Book Review: Failure is Not an Option by Gene Kranz

Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond by Gene Kranz

Gene Kranz was a NASA flight director in the early days of the manned space missions. He coordinated the efforts of the designers, engineers, and astronauts before, during, and after launches. The most dramatic missions he led were Apollo 11 (the landing on the moon) and Apollo 13 (the failed mission shown in the movie of the same name (Ed Harris played Kranz)). A lot of the other missions are also exciting. Kranz's narrative goes to the end of the Apollo program in the early 1970s, with a little bit of discussion of the shuttle program. The book was written in 2000, quite a few years after he retired and after the Harris film (which was released in 1995).

Kranz has a lot of insights into the workings of NASA, especially the relationships between Mission Control and the astronauts. He touches on the political side of the job very rarely--he did not deal with the Federal bureaucracy. He did deal with the press, having briefings often during flights. The press in the 1960s was highly sympathetic to the space program, being more cooperative and less muckraking than in later years. The main focus of the book is on the men and the tricky situations that arose. I enjoyed the backroom stories but the overall narrative is a little flat. Kranz does not have a consistent focus and is not a natural storyteller. The book is more of a chronicle of what happened than the story of an era. The events are so dramatic and impactful that his lack of storytelling and finesse is easy to overlook.

Mildly recommended.

Geocaching December 2023

The month of December started with a find in the heart of Baltimore. In front of Penn Station (yes, Baltimore has one too!) is a statue named Male/Female. A virtual cache named Intersection references the statue. I sent off an answer based on information from the statue's base to get credit for the find. The statue is quite controversial since it is a bit underwhelming and doesn't fit with the classier look of the train station. At fifty-one feet tall it is hard to miss and it is an unfortunate first impression for people who come to town by train.

Me and GZ

I found two caches in the fog one day, Welcome to Blandair Park and Romantykes1. The fog helped provide cover for caching, especially since the park's soccer fields were in full use on a Saturday.

Blandair Park

Nearby lake

The fog didn't let up the next day but I continued on with Heaven Cache and an Adventure Lab that doesn't have its own web link.

Fog on Lake Kittamaqundi

I found a multicache that required me not to take a picture, We Haven't Looked Everywhere Yet. It's based on Gary Larsen's comics, so a lot of fun.

The oddly-named Black Athletes on Cereal Boxes... does indeed have a display of Wheaties covers on the outside. Nearby I also found Red, Blue and..., which was out in the open so I hid it a little better.

OK, the images are on the inside but they are still visible outside.

On my 99th day of caching I found The Up High Cache... in a MARC parking lot. It was in the far end of the lot, so no cars around but mine.

On the 100th day of caching, I went to Lake Kittamaqundi since there were plenty of caches around it, including the Whereigo cache Columbia's Poster Trees. The plan was to find two caches and then have the Whereigo as my 1000th find. Unfortunately, I had 3 DNFs and wound up just finding the Whereigo (which was fun but time consuming). I had to run errands afterward and saw two on the way to the stores. I did find A Day at the Office.... (a regular cache) and the mystery cache A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was a good summary of the day and a fun name for my 1000th find.

Picture of a cool bird in a tree by the lake

Zoomed in on the bird

Me at the 100th cache

The next day I started working on filling in every calendar day with a traditional find and located Say A Prayer for Me. To avoid being caught in an unending cycle, I took two days off from caching, so my longest streak stands at 101 days.

View from the cache, almost

Inexplicable Guard Rails of Central Maryland #2 is a spooky spot. One guard rail cuts off a bit of road and another guard rail is at the end of the bit of road. I guess they didn't bother to take it out when they put in the other rail?

Glad I can't drive down here

My next cache was also a sequel, Free State in the Springtime #2. I tried to find the first one but it looked like it was missing.

Less spooky sequel

Another sequel, Crash's Lunchtime Cache #2, was found on the next day. I swear I didn't plan this mini-series! Maybe I will pick up the originals later?

Not a good spot for lunch, if you ask me

Two new caches showed up in King's Contrivance. I found them both, RWLS: Timothy Turtle's Tatooine Triple Tignanello and Monarch's Land Grant. The trail includes a bridge!

How did this get in the middle of the woods?

My wife wanted to shop for a lamp, so we went to 2nd Chance, a warehouse full of house decor that have been brought in for sale. In the parking lot is Do You Need a 2nd Chance to Find It? which was easy to find. We did not take a photo and we did not find a lamp. We wound up making a purchase at Home Depot.

In the interests of acquiring the 2023 Winter Solstice souvenir, I found four caches in one day. I had gotten the final coordinates for KRAKADOOOUM! before setting out, so it was an easy find, though the cache container was not liftable (see the picture below). The Working Man was an easy, more traditional find. On my way home, I found two at a southbound rest area on I-95, South Bound Roadtrip and Woodshop Fun. The second has a very cleverly disguised container. I gave it a Favorite Point, something premium members can do for caches that they think are especially good.

The tree is worthy to wield?

View from the rest area cache

I did have a tragedy in one of my own caches. The log got too wet and needed replacing. All that I have left is this picture of the original, mushy log.

King's Power first log

The next step in acquiring the Solstice souvenir was completing the Adventure Lab at the NASA Goddard Space Center's Visitor Center. I was able to find all but one bit of information which I think has vanished, so I let the cache owner know. 

To fill out the last two caches required for the souvenir, I found Name That Store! and GSFC-MKH-LPC. They were both in a strip mall across the street from NASA. I was surprise to see Papa John's Pizza and Ledo Pizza in the same mall. The "anchor store" for the mall is Zion Church! An odd spot indeed.

Also popular spot

I made a find on Christmas Eve to get the end-of-year souvenir. Geocaching Symposium 2015 is a Wherigo cache just outside the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The cache is hidden across the street in an unremarkable parking lot.

Typical view for a not-too-far-in-the-woods cache

I ended the month, and the year, crossing the 1000-cache milestone overall, and 300 in a single year. I have only two days left on my calendar to fill in for caching, February 5 and 29, which luckily will happen this year. What will my projects be in the coming year other than making finds on those two days?

Click to enlarge

NASA Goddard Visitor Center and Agents of Discovery

We made another trip to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The visitor center is one of the locations for Agents of Discovery, a mobile-device based activity that we have done before. So we enjoyed the exhibits, the gift shop, and discovering some new facts.

Entrance to the visitor center

My children liked getting on the concrete barriers at the front of the building. The lady at the front desk told us not to climb on them, so I guess this is the last picture of that activity.

It says "No Parking," not "No Sitting"

Inside, we saw a sign that had different messages when looking through different colored filters.

Unfiltered message

Red-filtered message

Different types of soil are found on the lunar surface. Dust, volcanic soil, and meteor remains are all found on the moon.

Lunar soil exhibit

Also on the moon are footprints. We tried out the replica on display. None of us measured up to the Apollo 14 astronauts.

Big shoe to fill

Another display has models showing how the Hubble Telescope was repaired back in the day. I miss our old shuttle system.

Doing repairs

One display explains satellite mapping by having visitors bounce a pinball off a surface. The way the ball returns mimics the way satellite signals are reflected by the Earth's surface.

Satellite pinball

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has a copy on display. The many instruments it uses to observe the moon are described, along with interactive panels. My kids weren't so interested in this.

LRO

My children really enjoyed the infrared camera display. The pictures include a regular camera and the infrared.

Posing for the infrared camera

What the regular camera saw

What the infrared camera saw

We started the Agents of Discovery challenge, only to find that the QR reader on the app wasn't working. So the indoor discoveries went undiscovered.

I did find the QR code, Mr. Squirrel

Outside, the app worked better. At the Delta-B rocket, we read how it was used to deliver over 200 payloads into orbit. The app asked us what nickname was given to this rocket. We found the answer easily on the sign describing it.

A hard working rocket

From the rocket plaza we could see the flight center in the not-to-far distance.

Where the work gets done

Another outdoor challenge was to use the directional sign by the gift shop to see which NASA center was farthest away.

Various NASA bases

One interesting form of scientific detection is the Ozone Bio-Indicator Garden. The display tells how plants are effected by lower ozone layers. The plants are grown right next to the sign, enabling us to make our own observations.

Information

These plants are out of season or completely sensitive to ozone variances

Tobacco still grows strong

We took one last set of photos before buying some astronaut ice cream (the dehydrated kind) at the gift shop.

Sticking her neck out

Our man in space

A two-headed monster?

Yes indeed

National Electronics Museum, Maryland

The Smithsonian Institution sponsored a free museum day. One of the participating museums was the National Electronics Museum, which is not part of the Smithsonian.

National Electronics Museum

The museum focuses on communications and detection technology, mostly from the twentieth century. Some of the exhibits are too large to fit inside the building, so they are outside.

The Nike Ajax was an anti-aircraft missile radar built in the 1950s. These radars were stationed in the United States and used to guide surface-to-air missiles in the event the Soviet Union sent bombers to mainland America.

Nike Ajax

Produced from the 1960s to the 1980s, the TPS-43 was a tactical surveillance radar used to detect approaching air crafts. The unit folds up and is transportable by truck, helicopter, or aircraft. They were built by Westinghouse and sold to more than twenty nations.

TPS-43

Inside the museum, the first room displays early technology. The exhibit has lots of hands-on opportunities that were popular with our children.

Jacob's Ladder, popular with mad scientists and younger brothers

Using physical force to create electrical power

Showing where electricity is used in the home

One display had an Edison phonograph, which isn't so much electronic but is a technological marvel.

One of Edison's marvels

More recent technologies on display include smoke alarms and speed detectors.

Some modern developments

One corner has an oversized vacuum tube to show how it works.

Largest vacuum tube ever?

Technology created new forms of communication and eventually created the need for securing those communications. Morse code is fun to try out but hard to do properly, much less hear what is being broadcast. My children gave it a try anyway.

Morse code station

World War II featured a lot of famous cryptological inventions to secure information. Strip ciphers as on the right below were used to encode and decode messages. The strips had different arrangements for different days. Naturally, both sender and recipient need the strips.

Crypto equipment

The most famous coding machine was Germany's Enigma. The Allies couldn't crack the code until they managed to capture a machine. The Germans were unaware of the loss for a long time and lost a big advantage.

Enigma

The museum has its own amateur radio station, with a combination of latest tech and earlier equipment. No one was in the station to demonstrate but it did look like fun.

Radio station

A big development was the ability to turn a voice (or any noise) into an electronic signal that could be broadcast over the airwaves or through phone lines. One machine showed our voices turned into waves.

Singing in the machine

One of the earliest car phones was one from the 1960s. Obviously it's not in use any more. I was amazed because I thought the Batphone in the Batmobile from the 1960s show was something made up!

Mobile phone, if you have a car to go with it

The next room feature all sorts of World War II radar equipment, including a truck outfitted for radar support.

Truck full of electronics

Airplanes were fitted with radars as well, sometimes to detect threats, sometimes to thwart threats.

Airplane radar

A sample plane

A temporary exhibit showed equipment from NASA's Apollo missions. It was very exciting to see for me.

More equipment from the Apollo missions

NASA Apollo mission equipment

The undersea electronics were fascinating. Sonar is the sub-surface cousin of radar! A display showed World War II-era equipment.

Pinging!

Countermeasures used to create false signals for torpedoes

Another hall shows electronic countermeasures. Radar is important in civilian life and during war. Wartime makes the need for countermeasures, a way of jamming radar or fooling it by creating false targets. Different measures have been used since World War II.

Chaff is the most basic type of jamming. Chaff is basically strips of tinfoil dumped out the back of a plane to confuse the radar signals. While chaff is simple and low cost, it also requires carrying a lot of it to be effective.

Just throw some stuff out to fool the radar

Higher tech equipment includes missiles to mislead enemy weapons.

Actually electronic countermeasures

A long wall of countermeasures

My son tried out a Theremin, an electronic instrument played without touching it. One hand controls the volume, the other makes semi-musical noises. This must be a really tough instrument to master!

Playing a theremin

The satellites room shows various rockets and the satellites they put in space.

Sending satellites into space

Explaining different satellites

GPS satellites

Broadcast satellites

The museum was fun to visit. It's not too big so the kids didn't get bored fast enough for us to miss much, if any, of the displays.