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Posted on Wed, Nov. 18, 2009

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NASA needs a tune-up, former flight director Gene Kranz says

By Dion Lefler

The Wichita Eagle

It took America a decade to go to the moon the first time.

"We could do it in much less than that, five to seven years — if we had the will," said Gene Kranz, a NASA pioneer who led the ground team that guided America's astronauts to the moon and back. "Will is the key. Without will, you're powerless."

Kranz, who spoke to a crowd of about 1,200 on Tuesday at the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce annual meeting and dinner, called the space program "the economic engine of our country."

But, he said it's an engine in need of a tune-up.

The space program of the 1960s and 1970s "unleashed a generation of young Americans to step forward" and "take the hard route" of math, science and engineering.

Today, Americans are "not as innovative as we used to be," Kranz said.

A proposed return to the moon is undergoing re-evaluation and Kranz said he's not sure what will come next when the space shuttles are retired in a few years.

One of his biggest concerns, he said, is that unemployment among technical and science professions is higher than the general unemployment rate of about 10 percent.

"That kind of unemployment in the industries that must be developing the technology of the future, in Kansas, you'd say you were eating your seed corn."

The bulk of Kranz's speech dealt with the mission that made him famous, the ill-fated Apollo 13.

Kranz walked the audience through a detailed narrative of the mission in which three astronauts — James Lovell, John Swigert and Fred Haise — narrowly escaped with their lives after an explosion in an oxygen tank aboard their spacecraft.

In an age of primitive computers, the ground controllers were forced to invent new procedures on the fly to swing the ship around the moon and bring it back before the crew ran out of air, power or fuel.

"They had to do in minutes and hours what normally takes days and weeks," Kranz said. The ground controllers and astronauts "pulled off a miracle when they brought the crew of Apollo 13 home."

Conditions in the ship itself were horrible. The temperature was about 35 degrees and it was so humid that globs of water were floating in the air and clinging to instruments and equipment. The astronauts endured it in light cotton flights suits, Kranz said.

The key to their survival was "the absolute trust between the ground team and the crew," he said.

"Inspiring" was the way many in the audience described the presentation.

Sedgwick County Commissioner Dave Unruh said he was embarrassed to say he hadn't seen the movie "Apollo 13," in which Ed Harris portrays Kranz.

But "to hear him (Kranz) re-create it was informative and riveting. He's a true American hero," Unruh added.

Amber Chatwell, a 29-year-old management analyst at Spirit AeroSystems, noted that Kranz was 37 at the time of Apollo 13 and most of his team was younger.

"It shows you what young people can do when they're trusted," she said.

Reach Dion Lefler at 316-268-6527.