Free Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program by Glynn S. Lunney

additionally configured with a set of plot boards driven by the local radar and identical to the plot boards at the Mercury Control Center at the Cape. These were the tools by which we were going to assure that the spacecraft was safely in orbit or to assist in a few specific abort conditions. With the support of John Mayer, I was selected to be the flight dynamics officer at Bermuda and served on three unmanned Atlas launches and on John Glenn’s flight, designated MA-6. The station worked very well for this purpose and gave clear confirmation of safe orbit, which was also verified by the tracking displayed in MCC.
    This was great operational experience for me and taught me how to get a station ready for its mission. All of our learning curves were very steep and I went on to be the Flight Dynamics Officer in MCC at the Cape for the next three flights, MA-7, -8 and -9. The early opportunity to serve at Bermuda was a great assist to my knowledge and confidence. With all of the other stations around the world, it was also a great opportunity for STG to develop many of our young engineers into competent and confident operators ready to take their place in the MCC for Gemini and Apollo.
     

Christopher Columbus Kraft
    No record of these times can be remotely complete without testimony to the pervasive influence that Christopher Columbus Kraft had on the programs, the organization, and especially all of us, his young followers. Whatever his various titles were during those years, he was our leader – “the” Flight Director – and our role model. His influence was always a lesson in leadership, and we strove mightily to emulate the same.
    Over five decades, while he and I were sometimes in different organizations but still associated, Chris demonstrated over and over again that great leadership cannot be overrated. Chris had the skill of clarity of thought in defining issues and solutions. In a world of many new and compounding complexities, Chris reduced problems to a crisp definition, to a few options and then a decision. He often left me wondering, “Why didn’t I think of that?” His calibration of his people at all levels seemed unerring and he located people where their talents were a match to the assignment. To others, he seemed to delight in stretching them to levels that they did not know they were capable of. Decisions were often quick and always crisp, “Yes, we’ll do it that way.” On personnel matters, he would ask, “So you want to move to this job? Tell me why.” Listening and then, “Fine, I agree, the discussion is over.” And I never saw Chris avoid a difficult decision; he seemed to enjoy them and even to seek them out. Once made, everybody moved on. Things were not allowed to fester or to sit on hold.
    Chris had real respect for his troops and it showed in how he dealt with subjects that might impinge on them. On one occasion after a scrub and a launch delay of several days, he decided that all of us at stations around the world would stay at our respective sites and forgo travel back home. We did have one higher-level management person from a different organization who was in Bermuda to observe. He asked for an exception in his case, on the communication loop, essentially in front of the rest of us, and we all knew immediately how dumb that was. And, yes, he stayed deployed with all the rest of us. Perhaps the strongest demonstration of Chris’s leadership was his trust in us. That trust actually empowered and challenged us. You did not want to be found unworthy.
    The work itself forced us to strive for crisp, clear communications. This was best illustrated in our mission rule discussions of what level of failure would cause a major deviation to the plan. As most of us came to operations work, there was a natural tendency to avoid or stall on a decision. Usually this manifested itself as a discussion of symptoms or preliminary troubleshooting steps, but not the final decision on a failed or