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  • Failure Is Not an Option

  • Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond
  • Written by: Gene Kranz
  • Narrated by: Danny Campbell
  • Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (130 ratings)

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Failure Is Not an Option cover art

Failure Is Not an Option

Written by: Gene Kranz
Narrated by: Danny Campbell
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Publisher's Summary

Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race. He helped to launch Alan Shepard and John Glenn, then assumed the flight director's role in the Gemini program, which he guided to fruition. With his teammates, he accepted the challenge to carry out President John F. Kennedy's commitment to land a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s.

Kranz was flight director for both Apollo 11, the mission in which Neil Armstrong fulfilled President Kennedy's pledge, and Apollo 13. He headed the Tiger Team that had to figure out how to bring the three Apollo 13 astronauts safely back to Earth. (In the film Apollo 13, Kranz was played by the actor Ed Harris, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance.)

In Failure Is Not an Option, Gene Kranz recounts these thrilling historic events and offers new information about the famous flights. What appeared as nearly flawless missions to the moon were, in fact, a series of hair-raising near misses. When the space technology failed, as it sometimes did, the controllers' only recourse was to rely on their skills and those of their teammates. Kranz takes us inside Mission Control and introduces us to some of the whiz kids - still in their twenties, only a few years out of college - who had to figure it all out as they went along, creating a great and daring enterprise. He reveals behind-the-scenes details to demonstrate the leadership, discipline, trust, and teamwork that made the space program a success.

©2009 Gene Kranz (P)2011 Tantor

What the critics say

"Plenty of books (and several films) have already tried to depict the space program's excitement; few of their creators had the first-person experience or the attention to detail Krantz has, whose role as flight control "White" his readers will admire or even wish to emulate." ( Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about Failure Is Not an Option

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Wholly worthwhile...in a peripheral sort of way.

I've always admired Gene Kranz for his level-headedness, and ability to lead a team to success. I was hoping his book would illuminate some of the values and standpoints he maintained in order to achieve this, and he referred to them peripherally. The book is mainly giving credit to the many people who collaborated to make the achievements of mission control possible. Danny Campbell does a pretty good job of reading it; I found I was able to suspend disbelief enough to pretend it was Gene Kranz recounting his own experiences, even though I've seen him in interviews, and knew it's not his voice. I didn't learn a whole lot about Mission Control, or the Gemini and Apollo missions -- these stories have been told aplenty elsewhere. A worthwhile audiobook though; I have no regrets about buying it, and the time I spent listening to it.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great story of the space program

Insightful story of the space program, terrific details about the teams that reached the Moon

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A great book for space nerds or aspiring leaders. Would highly recommend to someone who knows nothing about NASA history or a buff.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Learn about mission control from the greatest

Gene Kranz humbly tells the story of his rise from Air Force pilot to legendary NASA Flight Director. Compared to the novel The Right Stuff which focusses on the bravado of fighter jock/astronauts, Failure Is Not An Option describes how NASA conquered the Moon through the pure grit of mission controllers.

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Amazing

Amazing piece of history. An Incredible story about an even more incredible feat done without any of today's technology

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Space- the Next Frontier

This behind-the-scenes look at the early Space Program is fascinating. I grew up in this era, and built model kits of many of the space capsules. Nevertheless, there is still much I didn't know about the missions.

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    3 out of 5 stars

Krantz's memoir about his career at NASA

Anyone who's ever watched Apollo 13 will be familiar with Flight Director Gene Krantz. Here he recounts (ably narrated by Danny Campbell) how he came to join NASA before rising to the rank of Flight Director.

Krantz is an excellent storyteller, easily portraying not just American culture of the 1950s through to the 70s; but also the politicians, scientists and astronauts who populated NASA itself.

While his stories of the last Apollo missions drags at times, his memories of his earlier years at NASA gave me a renewed appreciation for just how amazing the space program has been. So much of early spaceflight was educated guesses and improvisation. So much of the science that came out of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions was a new frontier for humanity.

Krantz's autobiography pays tribute to so many of the brilliant and dedicated people behind the astronauts. As for the astronauts themselves, Krantz shows that they weren't just stick jockeys, but intelligent and capable experts who worked hand in hand with the scientists at NASA.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Great technical Mercury-Gemini-Apollo timeline book

I can’t think of a better person to give us the full perspective on all the missions that put Americans to space. He remembers every mission with vivid detail. If you think this book is only about Apollo 13, it’s not. But of the early start of Mercury all the way to Apollo 17. Written in a beautiful technical way that made an engineer shed tears.

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12-0-2 not 1-2-0-2 :D

A great book, though surprised the program code pronunciation wasn't corrected - quite a minor gripe :)

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Fascinating memoir; slow towards the end

Wanted to love this book. The period it covers and the historical events it describes are truly fascinating, and as an insider’s tale it is genuinely interesting at many points. Unfortunately I found it hard to stay engaged throughout, particularly towards the end once the sections on the more famous missions (Apollo 11 and 13) were concluded.

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