Gene Kranz Quotes
Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily.
Kranz, Gene. Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond. Simon & Schuster, 2000, p. 204.
In this particular case Griffin was referring to manned space flight, but the principle is a general one. Risk can be managed and in many cases minimized, but can never be eliminated completely unless virtually all activity ceases.
The thing that make this an even more difficult problem to deal with is that until the failure, enthusiasts and supports of the technology point to the perfect track record to justify continued use, opposing even more safety measure, and trying to reduce anxiety.
Also published in What Do You Care What Other People Think, 1988. This was his last publication. He realized that NASA was under so much political and public relations pressure, that important science issues could not be faced squarely. So he wrote his own appendix to the report which was embarrassing to some of the administrators and contractors but was really appreciated by almost all of the scientists and engineers.
Eugene Francis "Gene" Kranz is an American aerospace engineer, a former fighter pilot, and a retired NASA Flight Director and manager. Kranz served as NASA's second Chief Flight Director, directing missions of the Gemini and Apollo programs, including the first lunar landing mission, Apollo 11. He is best known for directing the successful efforts by the Mission Control team to save the crew of Apollo 13, and was later portrayed in the major motion picture of the same name by actor Ed Harris. He is also noted for his close-cut flattop hairstyle and the dapper "mission" vests (waistcoats) of different styles and materials made by his wife, Marta Kranz, for his Flight Director missions.
