Christopher C. Kraft Jr.
Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr. was an American aerospace and NASA engineer who was instrumental in establishing the agency's Mission Control Center and shaping its organization and culture. His protégé Glynn Lunney said in 1998: "the Control Center today ... is a reflection of Chris Kraft".
Following his 1944 graduation from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with a degree in aeronautical engineering, Kraft was hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor organization to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He worked for over a decade in aeronautical research and in 1958 joined the Space Task Group, a small team entrusted with the responsibility of putting America's first man in space. Assigned to the flight operations division, Kraft became NASA's first flight director. He was on duty during America's first crewed spaceflight, first crewed orbital flight, and first spacewalk. At the beginning of the Apollo program, Kraft retired as a flight director to concentrate on management and mission planning. In 1972, he became director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, following his mentor Robert R. Gilruth, and held the position until his retirement in 1982.
Later, Kraft consulted for companies such as IBM and Rockwell International. In 1994, he was appointed chairman of a panel to make NASA's Space Shuttle program more cost effective. The panel's controversial report, known as the Kraft report, recommended that NASA's Space Shuttle operations should be outsourced to a private contractor. It also recommended that NASA cut back on the organizational changes intended to improve safety that were made after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. This attracted even more critical comment after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
Kraft published his autobiography Flight: My Life in Mission Control in 2001. The Mission Control Center building was named after him in 2011. When he received the National Space Trophy from the Rotary Club in 1999, the organization described him as "a driving force in the U.S. human space flight program from its beginnings to the Space Shuttle era, a man whose accomplishments have become legendary".
Early life and education
Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr. was born in Phoebus, Virginia, on February 28, 1924. He was named after his father, Christopher Columbus Kraft, who was born in New York City in 1892 near the newly renamed Columbus Circle. Kraft's father, the son of Bavarian immigrants, had found his name an embarrassment, but passed it along to his son nonetheless. In later years, Kraft—as well as other commentators—would consider it peculiarly appropriate. Kraft commented in his autobiography that, with the choice of his name, "some of my life's direction was settled from the start". His mother, Vanda Olivia, was a nurse. As a boy, Kraft played in an American Legion drum-and-bugle corps and became the state champion bugler. He went to school in Phoebus, where the only school went to the ninth grade and attended Hampton High School. He was a keen baseball player and continued to play the sport in college; one year he had a batting average of.340.In September 1941, Kraft began his studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and became a Cadet in the Corps of Cadets as a member of N-Squadron. The United States entered World War II in December 1941, and he attempted to enlist in the United States Navy as a V-12 aviation cadet, but was rejected because of a burned right hand that he had suffered at age three. He graduated in December 1944 with a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering.
NACA career
On graduation, Kraft accepted a job with the Chance Vought aircraft company in Connecticut. He had also applied to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a government agency whose Langley Research Center was in Hampton, Virginia; Kraft considered it to be too close to home, but applied as a back-up if he was not accepted elsewhere. On arrival to begin work at Chance Vought in Bridgeport, Connecticut he was told during three successive attempts that he could not enter the plant without his birth certificate, which he had not brought with him and which he then attempted to procure. Annoyed by the repeated obstructive mindset of the clerk at the front gate, he decided to accept the offer from NACA instead.In the 1940s, NACA was a research and development organization, devoted to cutting-edge aeronautical research. At the Langley Research Center, advanced wind tunnels were used to test new aircraft designs, and studies were taking place on new concepts such as the Bell X-1 rocket plane. Kraft was assigned to the flight research division, where Robert R. Gilruth was then chief of research. His work with NACA included the development of an early example of gust alleviation systems for aircraft flying in turbulent air. This involved compensating for variations in the atmosphere by automatically deflecting the control surfaces. He investigated wingtip vortices, and discovered that they, and not prop-wash, are responsible for most of the wake turbulence in the air that trails flying aircraft.
Although he enjoyed his work, Kraft found it increasingly stressful, especially since he did not consider himself to be a strong theoretician. In 1956, he was diagnosed with an ulcer and started thinking about a change of career.
Flight director
Flight operations
In 1957, the Soviet flight of Sputnik 1 prompted the United States to accelerate its fledgling space program. On July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established NASA and subsumed NACA within this newly created organization. Langley Research Center became a part of NASA, as did Langley employees such as Kraft. Even before NASA began its official existence in October, Kraft was invited by Gilruth to become a part of a new group that was working on the problems of putting a man into orbit. Without much hesitation, he accepted the offer. When the Space Task Group was officially formed on November 5, Kraft became one of the original 33 personnel to be assigned. This marked the beginning of America's man-in-space program, which came to be called Project Mercury.As a member of the Space Task Group, Kraft was assigned to the flight operations division, which made plans and arrangements for the operation of the Mercury spacecraft during flight and for the control and monitoring of missions from the ground. Kraft became the assistant to Chuck Mathews, the head of the division, and was given the responsibility of putting together a mission plan. Given Mathews' casual analysis of the problem, it almost sounded simple:
When Kraft began to plan NASA's flight operations, no human being had yet flown in space. In fact, the task before him was vast, requiring attention to flight plans, timelines, procedures, mission rules, spacecraft tracking, telemetry, ground support, telecommunications networks and contingency management.
File:Mercury Control.jpg|thumb|right|Mission Control Center as it was during Project Mercury |alt=A large room with console arrayed in front of a world map and many desks occupied by people viewing screens
One of Kraft's most important contributions to crewed spaceflight would be his origination of the concept of a mission control center. Many of the engineers in Project Mercury had previously worked on the flight test of aircraft, where the role for ground support was minimal. Kraft soon realized that an astronaut could only do so much, particularly during the fast-moving launch phase; the Mercury spacecraft would require real time monitoring and support from specialist engineers.
These concepts shaped the Mercury Control Center, which was at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Another important concept pioneered by Kraft was the idea of the flight director, the man who would coordinate the team of engineers and make real-time decisions about the conduct of the mission. As Mathews later recalled, Kraft came to him one day saying, "There needs to be someone in charge of the flights while they're actually going on, and I want to be that person." In this informal way, the position of flight director was created.
A pivotal experience for Kraft was the flight of Mercury-Atlas 5, which sent a chimpanzee named Enos on the first American orbital spaceflight carrying a live passenger. Coverage of these early missions that carried non-human passengers could often be tongue-in-cheek; a Time magazine article on the flight, for example, was titled "Meditative Chimponaut". Yet Kraft viewed them as important tests for the men and procedures of Mission Control, and as rehearsals for the crewed missions that would follow. Originally, the flight of Mercury-Atlas 5 had been intended to last for three orbits. The failure of one of the hydrogen peroxide jets controlling the spacecraft's attitude forced Kraft to make the decision to bring the capsule back to Earth after two orbits. After the flight, astronaut John Glenn stated that he believed a human passenger would have been able to bring the capsule under control without the need for an early re-entry, thus "affirming the superiority of astronauts over chimponauts." Yet for Kraft, the flight of Enos represented proof of the importance of real-time decision-making in Mission Control. It gave him a sense of the responsibility he would have for the lives of others, whether human or chimpanzee.
Mercury
Kraft served as flight director during all six of the crewed Mercury missions. During the final flight—Mercury-Atlas 9, which lasted for over a day—he shared responsibility with his deputy John Hodge.Mercury-Atlas 6, the February 20, 1962, flight of John Glenn, was a testing experience both for Mission Control and for Kraft. Space historians Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox described it as "the single event that decisively shaped Flight Operations". The mission was the first orbital flight by an American, and unfolded normally until Glenn began his second orbit. At that point Kraft's systems controller, Don Arabian, reported that telemetry was showing a "Segment 51" indicator. This suggested that the capsule's landing bag, which was meant to deploy upon splashdown in order to provide a cushion, might have deployed early. Kraft believed that the Segment 51 indicator was due to faulty instrumentation rather than to an actual early deployment. If he was wrong, it would mean that the capsule's heat shield, which fitted on top of the landing bag, was now loose. A loose heat shield could cause the capsule to burn up during re-entry.
On consulting with his flight controllers, Kraft became convinced that the indication was false, and that no action was needed. His superiors, including Mercury capsule designer Max Faget, overruled Kraft, telling him to instruct Glenn to leave the capsule's retrorocket package on during re-entry. The reasoning was that the package, which was strapped over the heat shield, would hold the heat shield in place if it was loose. Kraft, however, felt that this was an unacceptable risk. "I was aghast," he remembered. "If any of three retrorockets had solid fuel remaining, an explosion could rip everything apart." Yet he agreed to follow the plan advocated by Faget and by Walt Williams, his superior in the flight operations division. The retrorockets would be kept on.
Glenn landed safely, but an inspection of his capsule revealed that one of the landing bag switches had been faulty. Kraft was right; the heat shield had not been loose after all. The lessons that he drew from this experience were clear.
His assistant on the mission, Gene Kranz, considered Glenn's flight "the turning point ... in Kraft's evolution as a flight director."
Before the flight of Mercury-Atlas 7, Kraft had objected to the choice of Scott Carpenter as the astronaut for the mission, telling Walt Williams that Carpenter's lack of engineering skills might put the mission or his own life in danger. The mission suffered from problems including an unusually high rate of fuel usage, a malfunctioning horizon indicator, a delayed retrofire for re-entry, and a splashdown that was downrange from the target area. Throughout the mission, Kraft found himself frustrated by the vagueness of Carpenter's communications with Mission Control, and what he perceived as Carpenter's inattention to his duties. "Part of the problem," he recalled, "was that Carpenter either didn't understand or was ignoring my instructions."
While some of these problems were due to mechanical failures, and responsibility for some of the others is still being debated, Kraft did not hesitate to assign blame to Carpenter, and continued to speak out about the mission for decades afterwards. His autobiography, written in 2001, reopened the issue; the chapter that dealt with the flight of Mercury-Atlas 7 was titled "The Man Malfunctioned". In a letter to The New York Times, Carpenter called the book "vindictive and skewed", and offered a different assessment of the reasons for Kraft's frustration: "in space things happen so fast that only the pilot knows what to do, and even ground control can't help. Maybe that's why he is still fuming after all these years."