Flight

Flight: My Life in Mission Control is the feisty memoir of Chris Kraft, head of mission control ground crew on the famous Eagle mission of 1969. On July 20, 1969, near the end of a great decade of near-space exploration, a small craft called Eagle landed on the moon's surface. As anyone who watched the televised broadcast of the landing might recall, the astronauts aboard Eagle were guided to their objective by a capable ground crew headed by Chris Kraft, whom his colleagues had long called "Flight". Kraft was unflappable on the surface, but, as he writes in this memoir, the Eagle's landing had moments of drama that gave him pause, and that few outside NASA knew about--including baleful alarms from the ship's on-board computer that warned of imminent disaster.

For Kraft, frightening moments were part of his job as director of Mission Control. He encountered many of them in the early years of the space programme, when failures were commonplace and all too often caused not by mechanics but politics. We learn of many in Kraft's pages. One such failure was the Soviet Union's Sputnik launch, on which Kraft thunders, "We should have beaten them.... We were stopped by anonymous doctors in the civilian world who didn't know what they were talking about, by a bureaucrat in the White House who'd been stung when JFK shot down his position on manned space flight, and by our friend the German rocket scientist who got cold feet when he should have been bold."

Plenty of other contemporaries, including John Glenn and Richard Nixon, come in for a scolding in Kraft's fiery account, which offers a fly-on-the-wall portrait of the challenging work of astronautics--work that, Kraft writes hopefully, is only beginning. --Gregory McNamee

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Sour gripes - Rated
I found this book very interesting when it stayed factual and told the stories of the early space program. When Kraft started spitting venom about people he didn't like - such as astronaut Scott Carpenter, who he seems to want to crucify in this book - I lost a lot of respect for Kraft. Too many old grudges going on here...

Fascinating book about a fascinating man - Rated
I have read a lot about the space program and this book is one of the better. Kraft was undoubtedly one of the key figures in bringing USA to the moon and this book describes his story very well.
Why then only 4 stars? Well i find that Kraft perhaps tend to overlook other people and having read Krantz's book i find it a bit sad. Krantz speaks very high about Chris Kraft, sometimes emotional but Kraft returns the favour by allmost not mentioning Krantz. Chris Kraft WAS the reverend leader who laid the foundation but Gene Krantz was the #2 man who build the house(mission control)

An engaging read - Rated
The kind of engaging read that makes you glad that Kraft committed his memoirs to paper. His long involvement ran from the early days of NACA through the formation of NASA, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, ASTP, Skylab and the early days of Shuttle operations.

Of the mission programmes, Mercury and Gemini receive the most detailed coverage here. Despite an entertaining description of the scene in Mission Control when Apollo 11 landed, coverage of the later Apollo missions is sketchy - he had moved into more of a background - though more senior role by that time. There are interesting descriptions of incidents such as the Apollo 15 stamps scandal, with more detail than found in many of the space books.

Twenty-two black and white photos figure in the central pages: a few of them personal but the rest all to do with the program.

Great Read - Rated
Only really getting into the swing of early manned spaceflight a few months back i dug deep into this book and it does not fail to impress, from Krafts early days in his hometown to his life in NACA before embarking in NASA its all here from the man they call 'Flight'.

Kraft's witticisms are abundant throughout as is his flair for sheer brilliance, Scott Carpenter and John Glenn come in for a bit of a roasting and Kraft is not afraid to hide his feelings, he will say what he wants when he wants in this book.

If your wondering about Kraft's career in MCC or just spaceflight and NASA administration in general I strongly reccomend this book

Almost certainly the best account of the space race - Rated
Having read most of the books by the astronauts, controllers, and others involved, this for me was by far the best (although I must admit to being a fan of the genre in general).

Surprisingly for me (given that I'm a geek!), it was the human side of most of the stories that were the most interesting. If you have any interest at all in the space race, buy this book.

My only criticism is a minor one: In the last couple of pages, where Kraft discusses how we should still be exploring and moving out (with which I totally agree), he makes constant reference to "America should do this", "American people must do that", etc. Sure - it was America who won the space race, and I do not wish to take that away from them, but the cold war is over now - mankind must move forwards as a whole from now, not just America. But I would say that, being a Brit!

Great book: buy it.