Legendary NASA flight director Chris Kraft has died at 95

[Elderberry]

Houston Chronicle by  Alex Stuckey July 22, 2019



Christopher C. Kraft, Gemini flight director, appears in a relaxed, confident mood as he sits at
 the console in Mission Control at Manned Spacecraft Center — now named the Johnson
Space Center — in Houston on Dec. 7, 1965 and receives reports on the flight of Gemini 7.
The orbital flight of Lt. Col. Frank Borman and Commander James A. Lovell

Christopher C. Kraft Jr. — NASA’s first flight director and a legendary scientist who helped build the nation’s space program — died Monday, just two days after the world celebrated the historic Apollo 11 walk on the moon. He was 95.

“#RIP Dr. Christopher Kraft,” former astronaut Clayton Anderson posted on Twitter about 3:30 p.m. Monday. “You were a true leader for this nation and our world …Godspeed and thank you.”

Kraft’s name is emblazoned in bold letters on the side of the mission control building at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, home to the base of operations where Kraft guided astronauts from launch to landing as the organization grew to a full-blown agency that required multiple flight directors to oversee a mission.

The late Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong once said Kraft was “the ‘control’ in mission control.”

In an interview in February with the Houston Chronicle, Kraft said he never wanted to be an astronaut.

“I liked my job better than theirs,” he said. “I got to go on every flight, and besides that, I got to tell them what to do.”

2of11Chris Kraft, NASA's first manned space flight director, and the man for whom Mission Control at Johnson Space Center is named, pauses during an interview at his home on Thursday, May 15, 2014, in Houston.Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Staff / Houston Chronicle
3of11Chris Kraft places his arm around his wife, Betty (Turnbull) Kraft's back at their home on Friday, Feb. 22, 2019, in Clear Lake. Chris Kraft is NASA's first mission control flight director. They have been married almost 69 years at the time of his death on Monday, July 22, 2019.Photo: Marie D. De Jesús, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

Christopher C. Kraft Jr. — NASA’s first flight director and a legendary scientist who helped build the nation’s space program — died Monday, just two days after the world celebrated the historic Apollo 11 walk on the moon. He was 95.

“#RIP Dr. Christopher Kraft,” former astronaut Clayton Anderson posted on Twitter about 3:30 p.m. Monday. “You were a true leader for this nation and our world …Godspeed and thank you.”

Kraft’s name is emblazoned in bold letters on the side of the mission control building at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, home to the base of operations where Kraft guided astronauts from launch to landing as the organization grew to a full-blown agency that required multiple flight directors to oversee a mission.

The late Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong once said Kraft was “the ‘control’ in mission control.”

In an interview in February with the Houston Chronicle, Kraft said he never wanted to be an astronaut.

“I liked my job better than theirs,” he said. “I got to go on every flight, and besides that, I got to tell them what to do.”

During an era with no calculators and only rudimentary computers, Kraft essentially built NASA’s mission control to manage human operations in space. As the agency’s sole flight director, with a simple black-and-white monitor and listening to eight different communications loops, he had the final say for NASA’s first five manned missions, including the Mercury flights of Alan Shepard and John Glenn.

As NASA scrambled to catch the Soviet Union in space during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Kraft wrote mission rules and operating procedures for America’s early forays into space. Later, during the Gemini program, Kraft recruited and developed a team of flight directors, allowing him to move into planning for the Apollo moon mission.

“Dr. Kraft is one of the founding fathers of the space age,” Wayne Hale, a flight director for more than three dozen shuttle missions, and later the space shuttle program manager, said previously. “He was one of the indispensable men that made Apollo happen. He invented flight directing out of thin air and created this whole new enterprise in such a way that we still follow the model he set.”

On Monday afternoon, Hale tweeted out, “A giant has left us: Chris Kraft is one with the ages.”

More: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Legendary-NASA-flight-director-Chris-Kraft-has-14114715.php

[Fishrrman]

He made it to the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.
Godspeed !