Jeff Foust has an article today on a recent speech by Gene Kranz (yesterday was the thirty-fifth anniversary of the successful return of the crippled Apollo XIII). It’s become popular myth as a result of Ron Howard’s movie that Gene was the director of flight control, solely responsible for getting the crew back safely, when in fact there were more than one. In my opinion, Glynn Lunney in particular gets short (in fact zero) shrift in the movie, though the work obviously had to be done in shifts.

But I’m afraid that we (and I include Gene in this) take the wrong lessons from that incident. Yes, the teamwork was splendid, and the improvisation excellent, and they did everything they needed to do to get them back. But as I commented back in days immediately following the loss of Columbia, those are necessary, but not sufficient, to ensure that we won’t lose people in space. It has to be recognized that in addition to all of the smart moves on the ground, that crew was also damn lucky. If that explosion had happened while the crew was on the surface, or on the way back from the Moon, they’d have died, no matter how much derring do was on display in Houston. A lot of other things could have gone wrong that would have killed them, and no amount of teamwork, training, and smarts would have prevented it.

Sending people into space is a risky business, and we have to accept that. It sounds nice when Gene says it, but “failure is not an option” isn’t a realistic attitude. As someone once said, when failure isn’t an option, success gets damned expensive. And of course, the easiest way to ensure that failure isn’t an option is to not even make the attempt.