Kranz was a NASA Flight Director from the Mercury program through the end of the Apollo program. The book's title reflects a line he used during the Apollo 13 mission. If you like reading about this slice of history you should buy the book.
It starts with how he was hired, background, etc. The early days of the space program were pretty bad for the US with a lot of busted, fiery launches. Kranz goes into pretty good detail covering their methodology for building checklists and the famous "Go/ No Go"check in you see in movies or film from that era, a practice that continues today. It really shows all of the back end support stuff that happened to get man into space and return him safely. One interesting to me is the number of times the missions suffered mechanical issues that mission control worked through with the help of the astronauts.; Apollo 13 is the best example, but almost every mission had some serious problem to fix or workaround. Another one: at one point the average age in mission control was 26. NASA hired guys right our of college, 4 year degrees, and put them to work.
My one criticism is the last 3 Apollo mission recaps feel rushed compared to his previous mission stories.
Overall, if you like space history, especially this period, go buy the book.
It starts with how he was hired, background, etc. The early days of the space program were pretty bad for the US with a lot of busted, fiery launches. Kranz goes into pretty good detail covering their methodology for building checklists and the famous "Go/ No Go"check in you see in movies or film from that era, a practice that continues today. It really shows all of the back end support stuff that happened to get man into space and return him safely. One interesting to me is the number of times the missions suffered mechanical issues that mission control worked through with the help of the astronauts.; Apollo 13 is the best example, but almost every mission had some serious problem to fix or workaround. Another one: at one point the average age in mission control was 26. NASA hired guys right our of college, 4 year degrees, and put them to work.
My one criticism is the last 3 Apollo mission recaps feel rushed compared to his previous mission stories.
Overall, if you like space history, especially this period, go buy the book.
