Eugene Kranz
Eugene Francis \"Gene\" Kranz (born August 17, 1933) is a retired NASA Flight Director and manager. Kranz served as a Flight Director, the successor to NASA founding Flight Director Chris Kraft, during the Gemini and Apollo programs, and is best known for his role in directing the successful Mission Control team efforts to save the crew of Apollo 13, which later became the subject story of a major motion picture of the same name. As Procedures Officer, Kranz was put in charge of integrating Mercury Control with the Launch Control Team at Cape Canaveral, Florida, writing the \"Go/NoGo\" procedures that allowed missions to continue as planned or be aborted, along with serving as a sort of switchboard operator between the control center at Cape Canaveral and the agency\'s fourteen tracking stations and two tracking ships (via Teletype) located across the globe. Kranz performed this role for all unmanned and manned Mercury flights. After Gemini, he served as a Flight Director on odd-numbered Apollo missions, including Apollos 7 and 9. He was the Flight Director for Apollo 11, during the moment when the Lunar Module Eagle landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969. He and his team, as well as the astronauts received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their heroic roles. During the Apollo 13 mission, Kranz never actually used the phrase \"Failure is not an option,\" which was created for the Ron Howard movie Apollo 13. However, he so liked the way the line reflected the attitude of mission control, that he used it as the title of his 2000 autobiography.
