Excerpt of \"Failure is Not an Option\" by Gene Krantz
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Chapter two lift off the clock is running. The Soviet Union was our rival in space. While we were blowing up rockets, they were impacting the moon with a probe. They even photographed the far side. Each Russian breakthrough came as a shock. Our intelligence on the Russian space program was pretty hot stuff. Notebooks with newspaper and trade journal clips pasted in them. The military apparently didn't feel that the civilians in NASA had a need to know. Whatever it was they knew, most Americans followed the selection and training and further adventures of the seven original astronauts. That was about all they really knew about our infant manned space program. The astronauts were instant celebrities, not so much selected as anointed. The Publicas. Well is. The mission control Team was caught up in the beauty pageant aspect of the first man launch. Which astronaut would be first? Who was the best? April 1961 in April is we were deploying for a pair of missions. The Russians beat us again. Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space and in orbit to boot, and we Neophytes at the space task group viewed the Russian success with both frustration and admiration. We packed up our bags, kiss the wife and kids goodbye, and a few hours later were once again at Mercury Control. Marta was now expecting our third child. We were launching increasingly complex missions from the Cape every month over half of the year. We were T. D y on temporary duty at the Cape. Unlike the later years in Houston, our wives did not know each other and often live pretty far apart. So it was a lonely time for them. Compounding the problem was the dispersal of so many of our people to far flung remote sites working in mercury control. I was fortunate I could easily stay in touch by phone, and I could share with Marta the excitement and pride that we felt is the program went forward following two successful Redstone launches. We moved on to the unmanned Atlas mission, which was designed to test the spacecraft and the global network. The mission that would follow was the one we have been waiting for. It was planned to launch the first American into space. After we arrived at the Cape, we found that the military, which actually ran the Cape and nearby Patrick Air Force Base, as well as the recovery forces had pulled the plug on a resource is and re allocated them to deal with one of the worst crises of the Cold War. Ah, force of 1300 Cuban exiles who had been trained and armed by the CIA and given decidedly insufficient American tactical support, had landed at the Bay of Pigs in Fidel Castro's Cuba in the predawn hours of April 17th, initially planned under the Eisenhower administration. This ill advised invasion had probably been doomed from the outset, but its fate was sealed when President Kennedy, on Lee a few months into his term and ambivalent about the entire operation, withheld American air support. Castro's small air force decimated, the exiles been on his overthrow. All this was happening a few 100 miles to the south of the Cape. We sat in our hotel rooms anxiously waiting to recover. The resource is we needed for the next two missions, our eyes glued to the television sets. The combination of Gagarin's flight and the US humiliation at the Bay of Pigs provided a sobering background to our deployment. The press focused on America's pitiful space record while touting Russia's successes. It was reminiscent of what had happened a year earlier, when Newsweek lowered the boom on the Mercury program to lose to the Russians. All we needed to do was start late. Downgrade Russian feats, fragment authority, pinch pennies, think small and short decisions. I don't recall anyone disagreeing with that assessment. The message was understood in Washington, and it was taken to heart at the Cape. I find it difficult today to convey the intense frustration and near despair as we picked ourselves up after each setback, determined to break the jinx on the program. Now we were going for two back to back missions, launching an unmanned Atlas down range and then carrying out our first manned Redstone mission. We try not to think about the gaps and knowledge, experience and technology in our program. They were big enough to drive a truck through, and we could never forget that while we were screwing around with baby steps and sub orbital missions, the Russians had put a man in orbit so we would continue with our preparations at the Cape. Tired of being one step behind, it seemed like no matter what we did, the Russians were always one step ahead