Gene Kranz

“Three decades ago, in a top story of the century, Americans placed six flags on the Moon. Today we no longer try for new and bold space achievements; instead, we celebrate the anniversaries of the past.”

“I did everything by the numbers. I had checklists upon checklists. If I wasn't ahead of everybody on my team, I didn't feel I was doing my job.”

“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.”

“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”

“In particular, with my control team, I demanded the responsibilities to do all of the mission preparation, mission design, the writing of the procedures, the development of the handbooks.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I was working as a flight director on the Gemini IX mission, and it seemed almost overnight I was picking up the responsibilities for the Apollo Program.”

“Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect.”

“On the first flight test of any spacecraft, you're going to find surprises.”

“I was the most emotional of the flight directors. Space really got me all honked up.”