[NYT] Christopher Kraft, NASA Mission Control’s Founding Father, Dies at 95

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Christopher Kraft, NASA Mission Control’s Founding Father, Dies at 95
By Robert D. McFadden July 22, 2019


Christopher C. Kraft Jr. at his console in Cape Canaveral, Fla., in an undated photo. For 25 years, from the dawn of the space age in the 1950s to the threshold of almost routine launchings in the 1980s, Mr. Kraft played crucial roles in the American space program.CreditCreditNASA, via Associated Press

Christopher C. Kraft Jr., the legendary founder of NASA’s mission control, who directed America’s first piloted orbital flights, oversaw the Apollo 11 lunar landing and was director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, died on Monday in Houston, two days after the 50th anniversary of that historic moment on the moon. He was 95.

NASA announced the death.

For 25 years, from the dawn of the space age in the 1950s to the threshold of almost routine launchings in the 1980s, Mr. Kraft played crucial roles in the space program. He devised the protocols for exploration beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, orchestrated early orbital missions and spacewalks, and developed projects that put astronauts on the moon and into the first reusable space shuttles.

Aside from the astronauts who made history — including Alan B. Shepard Jr., with his suborbital flight; John Glenn, in orbiting the Earth; and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first to land on the lunar surface — Mr. Kraft was the most familiar face of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s early years, the steady ground commander who often explained missions to a rapt world at news conferences.

In an era of perilous experiments hastened by the Soviet success of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, Mr. Kraft presided over triumphal breakthroughs in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects. He also stood by helplessly when a fire killed three astronauts on a launchpad in 1967, but he helped devise the ingenious plan that saved the Apollo 13 crew after an explosion crippled their spacecraft en route to the moon in 1970.

At a time when there were no rules or procedures for space travel, Mr. Kraft, a brilliant aeronautical engineer, virtually wrote the book for NASA. He originated the concept of mission control, with authority vested in a ground-based flight director, not in a pilot-astronaut soaring through space at 7 miles a second who might be overwhelmed by pressures, especially during launch or re-entry.


Mr. Kraft, center, and other NASA officials at the space center in Houston lit cigars in 1969 to celebrate Apollo 11’s successful lunar landing.CreditNASA/Reuters

Mr. Kraft also developed the templates for a generation of space exploration: global tracking and communications networks; instruments to monitor the condition of astronauts; spacecraft propulsion and operating systems; flight plans; emergency procedures; techniques for splashdowns and recoveries at sea; even programs to train and coordinate the work of thousands of ground personnel. His plans for each mission were thicker than the New York telephone books of those days.

Appearing before hundreds of reporters as NASA’s spokesman in the early missions, first at Cape Canaveral, Fla., and later in Houston, he seemed a mild-mannered, soft-spoken technocrat. But in the windowless mission control room, he became a blunt taskmaster, demanding obedience and precision from subordinates and astronauts.

Wearing headphones, chewing a cigar, seated in a swivel chair at the flight director’s console surrounded by engineers at their computers and 17 projection screens, he coolly absorbed avalanches of incoming data and made tough “go, no-go” decisions during launch countdowns, at separation points of multistage rocket ascents and at other critical times in a flight.

During his NASA years, he never saw a rocket lift off, except on television monitors. Nor did he usually address his astronauts. A “capsule communicator” relayed his instructions, although he went on the air to give emphasis to his orders, to intervene in emergencies and to banter away tensions. His voice conveyed unshakable confidence, though a flight surgeon during one liftoff measured his pulse at 135 beats a minute.

Some astronauts chafed under his commands. In one contretemps, Mr. Kraft accused Scott Carpenter, one of America’s original astronauts, of being insubordinate on a Mercury flight.


Mr. Kraft at his director console in mission control during a flight simulation in 1965. He was the steady ground commander who often explained missions to a rapt world at news conferences.CreditNASA

While his relationship with the astronauts was not always smooth, he was adamant about who was in charge. “The guy on the ground ultimately controls the mission,” Mr. Kraft told The New York Times Magazine in 1965. “There’s no question about that in my mind or in the astronauts’ minds. They are going to do what he says.”

Mr. Kraft directed all six piloted missions of Project Mercury, which made Shepard the nation’s first person in space in 1961 and put Glenn into orbit in 1962.

He also directed portions of the longer-duration, two-astronaut Gemini missions of 1965-66. These included the first rendezvous of two spacecraft and the first spacewalk by an American, Edward H. White 2d, who floated above the United States as he gave mesmerizing descriptions of the Earth below. Gemini proved that astronauts could remain in space for the time it would take to get to the moon and back.

As NASA turned to the later Gemini flights and the lunar-landing missions of the late 1960s, Mr. Kraft stepped back from direct control of flights and took broader roles in planning and managing Project Apollo, including the selection and mentoring of his successors in flight control.

By then, he was a household name to Americans, and his habit of lighting a cigar amid jubilant cheers and applause at moments of triumph in mission control had become a familiar portrait on television and in newspapers and magazines, a symbol of swelling national pride in outdistancing the Soviet Union.


Mr. Kraft speaking with President Ronald Reagan at the Johnson Space Center in Houston in 1981.CreditJames Blair/NASA

In 1965, Mr. Kraft was on the cover of Time magazine, profiled as the “Conductor in a Command Post.” He drew the comparison himself: “The conductor can’t play all the instruments — he may not even be able to play any one of them. But he knows when the first violin should be playing, and he knows when the trumpets should be loud or soft, and when the drummer should be drumming. He mixes all this up and out comes the music. That’s what we do here.”

With his protégés Glynn Lunney and Eugene Kranz in charge of flight controls, Mr. Kraft became director of flight operations, with overall responsibility for the dress rehearsals of Apollo 7, 8, 9 and 10; for the historic Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969; and for Apollo 12, a moon landing four months later.

The 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing has been widely celebrated with a host of commemorative events, including television documentaries.

At the climax of Apollo 11’s descent to the lunar surface, Mr. Kraft was in mission control and conferred urgently with Mr. Kranz when, minutes before the scheduled landing, computer alarms rang out, threatening disaster. The world knew nothing about it until Mr. Kraft disclosed the event days later, and credited the Kranz team with resolving it.
“The computer was right on the ragged edge,” he said. Asked if the team had been worried, he snapped, “You’re damn right we were.”


Mr. Kraft, right, joined the Apollo 11 crew members Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington in 2009, to honor the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing.Credit Bill Ingalls/NASA

Four more Apollo missions put astronauts on the moon, but Mr. Kraft was less directly involved. He became deputy director of the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston in 1969. However, when Apollo 13 was crippled by an explosion en route to the moon, Mr. Kranz called him in to mission control. Mr. Kraft chaired a meeting of senior managers, who devised a rescue plan that used the lunar excursion module as a “lifeboat” to save the crew, as dramatized in the 1995 film “Apollo 13.”

In 1972, Mr. Kraft was named director of the spacecraft center — renamed the Johnson Space Center in 1973 — and held the post for a decade until his retirement in 1982. Besides overseeing the remaining Apollo missions, he played roles in the success of the first crewed space station, Skylab; the first international space docking; the Apollo-Soyuz test project; and the first space shuttle flights.

The shuttle Columbia flew a nearly flawless first mission in April 1981, circling the world 36 times and landing in California. But its second flight seven months later had to be curtailed to two days from five after fuel-cell problems arose.

It was “the prudent thing to do,” said Mr. Kraft, who did not light a cigar.

Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr. was born in Phoebus, in Eastern Virginia, on Feb. 28, 1924, to Christopher and Vanda (Suddreth) Kraft. His father, a hospital finance officer, had been born just before the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the New World: thus the name. Later, many would consider it appropriate for the son.

Christopher Jr. was a fine baseball player and dreamed of becoming a pro. After high school graduation in 1941, he enrolled at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. With the outbreak of World War II, he tried to enlist in the Navy but was rejected because of a childhood hand injury. He graduated in 1944 with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering.

The next year he joined what is now known as the Langley Research Center, of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. It was on the cutting edge of aeronautical research, using wind tunnels to test aircraft designs and working on the X-1 experimental rocket.

In 1950, he married Elizabeth Anne Turnbull. They lived in Houston and had two children, Gordon and Kristi Anne. Complete information on his survivors was not immediately available.

At Langley for 13 years, Mr. Kraft distinguished himself by solving complex flight problems and directing the work of test pilots. He also met future leaders of America’s space program, particularly Robert R. Gilruth, who became his mentor and the first director of the Manned Spacecraft Center.

After Sputnik opened the space race, President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1958. Langley research personnel became the core of its Space Task Group, charged with putting Americans into space, and Mr. Gilruth assigned Mr. Kraft to Project Mercury.

In retirement, Mr. Kraft became a consultant to Rockwell International and IBM. His memoir, “Flight: My Life in Mission Control,” was published in 2001 and became a best seller.

In 2011, NASA named the mission control center in Houston after him.

Michael Coats, then the director of the Johnson Space Center, called Mr. Kraft’s life a testament to his dream of space exploration:

“He is a space pioneer without whom we’d never have heard those historic words on the surface of the moon: ‘Houston. Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.’ Those words effectively put Houston, and this building behind us, on the intergalactic map forever.”

Correction: July 23, 2019
An earlier version of this obituary erroneously credited the American astronaut Edward H. White 2d with a distinction. He was the first American to walk in space, not the first person to do so. The Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov holds that distinction.

Correction: July 23, 2019
An earlier version of a picture caption with this obituary, using information from NASA, misstated where the photograph of Mr. Kraft seated at a console and pointing was taken. It was Cape Canaveral, Fla., not Houston.

A version of this article appears in print on July 24, 2019, Section A, Page 24 of the New York edition with the headline: Christopher Kraft, NASA Mission Control’s Founding Father, Dies at 95.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/science/christopher-kraft-dead-nasa.html

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Chris Kraft, legendary flight director, dies at 95
July 22, 2019 William Harwood,  STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION [SFN]


Flight director Chris Kraft at his console inside Mercury Mission Control. Credit: NASA

Former Johnson Space Center Director Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., the man who created the iconic role of NASA flight director during the Mercury and Gemini programs and whose no-nonsense, uncompromising management style defined control room operations and discipline through the Apollo years and beyond, died Monday. He was 95.

“America has truly lost a national treasure today with the passing of one of NASA’s earliest pioneers – flight director Chris Kraft. We send our deepest condolences to the Kraft family,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

“Chris was flight director at some of the most iconic moments of space history, as humans first orbited the Earth and stepped outside of an orbiting spacecraft. … We stand on his shoulders as we reach deeper into the solar system, and he will always be with us on those journeys.”

A legendary figure at the Johnson Space Center and across the agency, Kraft once said he set up mission control to monitor spacecraft systems, interact with astronauts in space and to stand ready, spring-loaded to “figure out all the things that could go wrong and be prepared to to deal with them.”

“We called those mission rules,” he once told visitors to the Kennedy Space Center during a question-and-answer session. “And we wrote all the procedures, both for ourselves and the astronauts and called those malfunction procedures. So we each knew what was expected of each other. We depended on each other, we integrated the astronauts in to doing the job in space and we did the job on the ground to keep them there and accomplish the missions.”

At the launch site, he said, “when you’re preparing a spaceship and something goes wrong, you try to figure out how to fix it. It’s a little different for the flight control team, because they didn’t have any spares around in a spaceship. So we had to try to figure out how to accomplish the mission even though the equipment was malfunctioning.”

The techniques pioneered by Kraft and young flight directors who followed in his footsteps, men like Gene “failure is not an option” Kranz, the urbane Glynn Lunney and more, saved the Apollo 13 crew from the brink of disaster in the aftermath of an explosion on the way to the moon that severely damaged the spacecraft.

Once comparing his complex work as a flight director to a conductor’s, Kraft said, ‘The conductor can’t play all the instruments, he may not even be able to play any one of them,'” Bridenstine said. “‘But, he knows when the first violin should be playing, and he knows when the trumpets should be loud or soft, and when the drummer should be drumming. He mixes all this up and out comes music. That’s what we do here.’”


Chris Kraft works inside the Mission Control Center in Houston during the Gemini 4 mission on June 4, 1965. Gemini 4, which included the first spacewalk by a U.S. astronaut, was the first space mission controlled from Houston. Credit: NASA

Kraft was in the flight director’s chair at Cape Canaveral on May 5, 1961, when Alan Shepard blasted off aboard a Redstone rocket to become the first American in space. The flight came a month after the Soviet Union sent cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit, a major psychological blow in the West at the height of the Cold War.

Shepard’s flight was a short, up-and-down suborbital mission, but it helped restore lost confidence and played a major role in President John F. Kennedy’s decision, announced on May 25, 1961, to commit the nation to sending an astronaut to the moon before the end of the decade. That promise was kept with the Apollo 11 moon landing 50 years ago on July 20, 1969.

“I had many proud moments,” Kraft recalled. “I think Alan Shepard was certainly a flight where I learned to be a flight director because until you put a human being on the end of a rocket, you don’t really understand the problem. I was pretty nervous, I was pretty exhilarated when it was over, as was Alan Shepard.

“Certainly, (John) Glenn’s flight was a great flight for all of us and then each one got better. Apollo 8 was probably my most exhilarating moment because I was the guy who had talked management into putting the vehicle around the moon and then in orbit around the moon. That was pretty exciting and pretty demanding on my heart, I suppose.”

Apollo 8 is considered one of NASA’s most daring missions. It marked only the third flight of a gargantuan Saturn 5 rocket, the first flight of the booster to carry a crew and the first mission to carry humans beyond low-Earth orbit.

“It was his legendary work to establish mission control as we know it for the earliest crewed space flights that perhaps most strongly advanced our journey of discovery,” Bridenstine said. “From that home base, America’s achievements in space were heard across the globe, and our astronauts in space were anchored to home even as they accomplished unprecedented feats.”

Born Feb. 28, 1924, in Phoebus, Virginia, Kraft earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from Virginia Tech in 1944 and joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA, the precursor to NASA. He later was assigned to the Space Task Group that spearheaded development of NASA’s Mercury program.


Chris Kraft, director of the Johnson Space Center, points to a plot inside the Mission Control Center during a visit by President Ronald Reagan during the STS-2 space shuttle mission on Nov. 13, 1981. Credit: NASA

According to his book “Flight: My Life In Mission Control,” Kraft said his boss Chuck Matthews told him to “come up with a basic mission plan. You know, the bottom-line stuff on how we fly a man from a launch pad into space and back again. It would be good if you kept him alive.”

The mission control concept developed by Kraft called for a team of experts, focused on specific systems and subsystems, coordinated by a director, and all following a set of previously thought-out rules and procedures designed to handle virtually any eventuality.

“I saw a team of highly skilled engineers, each one an expert on a different piece of the Mercury capsule,” he wrote. “We’d have a flow of accurate telemetry data so the experts could monitor their systems, see and even predict problems, and pass along instructions to the astronaut.”

Kraft served as flight director for all six of the original one-man Mercury missions and seven of the 10 two-man Gemini flights that perfected the rendezvous and spacewalk techniques needed for the Apollo moon program. He served as director of flight operations until the Apollo 13 mission when he became deputy director of the Johnson Space Center.

He took over as director in 1972 and held the post until 1982, overseeing the center through the initial development of the space shuttle. He retired from NASA in 1982, but remained active as a consultant and NASA advisor. Appropriately enough, mission control at the Johnson Space Center was renamed in Kraft’s honor in 2011.

Always outspoken, in an interview for a NASA oral history project, Kraft described the space shuttle as the safest spacecraft ever built despite the booster O-ring failure that doomed the Challenger in 1986 and the foam debris that brought down Columbia in 2003.

“We had two failures, which were catastrophic. Both were the fallacies of man, not the fallacies of the machine,” he said. “(Challenger) was a failure of the human brain, not of the machine. We should have fixed it. Same is true of the debris. Eventually they were playing Russian roulette.

“So take what Chris Kraft says with a grain of salt. I say the machine has never really failed. There is no rocket, even with those two failures, that has the success rate of the space shuttle. It’ll be a cold day in hell when that is improved on.”

Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/07/22/chris-kraft-legendary-flight-director-dies-at-95/