Apollo: The Race To The Moon

by Catherine Bly Cox

“I think the biggest role of the flight director was asking the right questions, which is an art more than a science,” said Gerry Griffin. “It’s anticipating what questions need to be answered.” The objective was to stay as far ahead of the spacecraft as possible, to have already thought about a problem before the problem demanded an action. And then, having asked the right questions, Flight had to listen carefully to every word and nuance of the answers. “The most likely error we can make in the business is not listening,” said Kranz. “We’ve got very smart people [in the controllers]. We breed them to be very smart, we breed them to give opinions. We breed them to work in an arena of conflict. Sometimes they may disagree with you. Sometimes they may not be too smooth in words. Sometimes they may come in on an untimely basis and disrupt your train of thought.” But none of that can interfere with your listening and understanding precisely what it is that you are hearing. If you can’t listen to each person and understand exactly what that person is saying, said Kranz, “we’re going to screw up. As you get down to having to work a problem in twenty seconds, you’ve got to have that relationship with the people.”