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American aerospace engineer (1924–2019)

Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr. (February 28, 1924 – July 22, 2019) 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 (NACA), the predecessor organization to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). 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 (later Johnson Space 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".

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 ( Suddreth), 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. In September 1941, Kraft began his studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) 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.

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 (NACA), 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 at Chance Vought he was told that he could not be hired without his birth certificate, which he had not brought with him. Annoyed by the bureaucratic mindset of the company, 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 head of research. 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.

With the beginning of the Apollo program, Kraft expected to resume at Mission Control. He would have been lead flight director on the first crewed Apollo mission (later known as Apollo 1), scheduled to launch in early 1967. On January 27, 1967, the three crew members were killed in a fire during a countdown test on the pad. At the time, Kraft was in Mission Control in Houston, listening in on the Cape test conductor's voice loop. There was nothing anyone could do; before the crew at the pad could get the door open, the three astronauts were dead, having been overcome by toxic gases. Kraft was asked by Betty Grissom, the widow of astronaut Gus Grissom, to be one of the pallbearers at Grissom's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia.

Kraft was a household name in America throughout the 1960s. He appeared on the cover of the August 27, 1965, issue of Time, profiled as the "Conductor in a Command Post". In the article, he compared himself to Christopher Columbus, and displayed what the magazine described as "an almost angry pride" in his work. "We know a lot more about what we have to do than he did" Kraft said. "And we know where we're going." He eventually came to terms with the idea, and the portrait painted for the cover became one of his prized possessions.

After John Glenn's flight, Kraft had vowed that he would no longer allow his decisions as flight director to be overruled by anyone outside Mission Control. For Kraft, the power that the flight director held over every aspect of the mission extended to his control over the actions of the astronauts. In his 1965 interview with Time, he stated:

text="[T]he guy on the ground ultimately controls the mission. There's no question about that in my mind or in the astronauts' minds. They are going to do what he says." Occasionally, Kraft intervened in order to ensure that his conception of the flight director's authority was maintained. By the time that the Apollo 7 mission flew, he had been promoted to head of the flight operations division; thus, it was Glynn Lunney who served as lead flight director and had to deal directly with behavior by the crew that Kraft considered "insubordinate". As Kraft commented in his memoirs, "it was like having a ringside seat at the Wally Schirra Bitch Circus". Mission commander Wally Schirra, annoyed by last minute changes in the crew's schedule and suffering from a bad cold, repeatedly refused to accept orders from the ground. Although Schirra's actions were successful in the short term, Kraft decreed in consultation with astronaut chief Deke Slayton that none of the Apollo 7 crew would fly again. Schirra had decided before the flight that he would retire after Apollo 7. Kraft had made a similar pronouncement before, in the case of astronaut Scott Carpenter. After Carpenter's troubled Mercury mission, Kraft wrote, "I swore an oath that Scott Carpenter would never again fly in space." The result: "He didn't."

After the Apollo 1 fire in 1967, Kraft had reluctantly concluded that his responsibilities as a manager would keep him from serving as a flight director on the next crewed mission, Apollo 7, and on missions thereafter. Henceforth his involvement in the Apollo program would be at a higher level. The idea was discussed in early August at a meeting between Low, Kraft, Gilruth and Deke Slayton:
"The four of us  had become an unofficial committee that got together often in Bob's office to discuss problems, plans and off the wall ideas. Not much happened in Gemini or Apollo that didn't either originate with us or with our input." Low's plan was to fly the mission in December, which left little time for the flight operations division to train and prepare. After agreeing that the mission was possible in principle, Kraft went to his mission planners and flight directors to determine whether they and their teams could be ready within the projected tight schedule. "My head was abuzz with the things we'd have to do," remembered Kraft. "But it was one hell of a challenge." On August 9, Gilruth, Low, Kraft and Slayton flew to Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where they briefed NASA managers including Wernher von Braun and Rocco Petrone on the planned mission. On August 14, they, along with the Huntsville group, traveled to NASA Headquarters in Washington, D. C. to brief Deputy Administrator Thomas O. Paine. In turn, Paine recommended the mission to Administrator James E. Webb, who gave Kraft and his colleagues the authority to begin preparations for the mission.

On Christmas Eve, 1968, Apollo 8 went into orbit around the Moon. Only ten years earlier, Kraft had joined Gilruth's newly founded Space Task Group. Now, the two men sat together in Mission Control, reflecting on how far they had come. Around them, the room was filled with cheers, but Kraft and Gilruth celebrated more quietly. "It was glorious pandemonium, and through the mist in my own eyes, I saw Bob Gilruth wiping at his and hoping that no one saw him crying. I put my hand on his arm and squeezed. [ ] He lifted my hand from his arm and shook it strongly. There were no words from either of us. The lumps in our throats held them back." Kraft again found himself a spectator during the landing of Apollo 11, which he viewed from Mission Control, sitting with Gilruth and George Low. He played a more active role in events during the unfolding of the Apollo 13 crisis. Called into Mission Control by Gene Kranz almost immediately after the accident, he led discussions on whether Apollo 13 should attempt a direct abort, or go around the Moon and return on a free trajectory; the latter option was taken.

Many Apollo engineers, later to become top managers, considered Kraft to have been one of the best managers in the program. He personally hand picked and trained an entire generation of NASA flight directors, including John Hodge, Glynn Lunney and Gene Kranz, the last of whom referred to Kraft as "The Teacher". In the words of the space historians Murray and Cox, Kraft "set the tone for one of the most striking features of Flight Operations: unquestioning trust—not of superiors by subordinates, but the other way around." As Lunney reflected in 1998:

Blockquote | "He instilled a sense of what was right, what was wrong, what you had to do, how good you had to be, and those standards that he kind of inbred into everybody, by his own example, and by what he did with us, continue today. The Control Center today  is a reflection of Chris Kraft."

In 1969, Kraft was named deputy director of the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC). On January 14, 1972, he became the director of the MSC, replacing Gilruth, for whom Kraft had worked since his arrival at Langley in 1945. Space commentator Anthony Young has described Kraft as a "superb successor" to Gilruth, second only to him in the history of center directors. Kraft was eligible to retire in the early 1980s, but he chose not to take the option. He remained as center director in the status of a "reemployed annuitant," receiving his government pension, but still employed by NASA. In 1981 he had been involved in a conflict with the NASA Administrator and other top officials over the conduct of the STS 2 mission, and over issues relating to NASA organization and management. This contributed to making his position at NASA more tenuous. In April 1982, Kraft made what newspaper reports called a "surprise announcement" that he intended to step down as center director at the end of the year. He denied that his resignation had anything to do with the threatened possibility of Johnson Space Center losing its leading role in Space Shuttle operations or in the development of NASA's Space Station Freedom. It criticized the effect of safety changes made by NASA after the Challenger disaster, saying that they had "created a safety environment that is duplicative and expensive." Fundamental to the report was the idea that the Space Shuttle had become "a mature and reliable system  about as safe as today's technology will provide." The report was controversial even at the time of its publication. John Pike, space policy director for the Federation of American Scientists, commented that "the Kraft report is a recipe for disaster. They are basically saying dismantle the safety and quality assurance mechanisms set in place after the Challenger accident." NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel took issue with the report, saying in May 1995 that "the assumption that the Space Shuttle systems are now 'mature' smacks of a complacency which may lead to serious mishaps." Nonetheless, NASA accepted the recommendations of the report, and in November 1995, responsibility for shuttle operations was turned over to the United Space Alliance. Nine years later, the Kraft report was again criticized, this time by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) as part of its consideration of the organizational and cultural causes of the Columbia disaster. "The report," it said, "characterized the Space Shuttle program in a way that the Board judges to be at odds with the realities of the Shuttle Program."

In 2001, Kraft published his autobiography, Flight: My Life in Mission Control. It dealt with his life up until the end of the Apollo program, only briefly mentioning his time as center director in the epilogue. The New York Times review space writer Henry S. F. Cooper Jr. called it a "highly readable memoir", while the Kirkus Review summed it up as a "[s]nappy, highly detailed account of  20th century America's most dramatic technological achievement." Reviewers almost unanimously commented on the outspokenness of Kraft's storytelling, and his readiness to personally criticize those with whom he had disagreed. Cooper noted that Kraft "pull[s] no punches about some of [his colleagues'] shortcomings",

In 1950, Kraft married Betty Anne Kraft ( Turnbull) whom he had met in high school. They had two children, Gordon and Kristi Anne. In his autobiography, Kraft acknowledged the sacrifices that his family had made as a result of his work for NASA, saying that "I was  more of a remote authority figure to Gordon and Kristi Anne than a typical American father." Kraft was an Episcopalian, serving as a lay reader at his local church. During the sixties, the Kraft family was deeply involved in church activities: Betty Anne taught Sunday school and served on the altar guild; Gordon was an acolyte; and Kristi Anne sang in the choir. In addition to his duties as a lay reader, Kraft spent some time teaching a class in adult Bible study. As he recalled:

"I lacked the fundamentalist verve and drove people away when I tried too hard to relate the early church to more modern interpretations. It was hard not to be modern when I spent my working days sending men into space." Kraft had been an avid golfer ever since he was introduced to the game in the 1940s by his friend and NASA colleague Sig Sjoberg. He cited the good golfing as a reason for staying in Houston after his retirement.

Kraft received numerous awards and honors for his work. At the end of the Mercury program, he was invited to attend a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, where he received the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal from President John F. Kennedy and Administrator of NASA James E. Webb. "None of us have many days in our lives like that one," Kraft remembered. The NASA Distinguished Service Medal was awarded to him twice in 1969 (for Apollo 8 and Apollo 11), in 1981 for the Space Shuttle, and in 1982 as a special award. He won the Distinguished Citizen Award, given to him by the city of Hampton, Virginia in 1966; the John J. Montgomery Award in 1963; and the Goddard Memorial Trophy, awarded by the National Space Club, In 1999, he was awarded the National Space Trophy from the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation, which 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". He was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame, on October 1, 2016. The Mission Control Center at the Johnson Space Center was renamed the Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center in his honor in 2011, and Kraft Elementary School in Hampton, Virginia, near his hometown, was named for him.

Kraft was portrayed by Stephen Root in the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. He has been interviewed in numerous documentaries about the space program, including Apollo 13: To the Edge and Back (PBS). In 2018, he was portrayed in the film First Man by J. D. Evermore. In 2020, he was portrayed in the mini series The Right Stuff by Eric Ladin. In the 2019 BBC Proms live performance of their album The Race for Space, a few days after Kraft's death, Public Service Broadcasting dedicated their performance of "Go!" to Kraft's memory.