and his bedside manner with this crew was absolutely superb. he was a mentor, tutor, disciplinarian, teacher, i mean the whole nine yards that at times i almost felt he was on-board the spacecraft placing the crew's hands in the switches and just keeping them going. bottom line was, we continued to have a lot of surprises. we had to do an emergency maneuver.

one of our three command module batteries failed just about -- or was expected to fail just about the time the parachutes were due to come out and at the time that we landed, this issue was still in doubt. the final thing i remember about this mission was this re-entry period, because the mood in this room was becoming very -- what i'd say mellow. when we got ready to jettison the lunar module, we started speaking sentimentally to the lunar module as we were getting ready to jettison. farewell, aquarius, you were a hell of a good spaceship. in front of the entire world to start talking -- but you didn't even know the world was watching at that time. you were just so focused on getting these guys back. finally comes time to express our feelings and again the entire world is listening and mission control isn't going to admit we're emotional and the rookie on board the spacecraft jack swigert comes down and says

all of us up here want to thank you guys down there for the fine job you did. and that sort of broke the ice and we got a few atta boys from lovell and hayes. then we go into blackout. blackout is the time period in the mission where the fire of the re-entry prevents communications to the spacecraft. by this time the program, we could nail it when it starts and when it finishes to a second. and each controller during blackout -- this is an intensely lonely period because you're left -- the crew's on their own and they're left with the data that you gave them. maneuver data, attitude information, all these kind of things and each controller is going back through everything they did during the mission and was i right? and that's the only question in their mind. and there isn't any noise in here, you hear the electronics, you hear the hum of the air conditioning occasionally. in those days we used to smoke a lot. you'd hear a rasp of a zippo lighter as somebody lights up a cigarette.

you drink the final cold coffee and stale soda that's been there and every eye's on the clock on the wall counting down to zero. when it hit zero i tell kerwin, okay, give them a call. and we didn't hear from the crew after the first call. we called again and we called again. we're now a minute since we should have heard from the crew. for the first time in this mission there is the first little bit of doubt that's coming in to this room that something happened and the crew didn't make it. but in our business, hope's eternal and trust in the spacecraft and each other is eternal. so we keep going and every time we call the crew, it's will you please answer. we were 1:27 seconds since we should have heard from the crew before we finally get a call an from the crew, the acquisition signal. then almost instantaneously from the aircraft carrier we got sonic boom iwo jima, radio

contact iwo jima. then we have the 10x10 television in the room and you see the spacecraft under these three red and white parachutes and the intensity of this emotional release is so great that i think every controller is silently crying. you just hear a whoop, then you're back down to business again. in mission control, the unfortunate thing is -- i guess it's necessary -- you can never express an emotion until well after this mission is over. and you get this whoop and you're back in there. the emotion you can hear it in the voice of the people. you got some final instruction to voice up the crew. you really got to work to get them. then these guys are in the warm air of the south pacific. they're home, they're alive. you see them come out of the spacecraft. iwo jima circling, deploying helicopters and pjs. at mission control our job isn't done until we've handed over the responsibility to the carrier task force commander.

and it is only when that is accomplished that we can start this internal celebration. and our celebration always started with cigars. i don't know what the young controllers are going to do today because you can't smoke in mission control. somebody ought to write a federal regulation that maybe will change it the day that the shuttle teams recover their crew members against long odds. but anyway you start with cigars. they got to be good cigars. because nobody in mission control's going to smoke a bummer. and we had some darn fine cigars. there were about 700 that we had acquired. not only through mission control teams, our back rooms, program offices, the factory, the laboratories. everybody had their mission cigar to light up at the same time we did. >> thoughtfully provided by the cigar institute of america. >> yeah. and it was really spectacular. but anyway, once you get the cigars lit up, there's all the

atta boys and celebration, mission control. then you unlock the doors because they've been locked and the real heroes start pouring in at that time, because these are the folks in the back rooms who came up with the answers we needed when we needed them. final phase of every mission, final celebration is to pass out an american flag and we had these flags we -- we started this tradition when we sent our fir american -- second record, but it was really the record when we rendezvoused two space crafts for the fir time. for every mission from then on there's been an american flag in the hands of every controller at the time of touchdown. and this was just for us a spectacular time to live. i don't think anything or anyone

will ever forget those days. final comment on this is, crew parties are always, always something. and while we were waiting for the crew to recover, the back-up crews and the cap coms always develop some kind after parody on what happened during the course of a mission. and this was a parody that was taken off after a very short set of comments i made during the mission. i said hey, i don't understand that, cy. and then cy says i think it's an instrumentation flight. and then deek slay ton says hey, we're going to have to do something about that. they took these three segments of words and interspersed them with -- and today's people won't understand spike jones and his music. we had some gospel singing in this and we had comments by chris kraft and president nixon. they interspersed all of these on a tape and we had to listen to this thing over and over and over as we drank the beer and smoked some more cigars with this crew.

but it was that kind of a way of business. this was an honest to god brotherhood that existed in those days that i don't think any group of people in peace time has ever come together in a similar fashion. >> does that old gang ever get together today for reunions of any sort? >> we have one coming up. generally every five years we get together for some type of a reunion i think they're all together too infrequent but i think that two or three things have done a lot to help us in this most recent years. i think that the "apollo 13" movie has done a lot to bring back and bring some recognition to some really great people, people who stood tall when the times were short and odds were long. i think john glenn's flight i think helped us bring together some of the real joy of living and the work that we did. and i think that's helped. and i believe now that the coming celebrations for this

30th anniversary and we're going to have a lot of 30th anniversaries for lunar landings, as well as various missions that we have flown here. i think that's bringing it back together. it's good to get the folks back together. >> now we've stopped right now with "apollo 13." there were other follow-on apollo flights, although the apollo program was cut short. nonetheless, there were others and they were quite important. what was your role during the 14, 15, 16 and 17 phase? >> it changed. we were at the point of having to move engineers over to the coming sky lab program so that was one dimension. i was having to string my teams out more and more and more and we literally had our feet in two programs, apollo and sky lab.

at the same time the flight directors had become a very valuable commodity because many of the people who caused the mercury gemini apollo programs to come into being were now retire, they were leaving the program. my flight directors, cliff charlesworth was one of the first to go. we were now looking at how we could apply some of the technologies we had to other problems on earth. glenn lunny left. he picked up the apollo soyuz program at that time which is now this next generation of involvement trying to involve the russians in space as partners. all of a sudden i started finding myself short in flight directors and having to bring new people on-board. so i was -- role was sort of a mentor, teacher, tutor, same as kraft had done in the early days, and at the same time to stretch our assets because i had to move training people over there. we started standardizing many of

the mission flights. i would launch the apollo 15, 16, 17 from both the earth, as well as the moon. and the other flight directors would ahandle the evas. griffin would do the landings. we kept the experience as high as we could and moved new generations over to the sky lab program. 14 stands out because probably one of the most famous things that griffin -- it's the one i remember griffin in. he had an abort switch and as we were getting ready to go shutdown to the surface of the moon, rerecognized this indication. one of my other controllers came

up with a software patch. from the time we recognized the problem to when we went down to the surface of the moon, we were executing a very complex procedure onboard the spacecraft, to match the software, ignore the abort switch. we used the engine to settle the sauder ball at the back of the switch. there was no problem too tough or too time critical for them to sign up for. apollo 15 i remember because we

were overextending the surface operation, extending the surface time. and basically working against the suit. their firng fingers were hemorr. they became dehydrated.

rebellion on board the spacecraft. we had some problems with the vector control. mattingly was to execute a maneuver on that mission in here. and came around the backside of the moon. the maneuver didn't get executed.

go for broke things that we and the crew would do to keep this mission going, accomplish our oebt i objective. the mission is becoming more and more and more difficult. this was a super bowl class elite, world class elite team in crisis management. to put it bluntry was at the top of their form there. we moved into a 17, and it was with a degree of melancholy, i don't think there's any person alive who had worked the lunar program, who had worked these missions that started to say hey, we've been to the room, what do i do after this? i was looking at the end of my lab and earth orbit equally as s

and the final thing that jerry griffin and i decided to do, all proviso handle, all proviso flight directors, they were in the console one day, and then the next mission they weren't there anymore. and kraft had gone out that way. lunny had gone out that way. charlesworth had gone out that way. we determined this wasn't going to be the way we handed over the shift. bob mccall, a spectacular space artist, was sitting in front of me at the console sketching out during the first and second evas the crew. very gifted. he'd take a look at the pictures that were on the television screen, and in 60 seconds he'd have a pencil sketch done.

we went to the coffee shop that was in mission control at this time and i was interested in the legacy because i wanted to leave a different legacy than the one kraft -- kraft had established the legacy of the flight director. i was looking at the one, the legacy in a broader sense, the one of the team, the one of the mission control itself. so i asked bob to design us an insignia for mission control. i put my thoughts out pretty well. i said i wanted to talk with the commitment. it is really the one that led to the flight controller's pin you will see several places in mission control today. it represents everything we learned about spaceflight. commitment and team work of the mercury and gemini programs. the discipline. because once we failed into gemini four we got into a series of arguments between crew and ground and how the job was to be done. it carried over into the

mission. morale. believing so strongly in your mission, your team and your success that you literally cause the right things to happen. tough and competent came out of the apollo fire where basically we weren't tough enough, we didn't step up to our responsibilities. we have to remember in the business we're in, we're always accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. competent we can never stop learning. basically i sketched out to bob the elements that i wanted to be representative of the emblem of mission control and he agreed to go do this. i then came back in, launched the crew off the surface, and in lunar orbit -- because we were going to continue in lunar orbit for some period of time -- both griffin and myself handed over to the next generation of flight directors. i handed over my responsibility to chuck lewis because he had

been my assistant flight director, my faithful wingman for so long. and griffin handed over to i believe it was phil shaffer at that time. and we then proceeded to sit in the viewing room for the remainder of the mission and watch our new flight directors now apollo, carry over into the skylab program. that was the ending of telephone program for us. >> it wasn't really the ending of the program for you though, because by now you had moved on into management and it was the end of your flight direction. >> yeah. >> but on the other hand, there were still flights to be flown and spacecraft to be worked with. you just mentioned a couple of them. skylab, for one. >> skylab was -- it was -- people say gene kranz, you really can't believe what you're saying. but skylab was as exciting to me as apollo ever was.

this was -- skylab to me was a different type of focus. focus as a leader and focus as a team. where we had -- the apollo missions were all short, on the order of ten days or so. and it's one thing to hold a team together and do all the right things, keep the quality for ten days, even though it is a very intense. it is another thing to keep this team together for the best part of a year. and to hand over not tens, but literally hundreds of problems every shift without a glitch. to have these people respond to loss of control because a control moment -- module that's holding the altitude freezes up in this whole stacks base system starts tumbling, to recover from a massive short in one of the power distributors that is scattering solder balls all over the inside of the spacecraft, all kinds of problems come up. to learn to repair and replace