I was fortunate to be one of the first NASA Flight Controllers. I supported Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. I joined the NASA Space Task Group at the Langley Research Center in 1961. My first supervisor was Gene Kranz, a Former F-86 pilot who got there a year before me. He was 28, and I was 25. Gene trained me to take his place as the Operations and Procedures Officer. I later moved up to the Assistant Flight Director position in Gemini and was the Guidance Officer on Apollo 1, which ended in a disastrous fire.
I wrote...
Apollo Mission Control: The Making of a National Historic Landmark
My book describes the history of this now iconic room, which represents America’s space program during the Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, and early Space Shuttle flights. It is now a National Historic Landmark and has been restored to a level representing the day the flight control teams walked out after the last lunar landing missions.
The book is dedicated to the estimated 3,000 men and women who supported the flights and tells the story from their perspective. It describes the rooms of people supporting this control center; those rooms of engineers, analysts, and scientists most people never knew about. Some called it a “shrine,” and some called it a “cathedral.”
I enjoyed this book because I shared the author's life with him in both the Mercury and Mission Control Centers. I witnessed his intense management and leadership style first-hand.
Not only was he my direct supervisor, but he was my mentor and friend. His family was very close to mine; he was also my neighbor. Gene is one of the reasons the Space Program was so successful. He epitomizes "Tough and Competent."
"It was as tough a test as could be conceived and put to flight control . . . if there was any weakness, the team would have crumbled. The teams dealt with IT!! There is no way that you could have a team stand up the way we did. We knew we had IT. It was all built in as we had been working on IT! for years."- Arnold Aldrich (Apollo 13)
Tough and Competent documents the leadership and teamwork principles which emerged from an organization of novice, part-time engineers in NASA Mercury Control. By July 1969, when faced with…
I enjoyed this book because Chris Kraft was the father of manned spaceflight operations. He designed the control center concept, had it built, and then managed the early Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo Flights from it.
He was the very first Flight Director and later managed the Apollo flights and became the NASA Manned Spaceflight Center Director. All Flight Controllers highly admired this great leader. The building is now named the Christopher C. Kraft, Jr Mission Control Center.
In his New York Times bestseller, Chris Kraft delivers an unforgettable account of his life in Mission Control. The first NASA flight director, Kraft emerged from boyhood in small-town America to become a visionary who played an integral role in what would become the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It's all here, from the legendary Mercury missions that first sent Americans into space through the Gemini and Apollo missions that landed them on the moon. The great heroes of space are here, too-Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Buzz Aldrin-leading the space race that would change the…
I enjoyed this book because it describes one of the very first Flight Directors; one that people don’t know much about; Glynn Lunney. He was a relatively quiet person but extremely intelligent and capable. He is best known for his leadership in the control center during the Apollo XIII mission and during the Apollo Soyuz mission. He also was the Flight Dynamics Branch Chief that included all of the "Trench" Flight Controllers.
Perfect gift for all the ages. Live the history and leadership of Manned Space Flight...... the Missions that all Countries Celebrated together in Peace and Joy,
I enjoyed this book because the authors give much credit to all the Flight Controllers at all the positions including those in the back rooms supporting those in the Mission Operations Control Room.
The book highlights the backgrounds of young ordinary people from “rural America and smokestack towns” who became extraordinary, if not brilliant. They were a band of brothers supporting the first missions to the Moon.
The inspiration for the documentary Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo
At first glance, it looks like just another auditorium in just another government building. But among the talented men (and later women) who worked in mission control, the room located on the third floor of Building 30-at what is now Johnson Space Center-would become known by many as "the Cathedral." These members of the space program were the brightest of their generations, making split-second decisions that determined the success or failure of a mission. The flight controllers, each supported by a staff of specialists, were the most visible…
I enjoyed this book because it tells the stories of many of the men who manned the first row of consoles in the Mission Control Center, which was called the “Trench.” Their individual stories are unique. They came from all walks of life and were mostly in their twenties during Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
"We were the guys in the Trench: the Retrofire Officer, the Flight Dynamics Officer and the Guidance Officer. We were the ground pilots who tracked the spacecraft, calculated the maneuvers, and told the astronauts what time to burn, what maneuvers to do, and where to go. We were a proud bunch." Jerry Bostic, February, 2000
I am adopted. For most of my life, I didn’t identify as adopted. I shoved that away because of the shame I felt about being adopted and not truly fitting into my family. But then two things happened: I had my own biological children, the only two people I know to date to whom I am biologically related, and then shortly after my second daughter was born, my older sister, also an adoptee, died of a drug overdose. These sequential births and death put my life on a new trajectory, and I started writing, out of grief, the history of adoption and motherhood in America.
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, I am uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption.
The history of adoption, reframed through the voices of adoptees like me, and mothers who have been forced to relinquish their babies, blows apart old narratives about adoption, exposing the fallacy that adoption is always good.
In this story, I reckon with the pain and unanswered questions of my own experience and explore broader issues surrounding adoption in the United States, including changing legal policies, sterilization, and compulsory relinquishment programs, forced assimilation of babies of color and Indigenous babies adopted into white families, and other liabilities affecting women, mothers, and children. Now is the moment we must all hear these stories.
Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption
Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women's reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, Rebecca C. Wellington is uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption. Wellington's timely-and deeply researched-account amplifies previously marginalized voices and exposes the social and racial biases embedded in the United States' adoption industry.…
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