The tools we used in Mercury were primitive, but the dedication of highly trained people offset the limitations of the equipment available to us in these early days and kept the very real risks under control.
Let’s work the problem, people. Let’s not make things worse by guessing.
I don’t care what anything was designed to do, I care about what it can do.
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.
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.
You can not operate in this room unless you believe that you are Superman, and whatever happens, you’re capable of solving the problem.
There is no achievement without risk.
I think everyone, once in his life, should be given a ticker-tape parade.
Apollo succeeded at critical moments like this because the bosses had no hesitation about assigning crucial tasks to one individual, trusting his judgment, and then getting out of his way.
Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect.
I mentally savored the moment of America’s triumph like a fine wine.
High-risk leadership beckons many, but few accept the call.
Loading new software into new computers and using it for the first time was like playing Russian roulette. It demanded and got a lot of respect.
My controllers, average age now twenty-seven, were asking themselves, “What do you do after you have been to the Moon?” They had come to us at the beginning of Apollo, in their early twenties. Now, with NASA limiting the program to only three more missions, they were taking it the hardest. Mission Control was their portal to the stars; they believed we had taken only that first “giant step for mankind” and could not understand why we were not taking the next leap forward. I knew how they felt.
Although our technical backgrounds were very different, we were both emotional about our work, perpetually optimistic, and gave our people unconditional support.
Leadership is fragile. It is more a matter of mind and heart than resources, and it seemed that we no longer had the heart for those things that demanded discipline, commitment, and risk.
The temperatures range from plus to minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit during the two-week-long lunar days and nights. This heavenly body has never seen an earthling, never felt a footstep. But, as the scientific evidence from Apollo will help confirm, Luna is our geophysical sibling, separated from us in the violent formation of Spaceship Earth.
Tears were coursing down the faces of Kennedy’s moonstruck recruits. John Kennedy had inspired us with his vision. One by one, we left work to grieve in private. The flag was at half-staff in our hearts.
It isn’t equipment that wins the battles; it is the quality and the determination of the people fighting for a cause in which they believe.
President Kennedy made his speech at Rice University that confirmed his commitment. This time I was more attuned to his words. On a makeshift stage erected on the fifty-yard line at Rice Stadium, Kennedy repeated the question that many had raised: “Some have asked, why go to the Moon? One might as well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why sail the widest ocean?