NASA flight director Gene Kranz talks about landing men on the moon

mr. Krantz thank you thank you thank you thank you I'm curious right off the bat what's it like for you to be back in in this room anytime you're in here what what goes through your mind do you go back to to those Apollo missions no it's it's almost like I've never left I got in here frequently after retirement I was talked to the co-op's and the interns and all that kind of stuff various VIPs that would come along run it on the line but it really didn't look like it wasn't Mission Control to me basically it was configured for the shuttle program and then it was abandoned for a while parts were missing from the consoles abort switches for some reason or other all three of them were put down in the flight dynamics thing so basically it was it was just sort of a hybrid that did not make sense the room layout was still basically the same but it wasn't home basically I grew up in here from the very beginning when we built Mission Control and that is we went through the Gemini program we had consoles we didn't have as many TVs a lot of meters in here but basically as time moved on to moved into what I'd say more or less the what you would consider the modern in a modern age and the major change started to come about in the room here about the mid period in the Gemini program and it was now configured as it is today with one exception our experience in the early Apollo indicated that we had to have a central communications position within the room prior to that time actually the 11 people were handling limb communication command service mother were heading cancer's my top communications this room here has been home I spent my entire life here from a standpoint of 1962 to 63 was fabricated all the way through 1994 so as we're coming up obviously on this huge 50-year anniversary of that Apollo 11 mission how often I'm curious do you find yourself going back and thinking about that mission yet it has been almost constant now I did a program at the Smithsonian for the flight jacket night and this was very enjoyable for me because I've been sort of frustrated that they never did a good movie showing Mission Control during the landing it's always the crew in the final three minutes and I said well but we had to get him to that final three minutes down it was a battle we had problems with communication with probably navigation computer program alarms etc so basically when we were doing the restoration here they found a DVD containing some sixteen millimeter film that was shot by a photographer by the name of bird and I looked at as I forgot that's Mission Control during the landing but it was you know sixteen millimeter a hundred foot was roughly about three minutes of film so everybody took snippets and if the cameraman didn't know what he is looking for you had this and then there it's certainly kids when they get their first television camera down there where they drowned that they're all over the place well this is the stuff so I had to I looked at it said you know I got to speak up the Smithsonian and I'm gonna talk about Apollo 11 I am going to turn this into a film it turned out to be 12 minutes long and I'm going to narrate this based on my log the crews report post mission report they air ground voice transcripts that we have there and it was really a lot of fun to try to piece things together that had never been tied together the bringing the post mission report into what was happening in the mission gave me a sort of visibility and why Neil Armstrong was doing some of the things he was doing this also gave me a greater insight in the concerns onboard the spacecraft are relative to the program alarm so this was a very enjoyable time so I have lived the Apollo 11 mission in detail since the last late last summer I'm enjoying the Dickens out of it because I'm revising it now and I'm going to I'm talking up at the up in Denver for events up there up at Perdue I got one down in Galveston we're going to do today is constantly reliving it in a way yes yes well basically I don't really when I walk into the room I don't have to relive it as soon as I walk into this room this is this seems crazy but I hear things I can hear John Doe I wouldn't say I don't know where I was but he didn't either at each other when I see that guy I got to tell him what I thought about him I can hear John uhrin called flight have the crew go I see II talks so I can hear things events the one thing that is different right now is I don't smell the pizza I don't smell the cigars and cigarettes anymore they've cleaned this up in fact they cleaned it up so much that when they're doing the room restoration they have the return air ducts down there where as black as this suit here from nicotine toss star but now even that's clean so I don't feel it's quite right yet we still got a mess that the return air duct up I've spent some time on that recently again it's looking back you know at the time President Kennedy made that speech for the previous four years but Nick had been orbiting overhead one year prior to that speech Yuri Gagarin had been placed in orbit and mercury control we had just blown up our second Atlas rocket we turned around in a week later lost Alan Shepard and then we got the John Kennedy speech and sit down say what a confluence of events here he that man here had been under in must be done under intense political pressures basically he had really address the nation and get this nation moving again and I think it was ready it was waiting for a call like this I think the sixties early sixties was a marvelous time because people were not watching television they were out marching for their beliefs civil rights movement basically had the the freedom core that you had the US core they had in there they had they had the let me I'm losing my track of mind here the things people were marching in a civil rights movement was going basically the environmental movement on they had the protest you had beginning in the fron foreign against Vietnam you had the space program all these things were going on and people were involved in them I mean I think I think America was more involved at that time other than any other time in history other than during wartime so it was say I think it was a great time for America and Kennedy speech I think ignited the fire let's go do it it motivated people like you to take on the challenge right and it wasn't it I mean it was did you think it was crazy that that level of while I was already working on the space program at that time but it was it was sort of like to you that's nice but it's time we get John Glenn in orbit let's concentrate just go ahead on Glenn right now let's worry about the moon let somebody else worry about that I think the that was a great challenge and it took a while to sink in now you don't get to Apollo 11 without of course Apollo 1 and I've heard you talk about the significance of what happened there as well in terms of losing man could you talk about how that is something you carried with you Apollo uh one was it was interesting we had just finished the Gemini program and basically they had the first three flight directors for Apollo 1 or John Hodge myself and Chris Kraft and John came off after the germinate mission he started working Apollo I came after or Gemini 9 Chris was starting working in Gemini 76 but basically we had less than about six months to turn around to get ready and basically I was basically a hard pressed to be prepared my and I had worked the final Gemini missions and at times why we were flying Gemini the flight controllers in the console that will work in there we're actually doing their schematics and mission rules and flight plan stuff so I said gee are we giving the right attention to the mission that's in place but this was the nature of the workload at the time we were transitioning from Gemini to Apollo I was the flight director on console for the plugs out test and this was basically a dress rehearsal of the turn Allah countdown right up to the point where you transfer from external tards internal power in the spacecraft and we had had an enormous amount of communications poems in there and it took basically this was a test that should have taken roughly about six hours and it was virtually a day long and I finished that test with sort of that most of the comm problems so I elected to turn around and provide support the next day's test and get the power up get everything working and then hand over to Chris Kraft and I hand it over around noontime there and basically I went back to the office took a look at the work that had to be done and then basically I was going to take my wife out we hadn't been out for a long period of time we had five kids at that time and basically I wanted a break I needed a break at about the time we were getting dressed I heard the pounding of the door and neighbor came over and said Jeannie was he worked in the space program he's one of the lunar module guys you know and said they had an accident and they think the crews did and boy that all he said is when I heard that were dead I got rolling and at the time I arrived here in Mission Control the place was locked up I couldn't get in and fortunately I knew where the doors were for all the forces were that basically brought in the heavy equipments and all that kind of stuff all the equipment they had to move in Mission Control so I came in through there and got in upstairs and when I walked in it was obvious that we had lost somebody and it was the impact these these are young kids sitting the consoles and they had never gone through an experience like this before Hodge had he was working in flight test I had lived and worked in flight test and flow and aircraft in Korea so he lived with this so it was a question of how do we get these these people going again and everybody hung around playing back the data trying to get the answers and find out what happened to why it happened there was an embargo and the phone calls going out at that time and finally Chris just gave the call okay everybody pack it up it's time to go home we went out to a Wiest have a bar the watering hole called the singing wheel which is on highway three and we went all over the singing wheel and the proprietor there moved all all the people out basically it was myself and my controllers and late at night the wife started showing up to take their people home and it was a time of I won't say reflection but a time that says somehow or other we got to get going and get back on track and we got to get these kids convinced that this type of an accident is the price of progress if we want to go to the moon we had expected to lose people somewhere in flight we had never done it before it happened to the launch pad they faced it but basically it is up to us to get together get this program working again and three days later that was two days later which is Monday John Hodge it was the division chief at that time basically reported and what was happening and Sam Phillips said established a committee to investigate the accident they sort of went through the responsibilities there and then I finished and I had worked in flight tests I had a cartoonish kind of card in there that showed an airplane that crashed in a into a tree and it says aviation unlike the sea is terribly unforgiving of carelessness incapacity or neglect and I used those words now to start a discussion with my people and basically it was up to the point of saying we all have to accept responsibility for this accident it wasn't just Mission Control wasn't the Cape it wasn't the crew that none of us said stop halt time to regroup get everything settled down fix things and then get on with it and that's when I finished and finished left two words with them tough and confident you'll write those near blackboards and you'll not erase them until we've completed the Apollo program did that loss help you get to the moon I think the loss was was like many things in life it was for kissing event it hardness at tempered us basically it focused us more on good enough isn't good enough it has to be perfect and I think this was the characteristic we had tough meeting there forever accountable for what we do or what we fails to do competent or whatever again taking a hang for credit we'll never stop learning from now on the teams and Mission Control will be perfect and that was the name perfect no ambiguities absolutely the best we could do can you take me back to the morning of the launch for Apollo 11 what was going through your mind as flight director what was going on in here if Charles worth was a flight direct I am that was a free day for me because base buy is going to replace cliff after he had gotten the crew on their friends translunar journey so I was basically sitting there over in the shelter don't say you always want to be around and I'd launched a few of these guys before and that's a that's a unique time it's a time of intense focusing because everything and launch day has to go perfect and the one thing that is really a question is Mission Control ready to go and we got all kinds of mission rules let's say you can heed this you need that running on the line but we also know that once you get that is worried about this when I get down into the final count where they're on a sequence and now all these bells are opening and closing engine starting right on down the line I would never call a halt during their I would whatever the problem was I would say we'll live with it once we'll get them up in orbit then we'll work whatever problem we got the majority of the times we scrub would be for grand system problem problems and Mission Control but basically it's it's a question the heartbeat heart starts to pumping a little bit and your medley going through all of the things that this flight director is going to have to do and you just praying that we get through this first stage it because first stage you're going vertical that's when you want to clear through what we call max - max dynamic pressure you want to get through that as far as rapidly as possible and then you tin over and then start going so now you're accelerating accelerating accelerating down and you can almost feel it down at the Cape when we lost an Atlas we could feel it in mercury control here we don't have that feel but you can see this thunderous I cheated I'd sit back there and was I could look at crafts TV or TV that was up in the viewing room there we didn't have it in Mission Control did you believe in that moment that that launch would be the one that would end up on the moon that was a flight director that was cliffs job okay from my standpoint my job was landing okay and everybody asks question did I ever believe yes I believed 100% that we're going to be successful we're gonna land that crew on the moon and this is true whether it be Apollo 11 13 whatever I had because as flight director the relationship I must have with the crew is one that says he is never going to let me go I'm going to come home that guy is gonna be there and I say this sort of like a heart surgeon only that's not as God has just pulled open and it's looking into the surgeons eye and what does he want seeing surgeon I'm going to get this guy through this I'm gonna get this guy through this operation he's gonna be healthy so it's really a question of this kind of intense belief and you I have to have it and I have to be able to communicate it to my team so that they expect to be a hundred percent successful from my standpoint my job is to be cooler than cool sharper than sharp ready to go and I think this was a modus operandi I had developed most of the fighter-pilot back in flight test so basically I was never not up to speed I was ready to go and a lot of times my controllers when I was in the office they thought we'd always start workday at least a half hour ahead of time and they'd hear the Stars and Stripes forever played over their loudspeakers in their office so I knew I was ready to go and expected them to be ready to go so take me inside this room on July 20th 1969 what was it like in here the timeframe was he came in and we started we are all arrived here early dawn and I remember coming up to the console here and talking to Glenn Lonnie and basically we had we'd skipped a shift so we had a almost three shifts worth of reading to do for the login the handover and Glenn looks at me and he says it's all peanuts so I knew that okay this is I thought I went to the back room checked out with the engineers they didn't have any squats in there the one thing that was abnormal is he developed a flight director develops a relationship with the simulation supervisor and my sim soup was the coos and he was not here and that was strange all of his team was here but he wasn't here later I found out he was an auto accident but basically I come into the room now a complete hand over and now it's by the numbers the one thing that this was particularly true this day was that we're running by the clock and it's sort of like I visioned myself almost as a quarterback and and the redzone dan they're calling the signals 20 yards out this thing and all we need is get a touchdown score and we're the winner so that's basically the relationship that you have to have with the clock everybody else is working the same thing so we can go through the procedures of having the crew enter in the lunar mouths the crew headers of the lunar module and then the computer onboard the spacecraft is not too smart basically it's a 64k machine 16k erasable and we have to tell the computer where the spacecraft is and where we want it to go and if it gets those two sets of information it can figure out how to get from point A to point B but the problem is as we load this computer now we may go down and the current revelation and we're on or I may wave off about a second so we got two sets the data we got there so now we've got two sets of the abort data if we get in there so all of a sudden all this information has to go up so it's the information that's passed up to the crew by ground command and then by verbal is incredible so we spent an entire revenue is now we've undock we give the go for undocking separation the spacecraft separates come around the front side and this is gonna be our last look at it until it comes around already go to the room and we have to now make sure that we're ready for a maneuver we call it the descent orbit injection right now we're in an orbit that's roughly about 50 miles how the DISA an orbit injection is going to bring us down to fifty thousand feet where we will start the descent so again we have to make sure everything's go there go through that pass it up to the crew and now once the spacecraft goes behind the moon we've got a brief period of roughly about 25 minutes where we can take a break smoke break go to the restrooms come on back into Mission Control and I have to talk to my people and it's just a question of saying we were made for this day basically we'll remember what we're doing here always and I went on for some more words then I finished up I will stand behind every decision you will make we came into this room as a team and we will leave as a team then I say ground control go to battle short this is time when you really said about he goes and locks the control room doors and nobody can come in or out until we have either landed we have crashed or we have boarded those are the only three outcomes from now on and is now between me and my team and the crew and the spacecraft they are the only people that exist in the universe all the politicians are viewing room the bosses and the rows behind me they don't count anymore it's just me and the team and the crew and it gets say you develop a a routine a relationship that is I think very unique in those days because Neil knows I'm gonna give my best I know he's gonna give his best so together we are going to make this the first man lunar landing and just facial I'm sorry to interrupt could you feel nervous with their nerves in the room could you feel that your people know what happens it's interesting you got the communications panel in here I would listen to my Mikey I call on my kids and my pups I would listen to their pull up their loops in there I could listen to them talking to the backroom people I could sort of get a pulse check on him so I could check every group in here and say hey they're cool they're ready to go right on down the line but now a sudden the spacecraft cracks the hill yeah no we got communications with command mantra now we got communication with lure mods if things are going and my flight plan are sitting right next to me this is either right on the time line there so I know things are going not all the communication to go to crap we can't hear anything we can't hear the crew we can't give them the information they need we have to voice instructions up through Mike Collins and the command Model T voices at the end of the crew so all of a sudden things that were very easy to do with direct communication are now becoming really very laborious and we all of a sudden get a break from you in a case we look at everything's looking good right on the communications again now the question is I have a mission role that I have to basically implement do I have enough in nation to continue because if we'd crash or lose the spacecraft we got to know what happened and why and it's my judgment so I'm saying yep I got enough data let's continue the next thing and finally get to the point where I give them the go for powered descent and as soon as I give them the go for power descent we lose communications again and now we're running right up to the point I've give them the go the engines gonna start are we gonna have the data when the engine starts comes in briefly and then we lose again this continues all the way through about the first five minutes of the descent I'm just praying because if we don't have enough communications I'm gonna have to abort this mission at five minutes after we started decent all of a sudden starts clearing up so things are getting better now we hear the crew report hey they they were belly-up when they're comin across before we started down they were feet forward looking down the surface there shaking their landmarks and they report to us that they're gonna land along well this our trajectory confirms us also we don't know why they're landing long but basically this is a deviation and the trajectory that we hadn't expected flight dynamics officer says he's going to keep watching what's going on down there etc so now the reports coming in they're pretty good but again the communications craps out so now we're getting ready and I got to make serious communication decisions which is to continue the decent communication comes back again to make the decision to continue the descent about this time we're now looking for landing radar data which is very critical because the information the crew is going this is all being done automatically by the computer on where the spacecraft the information they're actually traversing down there is based on altitude data that we've given them on the spacecraft and this has got to be right if you can land the moon you got to know where the moon is within a couple thousand feet so we're waiting for that radar data to come in and just as it comes in we have a computer program alarm it's at the 1201 501 so I have a basically the crew says 1201 then there's a pause they say could you give us a read on that and Capcom reports could we give them a read about that time bales has checked with his back room and he says yeah we're going that alarm as long as it doesn't recur so now we now focus back on the landing radar we get the radar data and it's within a threshold that is acceptable to incorporate into the computer that's it we're outside this threshold that's an abort case right off the bat because the computer national where it is and it cannot digest a large amount of erroneous data because we found out in training it would just turn upside down and drive straight to the surface to solve the problem anyway so our working computer program alarms right are not in the line communications now are very good and basically its we're now tracking everything that's going on we're cutting down the altitude altitude rate right on the line until we get into the third phase of the descent the first one is a braking phase and then basically there is one basically is establishing the position for the final descent where we will stop flying automatically and the crew will take over and go manual by this time however the crew should have looked and looked at their lot through the landing site but basically the Armstrong was so disturbed by the distracted is better word by the program alarms and he's a pilot and pilots if you have problems the first ground rollers fly the airplane and that's exactly what he is doing he is watching that navigation guidance system and how it's performing like a hawk down there every step of the way so he finally get to the point where you give the crew the go for landing from now on it's up to the crew Mission Control is sort of out of the picture with exception of one thing how many times have you driven with your gas gauge in your car reading empty you always watched few times a few times well that's exactly what's happened to the crew now because this tank is cylindrical with a rounded bottom in there and the measuring gauge stops what it ends up the cylindrical portion it's what we call a low level so the crew calls out low level we confirm go low level so now we have 120 seconds of fuel at a 30 percent throttle setting okay now the crews getting relatively low down he's down around a thousand feet and he's now looking to where is he gonna land and he sees that if he's got a big crater out there and he has to make a decision he's gonna land in front of the crater or he's gonna overfly the crater makes that decision to overfly the crater because he doesn't know how far he's got to get back and what's behind him so you want to always know look and see what's at there for landing they're running out of gas so basically yeah there's a basically he's now he's going to overfly the crater and now an interesting tank thing happens in there this is something we didn't expect and the crews Armstrong is very good at this thing here the surface dust is now flowing in the same direction he's moving so he doesn't know he's moving yet tell whether he's moving right left straight a hook so he has to pick out solid objects like rocks that are blowing around and this is what he's now using as reference for motion at the meantime Buzz Aldrin is calling these things down and now we've had this low level it's now a hundred and twenty seconds past two minutes Bethel level so he started counting down time 60 seconds 45 seconds 30 seconds and about the time we say fifth we recognize the crew has just landed and it's interesting the crews going through engine shutdown and basically the control team is real cool in this but the people in the viewing room recognize we land and they're staffing and Clausing and they're stomping their feet right on down the line and this makes me pretty angry so I call out my controller okay everybody settle down stand by 41 state I'll say because what we got to do is make sure it is safe to remain in the surface so basically we basically keep quiet for two minutes then I do this they go stay a decision it's stay we push that up to the crew we then go for another six minutes eight minutes we go through a stay no stay decision making sure the spacecraft's are still safe pass that up to crew and then we go for the next hour so but Wendy says oh we race we celebrated two hours after the landing that was when we'd handed over to the team and Mission Control and we had actually two teams of Mission Control because there was the surgeons felt that the crew might want to sleep if they get down on the surface we never believed that was gonna be the case so I had a team that pick up a slip shift sleep shift I got the Cliff's Charlesworth team and I was gonna do the EBA so when when he'd celebrated after two hours well what was it like in here I you told me they were celebrating back there they say they're celebrating here basically we we just backed off from the castle I had to go to a press conference and I always took some of my guys with me to the press conference just to show him off but basically when we came back it was walking back from the media it was one of the motels we used as press conference out there that basically I really finally looked up and could see the moon up there you can see the other thing up there and say hey we just landed man that's pretty cool but basically it was it was to the point where all we wanted to do is get back in and find out what the heck's going on I mean that this was this was a unique time and the team was absolutely sharp crisp if you want to hear of a better version of this thing here go online to the Smithsonian site look at flight jacket night and you can see my home movie there and that I'm narrating their works really worked out like a champ turned out to be a lot of fun I've heard you say that you wish you could go back to that day yes I wish I could and you've said that you wish you could go back because you want to enjoy it more because I would like to celebrate at the instant landing when the rest of the world is celebrating that thing and the crew is celebrating and they're backed off but basically we're all tied in to this this business of very professional very capable on top of the job you see you know it's interesting that in Mission Control watching people work under stress is like watching grass grow you just who could never tell that there's a problem was there any cheering in here at any point clapping anything there there are a couple we had a lot of guests who sitting back if be behind me I had I mean to my left I had a built-in deled bill Tyndall was to me one of the real heroes of the Apollo program we should have named a crater after him in there because he did he basically came up basically brokered all the relationships between us and the crew and between technical community and how we're going to use the computer how far we're gonna press when we're going to call it a halt right and on the line Tyndall was did what they call the there's a book of his memos that are bet that he couldn't he could sit there listen to an argument nobody agree he would write a memo on make everybody laugh and all of a sudden everybody agreed he had found the answer but anyway I had built Tyndall here and I had two other flight directors cliff Charlesworth and Glen alighting fifty fifty years later now what do you think that day that accomplishment for you personally for NASA for our country what can we take from it fifty years later I think I think there's several things let me let me take the last one first what what I think is best for America I think that it established you know look at the complexity of this program the hundreds of thousands of people working it the difficulties we head through the Apollo one fire through some of the testing right and on the line but all of a sudden these group of people kept working at the job and made things happen and to me it's a question what America will dare America can do and I think really it's establishing a framework nationally they say there's some tough things out here what we gotta do is we give you and all the people marching in the same direction and what you need for that is you need top-level leadership in a need leadership at many levels below that you got to tie together the scientific the engineering the academic communities gotta tell the politicians you got to get the White House together everybody has to move in the same direction and that is I think what Kennedy was able to do that was a marvelous time to leave so I think that the key thing is it gives a good example of what can be done and the benefits from doing it you know you take a look at everybody so it'll cost basically what was it worth we won the Cold War okay basically we won the war in space because we were fighting a war I was a fighter pilot over in Korea and I saw a Russian aircraft basically we won that basically we set up an academic base we basically revitalized our academic institutions the colleges universities technology that came out people started believing in themselves and what they can do so I think it was what was benefit for myself personally it was just the pride in building a team that could do what most people thought impossible so what do you see the next step for us well there are several things I think I think going back to the moon is the obvious one because I'm a camper and when you go camping you get out there the first time you said god I wish I had brought that you brought a lot of the wrong stuff that you didn't bring some of the stuff you should have had and going to the moon is going to be like that only this time if you're gonna go to the moon you're gonna be there to stay so you got to start bringing the right stuff the first time out now we've got a good background in that we've got a good background in space so I think that is the first thing was to get to some place where we can build this Enclave and start building the systems I think the space station is good from one thing because we found that we can assemble things that haven't been assembled here on earth cad/cam capabilities are great I think the communications the ability to tie together laptop computers all over that station is great so I think there's a lot of the things we got going for us what we got to do is decide to go I think it'll be an international program but it should be a freedom-loving countries that we should pull together under this mantra because there are some good ones out there you get India out there you got basically all the freedom-loving countries of the world we got all the European countries we got Japan these are the the people that basically can benefit economically from this because when you try to do difficult things you must have you invent new technologies the space stations got long-lived systems I find it hard to believe that some of these bearings further driving the rotating of solar arrays to follow the beta angle with the Sun they've been operating up there for years well basically you want to go to the moon you're going to be there for a long time also but you're gonna have to basically manage your resources better you're gonna have to recycle recycle virtually everything we're gonna have to compact so basically I think that the opportunity for economic benefit is very great what is needed is leadership it has to exist at all levels it has to exist within basically our nation and we have to build a plan there's all kinds of plans I've seen half a dozen plans that have come out of headquarters out of various presidents down there starting at Reagan and then through the bush and then through basically Dan Goldin there's all buddies got a plan but basically what I want to do is put some money into that plan and put some leadership in there and make that plan happen two more quick questions for you I've heard you say in a documentary that people people could not operate here in Mission Control unless they were Superman and they could believe that they could solve any problem at any given moment could you talk about what you meant by that obviously with the enormous challenges you guys were facing here the key thing here in Mission Control is building leaders and leaders that are willing to step up and accept great challenges to this they have to first of all believe in themselves they have to communicate this to a group of people and they have to build a team because anything that's gonna happen nowadays is going to be done on a team basis it's too complex too fast-moving technology cost too much rather than the line say you got to do it you got to do it right the first time so I think that this business of establishing the belief in yourself that you can do these virtually impossible things and you have to convince your team that you can do it and they have to convince the people the other side this is conviction that goes as deep as America's deep you has to go from here at America's industry up to the insert a tional institutions out to the financers people are going to put it we need to get the conference everybody has to sign up for this we can do the impossible what do you feel in your heart when you step outside on any given night and that was I had probs there because my son was a football player we got five daughters in there and basically they'd be a cheerleader and ban and all that and I was more interested in watching the moon and looking we just landed up there it just couldn't wait for a full moon to come along there to me it's out there and that basically says I'm still here come and get me you know it's the kind of stuff you just have to develop the mental capacity to say we got a lot of problems here on earth we got to solve them we got financing problems we got to solve them but we can also sign up for doing big things I compare this the next journey to the moon is building the Panama Canal Panama Canal they had problems down there the medical problems were they had malaria people were infested the place would flood they had to build huge cans dams up there to hold the water back we're doing this but they build it and think about what would go be going on if we couldn't Traverse from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back without that canal there so I think it's it's a question of sign up to do the impossible people consider you a hero I'm sure you've heard that an American Hero do you think no I'm not my team is I always I always think about my team my team was I was nothing without a team I've always worked as a team all my life my organization you know the culture the organization was achievement through excellence we had to have that all I could do is convince the team they were as good as I thought they were thank you so much mr. Krantz I appreciate it have a good one thank you

Channel: KHOU 11

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Id: qBC3izQGM6g

Length: 42min 29sec (2549 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 03 2019