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Missiles Went Ape. Each flight is, in fact, a preparation for the next−a check on technologies and techniques, a test of the men on the mission and the men behind the mission. And always it is source material for changes in the Mission Rules, the fat blue notebooks that Kraft has been putting together since the start of the Mercury flights in 1959. "We got plenty nervous during those first few launches," he recalls, "because we didn't know how to fly and we didn't know enough rules. All we knew was that missiles sometimes came off the pad and went ape."
With nine manned missions behind them, the flight controllers have accumulated an astonishing compendium of practical knowledge. "We're not Christopher Columbus," says Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., with an almost angry pride. "We know a lot more about what we have to do than he did. And we know where we're going."
The Mission Rules book has fattened to 300 pages; a copy is available at each console at the control center. The 882 entries, subject to continuous review and revision, summarize all the known contingencies, all the possible malfunctions, all the "what ifs" of space flight. What if the control center loses voice communication? What if cabin pressure fails, or a hurricane closes in the chosen landing area? Last week all such questions faded in the face of the one big one: What if a relatively simple heater fails and vital fuel cells quit supplying necessary power?
Each flight controller must know all the answers that affect his special area. Kraft, whose retentive memory can still dredge up long passages of poetry memorized in high school, is an expert on the whole book. The fuel cell problem was exasperating, but Kraft was equal to handling it.
Public Confessional. Because he knows that putting book learning into practice is an art in itself, Kraft runs his controllers through weeks of simulations before each launch. They practice at least a dozen aborts, a half-dozen re-entry simulations, and another half-dozen assorted orbital situations. No one in the control room, not even Kraft, ever knows just what problem has been programmed into the computer-run simulation system. Not until they are actually faced with the artificial emergency can Kraft's men be sure whether they are dealing with an oxygen leak, an unsatisfactory orbit, or a violently ill astronaut.
Sometimes the "sims," as they are called, involve only the Houston controllers working with a Gemini mockup, a sort of space-age Link trainer. But as the real launch draws near, the astronauts climb into the Gemini simulator at Cape Kennedy and the entire tracking network joins in. Simulations are played through in deadly earnest. Once started, there is no stopping; if the controllers hesitate too long or make a mistake, they must work their own way out.
After each simulation, Kraft gets on the intercom to conduct the "wake." That debriefing, says John Hodge, a deputy flight director, "is a public confessional." Kraft does not hesitate to praise one man's performance or tear another's apart. And he is quick to acknowledge when he himself has made a mistake. "We're not being critical of each other for the sake of being critical," he says, "but so we can find out what went wrong."