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.

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.

And it is just that, a movie, not a documentary. The director had to pick and choose for the sake of the story.

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.

I understand from the recent IEEE article that, at the time, he didn't say that. What he did say was a bit wordier and possibley just as motivating, if not as catchy.

I don't know for sure, but I think the "success can get expensive" statement, however it's phrased, was originated by either Henry or George.

Whether Gene Kranz said the words "failure is not an option" at the time is not very relevant. He certainly has agreed to that statement and sold it as a belief of his. If he is held in high esteem and agrees with the concept, then others will listen to him, accept his credibility, and thus accept the concept. Its a very motivational concept and well played in the movie and for his book. But the actual practice is very expensive and extremely limiting.

"Failure is not an option" is a good way to motivate operators. It's a lousy way to motivate designers.

I think I first heard it from some ERPS alumni, but the "Failure is not an option" quote is actually incomplete.

"Failure is not an option- it's part of the standard equipment."

Meaning, designs and systems will fail- so make sure that they can fail gracefully. If this makes the designer's job a bit harder, so be it.

Also, in Gene Kranz's days the definition of "failure" was different. Astronauts dying was a tragedy, but not a failure. Not getting to the Moon before USSR was the failure.

By the time of Apollo XIII, they didn't have to worry about not beating the Russians to the Moon. In fact, there was little concern about that even by the time of Apollo XI, since the Russians had clearly given up, and were not going to do it at all, let alone beat us.

There seems to be a consensus here that competent, well-thought out design is too limiting.... not cost-effective.... too expensive. I guess this explains why there is so much crap on the market. While people calling themselves 'designers' do not have to pass a P.E. test- they would do well to expand their studies a bit before hanging out their shingle. I'd suggest they begin with the works of Leonardo DaVinci-- and work their way up through design philosophies of Frank Lloyd Wright, R. Buckminster Fuller, Alvar Aalto, Harold Edgerton, Ian McHarg and Victor Papanek- to name a few.
For the record, I have designed (in my living room, and built in my garage) a communications switching system for a county's fire & EMS dispatch and on board power & life support systems for two underwater habitats and several small submersibles, among other things. None of these systems have ever failed, and never did I find it prohibitively expensive or difficult to do things properly. I'm no genius- if I can do it, anybody can do it.

Doug wrote:

I think I first heard it from some ERPS alumni, but the "Failure is not an option" quote is actually incomplete.

"Failure is not an option- it's part of the standard equipment."

Meaning, designs and systems will fail- so make sure that they can fail gracefully. If this makes the designer's job a bit harder, so be it.

Michael Wallis of ERPS says, "Failure is not an option: it's a requirement." What he means by that is that no one can do it right the first time, every time, so the only road to success is incremental testing. Test, and test, and test, and test some more. Then go test. After that, go test. A lot of those tests will be failures.

(They're really only failures if they produce inconclusive results.)

Dave Masten of ERPS has a variation, "Failure is not an option; it comes standard." You're going to fail - in service - at some point. Design for that failure to be graceful. Shuttle tiles are a good example of graceful failure: not one flight escaped serious damage to several tiles. Some flights came back with entire tiles missing. The TPS design was such that even with tiles missing, the vehicle survived reentry.

-R

The phrase "When failure is not an option, success can get expensive" was coined by Peter Stibrany. It received wide circulation when Henry Spencer used it (in 2000 and 2001) in his .sig for messages posted to Usenet's sci.space newsgroups. At that time, Peter and I were working at Dynacon in Toronto, managing the development of the MOST microsat mission, with Peter as project manager/systems engineer (Henry was working with us, developing the MOST computer systems architecture). We were being mentored at the time in the way of low-cost microsat missions, by people like Jan King at AMSAT, and Rick Fleeter at AeroAstro. Peter came up with this phrase as an amusing play on the title of Gene Kranz's book (the 3 of us being fairly avid space history buffs), and as a pithy way of summarizing a core difference in philosophy between the way big-space projects (epitomized by Apollo) are done, and "The Microsat Way".