Thread by @adamdavidlong

1/ I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of legendary NASA flight director Chris Kraft houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

2/ "More than any other person, Kraft was responsible for shaping the organization and culture of NASA's Mission Control." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph….

3/ One of Kraft's most important contributions to crewed spaceflight would be his origination of the concept of a Mission Control Center. Many of the engineers in Project Mercury had previously worked on the flight test of aircraft, where the role for ground support was minimal.

4/ However, Kraft soon realized that an astronaut could only do so much, particularly during the fast-moving launch phase; the Mercury spacecraft would require real time monitoring and support from specialist engineers.

5/ "I saw a team of highly skilled engineers, each one an expert on a different piece of the Mercury capsule. We'd have a flow of accurate telemetry data so the experts could monitor their systems, see and even predict problems, and pass along instructions to the astronaut."

6/ His memoir "Flight: My Life in Mission Control" is one of my favorite books on building a team to take on a huge project.

7/ They started planning by listing all the questions they could think of. Then talking to every expert they could find "It wasn't exactly like going hat in hand. But there were going to be moments in those early days when we'd have to talk little and listen a lot"

8/ Kraft was relentless about creating and documenting procedures for everything: "Just to my left, we put a console called Procedures... We would write down every procedure for every console, and he'd be responsible for making sure that everybody followed them...

9/ Procedures became my alter ego, almost an assistant flight director. He kept us on track and it was no small job."

10/ On using simulations to train the whole team: "It was crude but we learned lessons immediately. Discipline was the most important. We learned quickly to keep everyone informed, to update the entire remote network on mission status, problems, and timing.

11/ A controller who knew that a problem was coming his way in fifteen or thirty minutes wouldn't be surprised when it popped up over the horizon."

12/ On learning from mistakes in training: "My philosophy was simple: better to learn from our mistakes in training than from mistakes during a real space flight. We ran the full mission dozens of times a day, with variations mixed in to get us ready for failure of every kind.

13/ At least, that's what we thought. The one failure we weren't ready for was the unknown unknown."

14/ "We bare our souls in these [training] sessions, I said "when we make a mistake or see a mistake, we call it out. It's how we learn.""

15/ Do you know the answers in advance?" [Astronaut Alan Sheppard] asked me after one particularly sweaty session.
"No. The [Simulation Supervisor] offered them to me once," I said. "He thought I'd be embarrassed if I screwed up. Do I look embarrassed?"

16/ "Nope, and you screwed up on that last call.”
That's how I learn. I don't want it to happen when you're up there."

17/ At @NASA the Flight Director is addressed as "Flight". Rest in Peace, Flight, and God Speed. Thank you for your service, Mr. Kraft.

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