Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond
Eugene. F. "Gene" Kranz. (Former NASA flight director.)
- Paperback: 416 pages
- Publisher: Berkley Publishing Corporation,U.S.; Reissue edition (May 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0425179877
- ISBN-13: 978-0425179871
Thoroughly absorbing account of the life and times of those involved in the early days of the space programme as related by probably the greatest of NASA's Flight Directors.
Whilst Kranz's book doesn't have the evocative prose and drama of Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" (Which I'm surprised hasn't been posted on here yet!) it does contain a wealth of technical information in an easy-to-understand format.
Reading this book certainly gives you an impression of what it must have been like to have worked on a test flying project of a completely unknown nature. They were all learning as they went along and procedures evolved at an incredible pace.
Kranz takes us through his early days of flying the F-86 and F-100, through his Flight Test days on the F-101 Voodoo project and finally onto NASA and the now legendary Moon landings that marked the culmination of all the effort and hard work of those involved.
Not exactly written like a Dale Brown or a Tom Clancy, but all the better for it.I enjoyed it enormously. Well worth a punt.
