Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
It is the film's thesis in four words: a room of people in white shirts and narrow ties deciding that the problem will be solved because it has to be. That it was written for the movie hardly matters; it captured how Mission Control really worked so well that the real flight director borrowed it for his autobiography, and it has been on office walls and team-talk slides ever since.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for Apollo 13Show the scene
With Apollo 13 crippled and the Moon landing lost, Mission Control in Houston has to work out how to bring three men home in a ship that is dying around them. Flight director Gene Kranz gathers his controllers, refuses to plan for anything less than a safe return, and charges them with getting the astronauts back: "Failure is not an option." The real Kranz never said it during the mission. The phrase came from flight dynamics officer Jerry Bostick, describing the team's attitude to the screenwriters, and Kranz later used it as the title of his memoir.
Sources (2)
- Wikipedia: Apollo 13 (film)PlotReference checked
- Wikipedia: Apollo 13 (film)Reception / taglinesReference checked
Context reviewed
