This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something. It's YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back. Make it work - for YOU.
Apollo

Chris Kraft

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
July 22, 2019
Filed under
Chris Kraft

NASA Administrator Remembers Mission Control Pioneer Chris Kraft
“Chris was one of the core team members that helped our nation put humans in space and on the Moon, and his legacy is immeasurable. Chris’ engineering talents were put to work for our nation at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, before NASA even existed, but 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. 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.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

11 responses to “Chris Kraft”

  1. Shaw_Bob says:
    0
    0

    Another sad day.

  2. sunman42 says:
    0
    0

    A true original, and we’ve pretty much thrown away the mold.

  3. Homer Hickam says:
    0
    0

    A fellow Virginia Tech grad who was tough as nails and never suffered fools. RIP, Flight. Well done.

  4. ThomasLMatula says:
    0
    0

    How sad. My Condolences to his friends and family.

  5. tutiger87 says:
    0
    0

    A role model and mentor in every sense of those words. We attended the same church, and every Sunday conversation brought a new nugget of wisdom from him. He was such wise counsel, through career highs and disappointments. May the good Lord bless & keep Miss Betty Anne intil they are reunited in heaven. They were married almost 70 years!

  6. mfwright says:
    0
    0

    I find it amazing the org chart of mission control has not changed (except some of the boxes renamed) since Project Mercury and Flight still at the top. There may be management (program director) above Flight but Kraft has Flight makes the final decision (upper management doesn’t interfere with real time decisions). Brilliant legacy.

    • fcrary says:
      0
      0

      What impressed me was that he followed that rule when _he_ was the upper management in question. According to Lovell’s book, _Lost_Moon_, Mr. Kraft did not jump in or try to tell the Flight Directors’ what to do, all through everything that happened to Apollo 13. From what I’ve read, he was visibly tempted to do so at times, but he never did.

      • mfwright says:
        0
        0

        in the movie Apollo 13 we can see Kranz (Ed Harris) looks at Kraft (Joe Spano) after making a big decision who simply nods in agreement. I always wondered what it was like for Spano to play a legendary figure at NASA bigger than Kranz and yet was a minor role. Perhaps not to crowd the 2 hour movie with too many people (lots more were essential for safe return but can’t fit them all into a single movie).

  7. Nick K says:
    0
    0

    Kraft decided that the Flight Director ran the mission beginning with John Glenn’s Mercury first orbital flight. This became a sacred principle and his pursuit of it helped to destroy much of NASA’s technical expertise in human space flight. When a signal indicated Glenn’s heat shield had come loose, Kraft decided that (1) Glenn would not be told, and (2) they would continue with retrofire and retrorocket ejection as planned. Walt Williams, the Flight Ops Director, called over Max Faget who had designed and held the patent on the Mercury capsule. Williams asked Faget what should be done. Faget said that at the least, leave the retro rocket package on and maybe if the heatshield were really lose the retrorocket straps would hold the heatshield in place until air resistance could hold it. Faget did seem to know best what to do. Subsequently the decision was also made to tell Glenn of the problem with the signal from the heatshield and after the flight unanimous agreement was that the astronaut should always be told the condition of his vehicle. Kraft hated that someone had overuled him. This set the situation up for Flight Control to take over management of the mission and to eliminate much of the Engineering organiation from a direct role. In 1982, when Kraft resigned as Center Director of JSC, he almost immediately became a consultant for Rockwell International. He was able to establish the STSOC Consolidation Contract ultimately won by a Rockwell/Thiokol spinoff, USA Inc. In this move ostensibly to make operation of Shuttle more efficient and less expensive, they eliminated NASA Engineering subsystem managers in favor of giving system management responsibilities to the contractors. This hurt NASA badly, killing much of the NASA hands on human space flight engineering expertise; notably when it came time for NASA Flight Ops to give up responsibilities to USA, they refused.

    • Brian_M2525 says:
      0
      0

      I’m surprised the legal eagles would have let him retire from NASA, become a consultant for Rockwell, and establish USA Inc.