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PART 1
THE REAL-TIME MORALITY
OF SPACEFLIGHT
(FINDING OUR RELIGION)
All too often, successful missions and sometimes even crew and spacecraft survival are delivered on the strength of the operations team. That strength is found in the teamâs expertise and preparation as well as on proven leadership. This is the kind of leadership environment where it goes without saying that everyone on the team will deliberately and consistently do the right thing for the right reason; will work to be as good as they can in whatever role they serve; and are willing to step up and make the call.
PAUL SEAN HILL, DIRECTOR OF MISSION OPERATIONS, 2010
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CHAPTER 1
CLEAR ALIGNMENT TO PURPOSE
We are the last line of defense for our crews.
EUGENE F. KRANZ, FLIGHT DIRECTOR AND FLIGHT CONTROL BRANCH CHIEF, 19651
Startup and Organic Evolution
What is our purpose? Ask most people that question about their organization, whether in the startup phase or as a mature, ongoing enterprise, and youâre likely to get a list of jobs and products.
Mission Control is no different. In fact, setting out to invent Mission Control in 1958, the leaders first had to grapple with just defining the job. They were faced with all kinds of basic questions, as our first Flight Director and Apollo legend, Chris Kraft, said in a lecture at MIT in 20052:
How many times around the Earth do you think we would like to go or need to go on the first flight? And what do you think would determine that?
What is a real-time decision? Where are you going to make a decision? Do you need some central facility (which invented Mission Control)?
And if youâre going to make decisions in a central location, then youâve got to have some means of getting that data back to them, of massaging that data, letting people know outside the limits of that control facility what is going on so they can interrelate with each other.
Nobody had ever done that before.
If this system is failing, what are the measurements that weâre going to have there? And, if it is failing, and it isnât operating at the right temperature or the right pressure, and it is off nominal, what will the system do? And how do we measure that on the ground? How do we detect it?
Starting with a litany of questions, they took inventory of the jobs that had to be done in real-timeâthat time when the clock is ticking, the rocket is burning, the spacecraft is in the sky, and the astronauts are in harmâs way. Based on those jobs, they defined the computers and communications networks they would need, and the myriad other mission planning and training tasks required before the first astronaut strapped onto the first live rocket.
Thatâs how they knew which things to develop first, how many people to hire, etc. All of which is essential management stuff. What they didnât do was spend a lot of time philosophizing about some underlying, core purpose. That would come over time, although even 45 years later, MOD leaders would typically still answer in terms of jobs and products.
Unsurprisingly, through the ensuing decades, there was a considerable list of jobs just on the flight control team while flying the spaceship and looking after the astronauts in real-time. In normal or âroutineâ human spaceflight, Mission Controlâs typical tasks include:
- Updating computer sequences that control the rocket and spacecraft systems
- Comparing the spacecraftâs guidance and navigation calculations against separate calculations in the MCC and updating rocket engine controllers
- Balancing electrical power generation and usage across multiple power sources, managing thermal control systems to ensure hot areas are cooled and cold areas are heated
- Managing the use of consumables like hydrogen, propellants, coolant, and food, the use and production of others like oxygen and water, and the storage and disposal of things like trash and human waste
- Monitoring atmosphere composition, adjusting the introduction of air, oxygen, and nitrogen into the cabin, and managing the systems that remove carbon dioxide and other contaminants from the air
- Monitoring satellites and experiments carried on-board, from initial activation to full service, and routing the science data to the ground
- Choreographing robotic operations and spacewalks, monitoring spacesuits and the systems required for the astronauts to step into space as well as the tools they use while outside
- Monitoring the astronautsâ health and guiding them through treatment when required
- Monitoring space radiation, which affects both crew health and spacecraft electronics and advising the crew on actions required to minimize their exposure
- Monitoring weather at all potential landing sites, targeting landing in areas that are within wind, precipitation, visibility, and sea-state limits, and coordinating with ground recovery forces to ensure the crew is able to safely exit the vehicle
But when things donât go so normally, Mission Control adds to their focus:
- Replanning the day, the next day, and the rest of the mission in response to system failure, operations running long, or changes in mission objectives
- Intervening by sending a command to power off a failing piece of equipment, switch to a backup, reset computers and automatic sequences, command an abort to separate the crew-carrying spacecraft from a failing booster, confirm false fire alarms, manage the systems required to cleanse the air after an actual fire in the cabin, and much, much more
- Developing maintenance and repair procedures to restore systems in flight.
- Ideally, before any of these occur, recognizing signs of equipment behaving in a way that could lead to failure and taking action to prevent the failure from ever happening.
These tasks are spread out across a flight control team of individual flight controllers in each position in Mission Control. Each flight controller is responsible for a specific system or technical discipline, e.g., the electrical, propulsion, robotics, spacewalks, etc.
Progressing from mission to mission, we learn from our successes and failures. As we solve problems and learn what works, we reinforce those decisions and behaviors in order to contribute to future successes. In less successful outcomes, we take note of those âHuh, that could have gone betterâ moments. Over time, we expand the Mission Control community awareness of lessons learned and best practices for solving specific problems when faced with them in real-timeâbest ways to focus on critical information, evaluate and manage risks, and communicate it while conducting a rapidly changing operation. We evolve our standards for being a flight controller and part of the Mission Control team.
As you might imagine, these are all very cool jobs. In fact, this short list doesnât do justice to how cool it is to be there and serve in that kind of role, where you are the final expert who can make the difference in todayâs space operation. Nor does it do justice to the training and expertise required to be on the flight control team and do any of this work. But itâs still just a list of âWhat we do.â
As important as that list is, and as important as evolving our best practices and operating standards is, they are not enough to justify the moral undertone or morality in the Mission Control room. That morality emerged when Mission Control started flying, rather than just crunching numbers and planning to fly.
- Each of the specific jobs that comprise our role is important and must be done correctly.
- No matter how critical or difficult they are, the jobs themselves do not define a moralityâa framework by which performance is judged.
Experience Leads to The Foundations of Mission Operations
Beyond the details of the job, the experience of real-time operations has a way of focusing our attention on what is most important. It is one thing to sit around a conference room talking about some dangerous operation in the future. It is another thing to find yourself on-console, trying to keep up with the spaceship and stay ahead of things as they unfold, all while a crew of astronauts is living with the results of your efforts and hurtling through sky and space. A defining result as Mission Control gained real-time experience was a clear understanding of our core purpose and, over time, what it took for us to deliver.
The earliest hints of there being something more to the job came unexpectedly from the morale problems that accompanied the failures in the early days of Project Mercury. Leading up to Alan Shepardâs historic Mercury Redstone 3 launch on May 5, 1961, only 8 of the 17 preceding uncrewed Mercury missions had been successful. In the weeks before launch, the Mission Control team was feeling the pressure from the daily criticism in the press. More acutely, as Shepardâs launch approached, was the growing reality of how dangerous this mission was for him.
In addition to their technical work, Flight Director Chris Kraft paid close attention to the teamâs morale, specifically to ensure they remained focused on the job at hand and didnât let any stress-induced mistakes creep into their mission preparation. Mission Control had to be ready during the mission. When the clock was ticking, it would be on their shoulders to beat the previous failure rate⌠to keep him alive.
That awareness stuck with the Mission Control teams as they progressed and learned through the six manned Mercury missions. Four years later, during final preparations for Gemini 3 in March 1965, a different management challenge presented itself, also not technical. A conflict flared up between a flight controller and an astronaut at a remote site in Carnarvon, Australia. Flight Control Branch Chief Gene Kranz had put the flight controller in charge at that site during the mission. Coincidentally, Chief Astronaut Deke Slayton had told a new astronaut he was in charge.
Thus began a several-day squabble that turned into a near civil war between the flight controller and the astronaut for the right to be the boss during the mission. In addition to spilling over to their managers, Chris Kraft and Deke Slayton, the dispute also distracted the flight control team at the L-1 day launch briefing of only the...
