Apollo 13 and Leadership
On April 10th James “Jim” Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise embarked on one of the most historic missions in NASA history. Three days later on April 13th, while performing a routine stir on the O2 tanks, the Apollo 13 mission suffered a terrible electrical malfunction and was forced to make an emergency return mission. The movie has forever contributed two phrases to our everyday cultural vocabulary, “Houston we have a problem”, communicated by Jim Lovell, and “Failure is not an option”, voiced by Gene Kranz.
A Leader
Gene Kranz, the legendary flight controller for NASA during the Apollo 13 mission motivated his team and executed careful planning, extraordinary leadership skills, and also was able to
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To compare with the Vroom-Jago Leadership model Gene utilized most of his decisions Group decision styles (the group makes the decision; you as the leader are just another team member). Group (G) decisions were made throughout the film, acted equally alongside his co-workers in “working the problem” by helping calculate trajectories and formulate solutions. Also, the Path-Goal model was visually displayed when Gene came up to the chalkboard, drew the course for the Apollo 13 crew from the moon’s atmosphere back to earth.
Successful Leadership
Successful leadership was realized after Gene Kranz and the Houston controlled was informed of the explosion on the Apollo spacecraft. At this point in the film he begins his journey into transformational leadership. Through intellectual stimulation he helps his team rethink rational ways oxygen can be saved using items available on the spacecraft. Also, he reminds them of the contingent reward by reminding each team member of the goal to save the astronauts lives and take control of the situation by mapping out what must be done to receive the outcome they desire.
Key Decision One of the most key and important decisions in the film is when Gene makes the call on shutting down the two of the suspected “leaking” fuel cells. To make this decision he uses certain questions from the diagnostic procedure, and must consider by shutting these down they lose the ability to land on the moon, altering the
One of the important points for leaders in critical situations is the fact that one must remain optimistic and believe in themselves and the team to achieve the set goal. Without the personal conviction managers will not be able to motivate the team to develop new solutions, to continue working and foster collaboration. This leadership style is known as transformational leadership. (LaFasto 2001). After “Houston we have a problem” was transmitted from Apollo 13, Gene Kranz stayed optimistic all time and was convinced that they can manage to get the crew home safely and alive. He believed that Mission Control could overcome all the difficulties occurred. “We are not loosing these men“. One of the other sentences Gene Kranz said “failure is not an option“ emphasizes, that he believed in the goal and was willing to pull out all the stops to get the crew home (Apollo 13 1995).
NonCommissioned Officers are the backbone of the Marine Corps. Each leader is very different from the other. Some Marines enjoy being a corporal only because of the increase in rank and pay. A few become the tactless leaders junior Marines try to avoid. Fortunately, many others strive to become the leader that other Marines wish to emulate. They know what it means to be a good leader. Those Marines have the traits of a leader and they get to know their Marines
The Apollo 13 mission was a significant historical event, because of the dangerous repercussions that followed the explosion of the oxygen tank on Apollo 13. The story in which the astronauts Lovell, Swigert, and Haise surviving these errors during the flight is truly incredible. In the movie Apollo 13, the creators depicted most of the events involving the crew’s adventure to and from space quite accurately. Although creating most events successfully the creators of Apollo 13 failed in many regards when it came to the creation of the plans the crew used to survive, and the small details that were missed, involving the crew in the process of flying the space shuttle and surviving the accident.
While the movie provides the dramatic fuel to entertain anyone that can understand the danger the men faced, the real story lies behind the successful failure that was Apollo 13 in the three astronauts and NASA experts. Within the storyline a multitude of examples of the leadership skills, theories, and traits that were all called upon in desperation to successfully bring the astronauts home can be found. The real success is seen within the leadership attributes of Apollo Commander Jim Lovell, Flight Director Gene Kranz, and the astronauts and NASA experts as two groups, as they each worked in separate ways to find solutions to the various problems that plagued this mission.
Without the leaders who took control, prioritize and communicated the goals of everyone involved in safely getting Jim, Jack and Fred home. Gene strong resolve of “we have not lost and American in space, and we’re not going to lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option” Gene believed that and how he handled the situation made everyone at mission control believe it also. Everyone at ground control had one goal and they worked together to make sure that that goal was
I think the main struggles he faces throughout the novel are jealously and internal guilt. Throughout the book, Gene struggles with his envy towards his best friend Finny. Even after Phineas breaks his leg, Gene is jealous of the way Finny still manages to have motivation and how Finny pretends that nothing even happened. Although Gene feels resentment for the duration of the novel, after causing Finny’s fall off the tree, he starts to feel major guilt inside of him. Even though Finny does not know that Gene jounced the tree for most of the book, I think that made Gene feel even more guilty. In the end, Gene ends up not only losing his struggle, but also losing his best friend. Gene realizes that all along, he thought Finny was the enemy, but if he had acted like Finny, like he always compared himself to be, he would have realized that the antagonists are maybe not always the enemy after all. So after Finny passed, Gene never killed anyone during World War II, and never saw anyone as an enemy, just as Finny would have
Gene’s envy and intimidation of Finny caused great internal turmoil with himself throughout the story. He went through and identity crisis because he was unsure of who he was and who he wanted to be. In the story, Gene said, “I went along, as I always did, with any new invention of Finny’s” (Knowles 117). He always went along with everything Finny proposed or did; this gave him little to no time to discover who he really was. This lack of personal discovery lead him to doubt who he was. This internal conflict within Gene also affected his personal actions. Before Finny’s fall, Gene said, “I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb” (Knowles
The space crew was scared not knowing what to do or what would happen, their lives were at risk. They didn’t now the possibilities or the outcomes, as they sat in the rocket waiting to see what would happen, while they still went spinning around the moon.
Millions of people all over the world watched as Apollo 11 was launched from Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969. Two hours after it left Earth, the rocket Lunar Command and Landing Modules separated from the main rocket, and three days later the crew entered lunar orbit. A day later the landing section separated from the Lunar Command Module and landed on the moon.
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In the middle of their flight to the moon the oxygen tank exploded. “The pressure in No. 1 oxygen tank continued to drift downward; passing psi, now heading to 200 psi” This quote is special to this part because now they have to find out a way to make the tanks stop losing oxygen, without giving up. When the crew first figured out that the first oxygen tank has exploded. “Completely new procedures had to be written and tested before being passed up to the crew”. There appear to be many important quotes, but this one is important because the crew had to trust NASA that their tests were right and didn’t mess up on anything. The crew was in a position to get out of the LM before exploding. “Three hours later the crew left the Lunar Module Aquarius and then splashed down gently in the Pacific Ocean near Samoa”. This quote means a lot because they were in a position to complete their mission even though they didn’t go to the moon. This was a great article because they never gave up to get back to
On April 13, 1970, NASA's Mission Control heard the five words that no control center ever wants to hear: "We've got a problem here." Jack Swigert, an astronaut aboard the Apollo 13 aircraft, reported the problem of broken down oxygen tanks to the Houston Control Center, less than two days after its takeoff on April 11th. Those at the Control Center in Houston were unsure what had happened to the spacecraft, but knew that some sort of explosion had occurred. This so-called explosion sent Apollo 13 spinning away from the Earth at 2,000 miles per hour, 75 percent of the way to the moon. In order to get the astronauts back to the
He doesn't let guilt or jealousy lead him down a long-term path of destruction. Gene recognizes his shortcomings, insecurities and internal conflicts. He views his friendship with Finny as a huge and meaningful stepping stone in his own life. The internal and external conflicts have a great influence with Gene’s transformation, since he is getting influenced by what he did with Finny and with Finny alone. This relates to the major theme because, the theme of the novel is basically competition or rebellion which transforms Gene and
Observing the interactions between the engineers at the mission control center, one could see that they are an important aspect of the journey. They have to react accordingly and calm when they get into a tough situation. One could tell that they clearly get frustrated but when a crisis occurs during the mission, they go on to try and solve the problem, even if it’s frustrating at first. My opinion of Gene Kranz is that he wants to get work down and he wants to get work done right away. He puts a lot of pressure on his peers, but I think he is a great leader. He doesn’t put pressure on them to be mean, but he does it because he needs them to work fast and efficient. I personally would want to buy into his ideas and solutions, because he did help resolve a lot of the problems that went on with the Apollo 13 mission. The issue they needed to solve that was similar to our project was when they had to come up with a solution to fix the oxygen leakage. They had to use the materials they knew the men in
Many traits seem to be synonymous with leadership such as intelligence, personality, supervisor ability, etc. However, managers and true leaders support their decisions and realize that there is no exact step-by-step process to the answer. To compare with the Vroom-Jago Leadership model Gene utilized most of his decisions Group decision styles (the group makes the decision; you as the leader are just another team member). Group (G) decisions were made throughout the film, acted equally alongside his co-workers in "working the problem" by helping calculate trajectories and formulate solutions. Also, the Path-Goal model was visually displayed when Gene came up to the chalkboard, drew the course for the Apollo 13 crew from the moon’s atmosphere back to earth.