As a flight director during NASA’s Apollo missions, Gerry Griffin led several lunar landings. He helped bring the crew of Apollo 13 safely back to Earth. Later, he directed Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Through these experiences, Griffin learned the value of teamwork in spaceflight—during the dynamic moments that can make or break a successful launch or landing, you absolutely have to trust your colleagues in the trenches. It made the difference.” This really happened in 1969. Griffin’s “Gold Team” in Mission Control led the launch of the Apollo 12 mission, when the ascending Saturn V rocket triggered lightning as it soared through electrically charged clouds.
The lightning strike disrupted the Apollo spacecraft’s electrical systems, which flight controllers and astronaut Alan Bean scrambled to reset. The rocket and spacecraft survived, going on to complete the second lunar landing. During the Apollo era, Griffin said, contractors were brought in to supplement NASA’s workforce.
But the positions in Mission Control remained NASA employees, and that was important because the space agency ultimately had responsibility—success or failure—for what happened during its missions. After he left NASA, that began to change. Griffin doesn’t want to denigrate contractors.
They play a critical role in extending the agency’s expertise for subsystems built for the space agency. But over time, often as a way to increase headcount at the space agency without raising the NASA civil service count, critical jobs were outsourced to contractors.
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