When NASA soared with eagles

When the shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1, killing all seven crew members, it was just one more blow for a space program that had once been the envy of the world.

On Sunday, though, the History Channel will broadcast an original documentary about a much happier time, when 26-year-old cowboys with slide rules and pocket protectors had the power to issue a “go” or “no go” seconds before a launch.

“Failure Is Not an Option” is based on the book by that title by retired NASA flight director Gene Kranz, portrayed by Ed Harris in “Apollo 13” as the cigar-loving, vest-wearing leader of Mission Control who uttered that phrase as his can-do crew worked to bring the moon mission crew home alive. But in the wake of the Columbia disaster and years of dwindling public interest in space exploration, the two-hour film feels more Hollywood than history; “Failure” is so riveting and moving that it’s difficult to reconcile the drama and maverick spirit of the old space agency with the beleaguered NASA of today.

“When we started, people would put their food down, get up and watch the launch,” Kranz said on a recent morning from his home near Johnson Space Center, south of Houston.

Kranz turns 70 this week and, physically, he is somewhere between retirement and his prime; he wears white sneakers with Velcro straps, but he’s still got his flat-top crew cut, and he still clicks a ballpoint pen furiously when he’s concentrating. (When he ran Mission Control, he destroyed about three government-issued pens per shift.)

Kranz was a technical advisor on “Failure,” and his viewpoint anchors the majority of the interviews. Featuring live footage shot in the control room during the 1960s and interviews with several of the key engineers who worked the Mercury and Apollo missions, the film moves at a cliffhanger pace.

A former Air Force pilot, Kranz was selected for the NASA program in the fall of 1960. Because he had most recently been a flight test engineer at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico dealing with flight systems, NASA initially assigned him to write flight instructions for the Mercury flight controllers. Kranz said there were no rules to follow, so he made it up as he went along.

By the time the Gemini program rolled around, he’d moved up to flight director.

“I think Gene made it feel urgent because he’s so intense,” said Rushmore DeNooyer, who produced the documentary. DeNooyer and Kirk Wolfinger -- his partner is founding Lone Wolf Pictures in South Portland, Maine -- deliberately avoided focusing on the astronauts. Instead, they dug into the culture of the engineer’s life and succeeded in making a number-cruncher’s job seem as exciting as a stuntman’s.

They also examined the anatomy of Mission Control, a brief but necessary explanation that effectively shatters the monotony of an austere room swarming with engineers in headsets. The men in the first row, the “trench,” were in charge of all the calculations necessary for navigation. The second row, “systems,” monitored every system on the spacecraft, from engines to oxygen to computers. And the third row was mission command, which oversaw, consulted and ultimately made every decision.

“Actually, there were intense rivalries in that room,” DeNooyer said. “The front row was very arrogant. The second row was important in their own different way. It was an entire world in there.”

Wolfinger has specialized in space program documentaries, including one for PBS as well as the Turner network, and he thought he’d “said it all.”

“The challenge was to find a fresh story and some fresh perspective. The other daunting challenge was to make a riveting film about engineers who sat in their seats. How many ways could we shoot guys in white shirts, thin black ties and horn-rimmed glasses? They aren’t exactly what comes to mind when you think about matinee idol. I mean, how many ways could we shoot a slide rule?” he asked. “It was finding the human beings in these guys.”

In “Failure,” the now-retired engineers speak with vitality and passion about the projects they worked on 35 years ago. They still recite the inspiring philosophy-cum-pep talks that Kranz delivered to them. They still get choked up when talking about Christmas Eve 1968, when astronauts William Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman began reading from Genesis as Apollo 8 emerged from behind the moon into full view of the cobalt blue Earth.

One of the finest moments of the film occurs as the engineers recall the fire on Apollo 1 in January 1967, which killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. The engineers’ loss of innocence is apparent on their weathered faces and in their gravelly voices.

And of course, they can still rattle off the acronym concentrate that passed for language in Mission Control. As one of them says, “There were acronyms for acronyms.”

“This room starts with its own culture,” says actor Scott Glenn, the film’s narrator, who played astronaut Alan Shepard in 1983’s “The Right Stuff.” “And fitting in starts with learning the language.”

It also meant shutting out the rest of the world.

“The young men who came to Mission Control in the ‘60s -- and they are all men -- live in an engineer’s paradise: intense, high-tech, competitive and insulated,” Glenn says in the narration. “Outside, an American cultural revolution will soon begin brewing. As the ‘60s unfold, Mission Control will be many things. One thing it will never be is hip.”

They were so focused on their goal that, looking back, Kranz can still recite his well-worn daily schedule, a regimen that included waking at 5:45 a.m., driving to work listening to “Stars & Stripes Forever” on tape and walking through the doors of Mission Control at 6:30, before the day shift arrived.

“We were spartan -- like a Jesuit,” he says.

“Failure” is a TV portal into a world that no longer seems to exist at NASA. The agency that aimed to put a man on the moon for President John F. Kennedy now seems bridled by regulation and risk-averse managers. Kranz says it has become more bureaucratic and less idealistic.

Perhaps the best scene to reflect the near-maniacal focus of the men of Mission Control would have been a set of interviews edited out of the final cut. Wolfinger sat down with Kranz’s five daughters, all of whom work in the space industry.

“Boys would come for dates, and they would be inspected,” Wolfinger said. “Gene played Sousa marches at the top of the volume in his convertible when he took his girls to school. These fathers were so consumed with what they did that normal conversation, especially around a mission launch, was impossible.”

Their entire world was NASA. Kranz and his wife, Marta, who sewed his trademark vests for him, have lived in this one-story ranch house for 40 years. At one time, 50 children lived on their small block, and most of them were the children of NASA engineers. A launch was not just an event for the Kranz family, it was an event for every single person they knew or saw.

Kranz, no fan of passivity or people who pass the buck, is outspoken about NASA’s recent lack of innovative leadership. Citing the anticipated Columbia shuttle investigation report as an example of the type of attitude prevalent at NASA, he scoffed at the program’s earnestness to dissect every move made in Mission Control with 20/20 vision. “Committees tend to look at things in a perfect world, but progress involves and demands risk,” he said.

Kranz travels around the country, giving motivational and historical lectures once or twice a week. This kind of exposure to Americans in Rotary Clubs and schoolhouses has enlightened him about a broader problem, one that he thinks goes beyond NASA’s stifling bureaucracy.

“In the ‘60s, every single person was marching for a cause. People were not spectators,” he said. “Today, look at people watching reality TV. We’re fanatics of watching reality.”

“Failure” is a cinematic shove for what Kranz refers to as complacent “working-level devils.” NASA was so convinced about its emotional power that the agency showed it to 280 employees earlier this month in hopes it would rally the troops.

Kranz went home after the screening and wrote an e-mail to the producers.

“I think,” he typed, “you may have begun the recovery process for this generation after Columbia.”

*

‘Failure Is Not an Option’

Where: The History Channel

When: 9 p.m. Sunday

Narrator: Scott Glenn

What else: Based on the book by retired Flight Director Gene Kranz

Production credits: Produced by Rushmore DeNooyer and Kirk Wolfinger