Also, later on STS-95, he became the then-oldest person to fly in space (at age 77 in 1998) and still the oldest person to orbit the Earth. So, he did okay for the son of an Ohio plumber.
Stranger
Someone needs to point out that Slayton wasn’t alone in the Astronaut Office. Although he was the boss, his deputy Shepard probably had just as much or more influence over who got the plum assignments. He was the gatekeeper and the one most astronauts had to make their case to. As noted above, he wasn’t shy about using that influence for his own benefit.
Kranz’ book Failure is Not an Option is one of the most fascinating things I have ever read. I picked it up at the Kennedy Space Center on my honeymoon in '06. Recommended reading for anyone who’s ever wondered about any of this. I walked away from that book with the impression that astronauts and their attendant colleagues are more god than human.
I seem to recall reading the “Flight Director has the final say” was initiated early, when Chis Kraft was on the helm. Kraft was later promoted up and away, and was subject to his very own “rule” numerous times.
And who wants to be “in charge” at a given position, if they aren’t really in charge, anyway?
Where it makes sense, is the constraints of time. Engineers and similar types will argue pretty much indefinitely over the best way to do something, given infinite time. Except in an emergency, one thing they don’t have is unlimited time. Somebody has to make a decision, at some point, AND have the authority to be able to make it stick. Too many cooks spoil the broth as they say, and I suspect they discovered exactly that - that second-guessing and cliques and doing things behind the scenes and over-ruling subordinates due to petty BS just creates even more trouble.
In the military leadership roles, it was stressed that (sometimes) any decision is better than no decision. Doing nothing (like “Failure”) is not an option.
I agree overall with the thrust of your post. But I’ll argue this tidbit a smidgen.
Doing nothing deliberately is a completely legitimate decision and often the correct one.
Doing nothing through analysis paralysis, plain indecision, group buck-passing, worry about HHQ second-guessing, cowardice, etc., is not an option. As you say.
This is encapsulated pithily in a phrase I overheard a Major counseling a young Lieutenant: “Better decisive than right.”
You don’t have the time luxury of gathering perfect information to make the completely correct answer. Your job is to decide. When the time comes, decide on the basis of the best information you have and trust the people executing that decision to be able to make it work or adapt and overcome.
One of the key maxims of Gene Kranz and his fellow flight directors was not to make a decision until you had to. Never back yourself into a corner. As much as you can, keep your options open.
In addition to Kranz’s Failure is Not an Option, Christopher Kraft’s Flight: My Life in Mission Control is also a good read.They are something of a natural pair. Kraft’s book doesn’t have the glamour of the famous Apollo incidents, but provides the story of how mission control got to be what it is from the man who did it.
Well sure, but in the training scenarios it’s a given that “doing nothing” (while at least technically an option) is not really an option, this is the whole point.
Somebody needs to make a decision, the clock is ticking, bad news does age like fine wine, etc. There’s no room for leaders who go into vapor lock or flip out, that’s what the training is for, some people by temperament are definitely more suited to this.
Probably the core things is the difference between making a a decision and “doing something”.
For flight directors this was the key point - they made decisions not to do anything right now. That is difficult for humans under pressure. The desire to do something is high.
The three most famous incidents in Apollo history exemplify this.
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Most of the way to the lunar surface, Apollo 11 starts getting 1202 and 1201 alarms from the guidance computer. These are serious errors indicating that the computer was unable to complete its tasks in the required time and had restarted. Does the flight director “do something” and call an abort?
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Apollo 12, 52 seconds into the flight, the entire command module power glitches, the guidance platform is gone, telemetry is a garbled mess, so mission control have no idea what is happening. Nor do the astronauts. As we famously know, they were hit by lightning - twice. What does the flight director do? Does he call an immediate abort?
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And of course, Apollo 13. Once they work out that the spacecraft is mortally wounded, and has a limited time to maintain life - do they immediately try to use the LM engines to turn the craft around and get back to Earth asap? Or do they get the spacecraft as safe as possible and start working though the options?
Gene Kranz is often quoted in Apollo 13 - “Lets not make things worse by guessing’”
History shows that in each case, “doing something” right now would have been the bad option. It takes balls of tungsten to ride out the panic and desire to “do something” - make a decision right now, as opposed to taking the time to understand exactly what the situation is. In the case of Apollo 13, every decision made was taken in a manner that closed off as few options as possible. In the end they actually delayed the return of the spacecraft somewhat in order to provide themselves with enough time to plan the process of restarting the CSM and re-entry.
@Francis_Vaughan nailed it. Don’t confuse deciding timely to do nothing with not deciding.
There’s an old saying in professional aviation:
Q: What’s the first response step of any serious emergency?
A: Wind the clock. It keeps your fingers busy until your brain calms down enough to make a good plan.
But they did “do something”. They continued with their mission.
If I was confused you might have a point. “First thing, do no harm” is a given in that business. That isn’t really under discussion, the pressure arises because in these situations the clock is ticking.
I suspect we’re talking past one another a bit.
I’m speaking to generalized decision-making in the normal course of the passage of time and ever-changing circumstances. Some of which changes are (probably) adverse.
You seem to be speaking to responding specifically to an obviously adverse surprise that must be ameliorated somehow, once we figure out what “somehow” is. And in a situation where the passage of time is itself a deteriorating aspect of the problem.
IOW, we’re both right; we’re just answering different questions. 
In that particular case, Flight Director Gerry Griffin asked EECOM Engineer John Aaron for input, leading to the famous “Switch SCE to AUX” command:
[> GRIFFIN (FLIGHT) - How’s it looking, EECOM? (…) EECOM, what do you see?
AARON (EECOM) - Flight, EECOM. Try SCE to AUX.
GRIFFIN (FLIGHT) - Say again? SCE to AUX?
AARON (EECOM) - AUX.
GRIFFIN (FLIGHT) - AUX.
AARON (EECOM) - Auxiliary, FLIGHT.
GRIFFIN (FLIGHT) - SCE to AUX. CAPCOM. What panel? EECOM?](Apollo 12 Lightning Strike Incident)
Since the vehicle telemetry was still showing good flight dynamics (not tumbling) it wasn’t necessary to call an immediate abort, although had Aaron not been familiar with that unique failure even (it had come up in simulation just a couple weeks prior to launch) Griffin would have had to call for an abort before they made orbit.
Stranger
What I always thought remarkable about Apollo 12 wasn’t the lightning strike / “SCE to AUX” drama, but the fact that they let them continue the mission when it wasn’t certain the parachutes would work at splashdown.
The worry was that the charges that fired the chutes might have been affected by the lightning strike, but there was no way to check. So on the logic that they might lose the crew regardless of when they re-entered, they opted to continue the full mission and hope. That decision was completely logical, then and now. But I think today it would go differently (at NASA or any other American entity) just because of “optics”. They would fear context-free headlines like, “NASA continues mission despite safety concerns”.
To some extent, NASA has itself to blame for that issue because of mistakes during the shuttle era. But I’m glad Conrad and Bean made it to the surface on 12.
At any point after liftoff, a failure of the parachutes to deploy would have doomed the crew regardless of when they returned.
Stranger
True, but I don’t think the lightning strike was part of the normal flight plan.
Obviously, there was no choice but to buy the overall risk that the parachutes would work in the Apollo system. They managed that risk to some extent by having three, which was one more than necessary, and indeed Apollo 15 had one chute fail. But to my knowledge, NASA never faced an Apollo 12-like scenario in which the efficacy of the chutes was in question due to a post launch incident.
Edit: There’s a lot to be learned about risk management in reading about the early space program. Another interesting (to me) tidbit is about the trajectory they used to go to the moon. The first few missions left Earth orbit on a free-return. So even if the big engine on the CM failed they would get back to Earth. I believe it was Apollo 12 that was the first to use a hybrid trajectory. A couple of hours after the initial burn out of Earth orbit (trans lunar injection), they performed another burn to take them off the free return and onto a quicker path to the moon.
The logic was elegant: By performing that second burn you validated the CM engine was functional and could be used again if necessary.
But unfortunately for Apollo 13, their emergency happened AFTER the second burn to exit the free return trajectory.
On the other hand, it was quite fortunate that it happened after docking with the Lunar Module and before they entered lunar orbit. If it had occurred outside of that part of the mission, the loss of Command Module power would have doomed the crew.
Stranger
Yes, and what this thread makes me think about is just how much risk remained after all of the redundancies and mission rules intended to mitigate it. Many of the people in decision making roles at the time came from the flight test community, and they were very familiar with what happened when things went wrong. But the difference was they weren’t off in the Mojave, they were doing it with the whole world watching. It must have been an incredibly stressful burden.
Another example would be Apollo 10. They went into lunar orbit, detached the LM from the CM, did some of the descent and then separated the LM sections to return to orbit. Although I think their LM was too heavy to land, I seem to recall reading about some managers questioning the wisdom of this mission. By doing all of those maneuvers you expose the crew to 95% of the risk of a full mission - why not wait until a suitable LM is available and let them try to land?
For that matter, sending Apollo 8 into lunar orbit without a LM exposed them to a lot of risk. But if they had suffered an Apollo 13 type of scenario, at least they would have still been on a free return path. In any case, the public relations value of that flight seems to have mattered more, and thankfully it worked out well.