Failure Is Not an Option is a presentation on the History Channel documenting the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

' space program with insights from the flight engineers, project managers, flight controllers, astronauts, and others involved inside the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Speakers include Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz

Gene Kranz

Kranz's book, titled Failure Is Not an Option, published five years after the movie, stated, "...a creed that we all lived by: "Failure is not an option."" . The book has three index references for the phrase, but none of those give any indication of the phrase being apocryphal...

, Jim Lovell

Jim Lovell

James "Jim" Arthur Lovell, Jr., is a former NASA astronaut and a retired captain in the United States Navy, most famous as the commander of the Apollo 13 mission, which suffered a critical failure en route to the Moon but was brought back safely to Earth by the efforts of the crew and mission...

, Jerry Bostick, Ed Fendell, Gene Cernan, John Llewellen, John Aaron

John Aaron

John W. Aaron is a former NASA engineer, and was a flight controller during the Apollo program. He is widely credited with saving the Apollo 12 mission when it was struck by lightning shortly after liftoff and played an important role during the Apollo 13 crisis, earning him the highly...

, Glynn Lunney

Glynn Lunney

Glynn S. Lunney is a retired NASA engineer. An employee of NASA since its foundation in 1958, Lunney was a flight director during the Gemini and Apollo programs, and was on duty during historic events such as the Apollo 11 lunar ascent and the pivotal hours of the Apollo 13 crisis...

, Wally Schirra

Wally Schirra

Walter Marty Schirra, Jr. was an American test pilot, United States Navy officer, and one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts chosen for the Project Mercury, America's effort to put humans in space. He is the only person to fly in all of America's first three space programs...

, and Gerry Griffin. It takes the viewer from the Launch of Sputnik through the moon missions. It was produced in 2003.

Failure Is Not An Option is also the title of an autobiographical book written by Gene Kranz

Gene Kranz

Kranz's book, titled Failure Is Not an Option, published five years after the movie, stated, "...a creed that we all lived by: "Failure is not an option."" . The book has three index references for the phrase, but none of those give any indication of the phrase being apocryphal...

 and, although he is often attributed with having spoken those words during the Apollo 13

Apollo 13

Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the American Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon. The craft was launched on April 11, 1970, at 13:13 CST. The landing was aborted after an oxygen tank exploded two days later, crippling the service module upon which the Command...

 mission, he did not. As to the origin of the phrase, the following story was given, citing an email by Apollo 13 FDO Flight Controller Jerry Bostick:

"As far as the expression 'Failure is not an option', you are correct that Kranz never used that term. In preparation for the movie, the script writers, Al Reinart and Bill Broyles, came down to Clear Lake to interview me on "What are the people in Mission Control really like?" One of their questions was "Weren't there times when everybody, or at least a few people, just panicked?" My answer was "No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution." I immediately sensed that Bill Broyles wanted to leave and assumed that he was bored with the interview. Only months later did I learn that when they got in their car to leave, he started screaming, "That's it! That's the tag line for the whole movie, Failure is not an option. Now we just have to figure out who to have say it." Of course, they gave it to the Kranz character, and the rest is history."