Quotes from Gene Kranz

Although our technical backgrounds were very different, we were both emotional about our work, perpetually optimistic, and gave our people unconditional support.

Leadership is fragile. It is more a matter of mind and heart than resources, and it seemed that we no longer had the heart for those things that demanded discipline, commitment, and risk.

President Kennedy made his speech at Rice University that confirmed his commitment. This time I was more attuned to his words. On a makeshift stage erected on the fifty-yard line at Rice Stadium, Kennedy repeated the question that many had raised: "Some have asked, why go to the Moon? One might as well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why sail the widest ocean?

The temperatures range from plus to minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit during the two-week-long lunar days and nights. This heavenly body has never seen an earthling, never felt a footstep. But, as the scientific evidence from Apollo will help confirm, Luna is our geophysical sibling, separated from us in the violent formation of Spaceship Earth.

always hire people who are smarter and better than you are and learn with them.

Unlike so many "reporters" today, they knew the difference between objective reporting of news and hyping things up to entertain the audience—and bump up their ratings.)

When reporters asked Shepard what he thought about as he sat atop the Redstone rocket, waiting for liftoff, he had replied, "The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder." It was a funny crack, but with an edge. In marked contrast to the tiny Mercury capsule, Apollo was, in spaceflight terms, practically a luxury liner.

Coffee was the substance that kept us going. Our surgeons had offered us something stronger, but we were all concerned about our performance deteriorating when the stimulants wore off.

I find myself crying unabashedly, then I try to suck it in, realizing this is inappropriate.

From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: 'Tough and Competent.' Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. "Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect.

We've learned a lot by building the International Space Station, the good, the bad. But, the fact is is that working together as a team, unity aboard that space station, we can accomplish great things.

There's an awful lot of future out there, and what you got to do, is you go to out and grab it, wrestle it to the ground, accept the challenges, and then decide. You've got the skills. You've got the knowledge. You've got the love, and you're capable of moving forward and making a great life yourself.

Unfortunately as the result of the shutdown of the shuttle program, we lost an entire generation of people experience and capable of making risk judgment.

No way can you ever, ever, ever evidence confusion, concern, lack of understanding. You have to be in charge. You are the guy. You have to be cooler than cool, smarter than smart.

I think everyone, once in his life, should be given a ticker-tape parade. The

How long the flight took on one of those old prop aircraft on any given day depended on the size of the bugs that hit the windshield and slowed it down.

While we often moved to different cadences, our nation was alive with ideals. We were in motion. Violence was everywhere but so was a conviction that we must somehow make this a better world.

Probability said that someday we would run out of luck—as

I had seen of Gus and the astronauts indicated that they had the "right stuff.

Let's work the problem, people. Let's not make things worse by guessing.

If you didn't like somebody, you just let 'em know it, and hopefully that would square 'em away. Not only would they critique me, get on my case, but basically it was that kind of relationship. It was always a learning, team-building relationship.

I just felt that space was the next thing coming in aviation. It was higher, faster. It had the risk.

The C Mission was the first command and service module. The D Mission was the first mission involving a lunar module in a manned fashion and the command module, and the E would take this lunar module and the command module into a very high elliptical orbit, about 4,000-mile-high orbit.

To recognize that the greatest error is not to have tried and failed, but that in trying, we did not give it our best effort