By Chris Kraft
2001, Dutton Publishing, $25.95, ISBN 0-525-94571-7
In Flight, Chris Kraft pens both his autobiography and a brief history of NASA’s early years. It is the tale of a young man who grew up at the right place and time, had the right tools, and went on to do accomplish great deeds.
The time was the early cold war. America had just won World War II but had found new enemies in its wake. Competition with the Soviets was fierce.
A bright young man, Chris Kraft excelled in school and took advantage of the breaks that life dealt him. It resulted in his being the Flight Director through all of the Mercury program as well as most of the Gemini flights. He then managed flight operations during the heyday of the Apollo moon landings.
His reputation of as a no-bull leader shines through his often dry writing style. After dispensing with the not too interesting but relevant story of his life before Mission Control, he tells many a tale about the astronauts, engineering the spacecraft, the missions, and the many, many problems that were handled along the way.
But there are deeper messages in his book. Although one could glean the information from just about any compendium of space flight, it was impressive to realize just how much had to be done to enable Mercury to fly, even more for Gemini, and the monumental task putting an American onto the moon had been. And all of that occurred between October 4, 1957, when the Soviets shamed the U.S. by flying Sputnik I, and July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong reclaimed our national pride by taking that first step on the moon. We can do great things working together and when sufficiently motivated.
It also became apparent that various small events had huge and long lasting effects on NASA and its programs. Those early Sputnik flights and Kennedy’s challenge to our nation were the catalyst that started it all. But foremost among those is the fire on Apollo 1 that took the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Kraft claims that the fire was tragically avoidable but gave the program a technical focus that it had been previously lacking. And then, during the Apollo 12 moon landing, Al Bean inadvertently aimed their only TV camera at the sun, burning out the electronics and depriving many millions of the highly anticipated real time, color images of men walking on the moon. With nothing but audio feeds, the networks ceased prime time coverage of the mission. It was the kiss of death for public support of the space program.
Finally, hidden deep in his 355 page narrative is the real reason why this book is a “must read”. The people who worked to make it possible to land a man on the moon were nothing short of passionate for what they were doing. Somewhere in his book is the reason why we load our equipment into our cars at 6am and drive hours out into the empty prairie, why we spend huge amounts of money for a few moments of flight that may result in a beautiful success or a resounding failure, why we do rocketry. Is it the quest for the unknown or simply the joy of making a big stick burn into the heavens? Each one of us has a different reason but, regardless of which end of the spectrum we are on, one thing is certain, given the chance, every one of us would have jumped at the opportunity to participate in man’s quest for the moon.