Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write "Tough and Competent" on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.

Gene Kranz

Categorized in : Writing White Safety

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.

skills responsibility mean

Failiure is not an option. by Gene Kranz

Failiure is not an option.

failure success motivational

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

best-effort errors attitude

I don't care what anything was designed to do, I care about what... by Gene Kranz

I don't care what anything was designed to do, I care about what it can do.

apollo care can-do

There is no such thing as good enough. You, your team, and your equipment must be the best. That is how you will win victories.

victory team winning

You can not operate in this room unless you believe that you are Superman, and whatever happens, you're capable of solving the problem.

problem believe rooms

We've never lost an American in space, we're sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option.

hell space watches

We had risen to probably one of the greatest challenges in history, put a man on the moon in the decade. We'd created incredible technologies. But what was most important, we'd created the teams, what I call the human factor. People who were energized by a mission.

technology team moon

There is no achievement without risk. by Gene Kranz

There is no achievement without risk.

achievement risk

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily.

safety design should-have

Failure is not an option! by Gene Kranz

Failure is not an option!

failure-is-not-an-option failure space

I think everyone, once in his life, should be given a ticker-tape... by Gene Kranz

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

parades tape thinking

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.

future love life knowledge

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.

gemini director mission flight

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.

control preparation team writing

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.

high mission service fashion

On the first flight test of any spacecraft, you're going to find... by Gene Kranz

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

surprises test find you

I was the most emotional of the flight directors. Space really go... by Gene Kranz

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

me flight emotional space

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

just next risk space

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.

cool you smart way