A Ringside View of the Moon Shots, Part 8: The Voice of Apollo

Jack King (left), the first chief of Public Information for NASA's Launch Operations Center, checks the settings on his console in the Launch Control Center firing room at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on November 14, 1969, in preparation to deliver countdown commentary for the Apollo 12 launch. King served as manager of press operations for 12 years, spanning the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. During that time, King was the "voice of launch control" for virtually every human mission from Gemini 4 to Apollo 15. (NASA photograph via Kennedy Space Center/Flickr)

"Voice of Apollo 11" always stuck to the script, and never showboated

By Steve Milner
Contributing Writer

Every good story needs a good storyteller, and Jack King was that guy. You might remember his New-England-accented voice while he was narrating Apollo 11’s final launch preparations and its fiery liftoff. He was the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) public information director and turned over commentary chores to a Houston counterpart when the space vehicle cleared its launch tower. And unlike his two predecessors, John “Shorty” Powers during the Mercury Program, and Paul Haney during the Gemini program, Jack, by NASA’s design, didn’t become a personality in his own right. Powers used to say he was the eighth Mercury astronaut, was a guest on popular television programs and developed his own persona. Haney pretty much did some of the same things, which didn’t sit well with NASA Headquarters public affairs boss, Julien Scheer, who had been a seasoned, no-nonsense newspaper journalist who saw Power’s and Haney’s “performances” as self-promoting, unnecessary distractions from space missions. He eventually fired both of them, with Haney’s unexpected termination only weeks away from voicing commentary for Houston’s portion of the Apollo 11 mission.

According to Jack’s on-line obituary in 1985, his son, “Chip” King, was a U.S. Navy pilot who flew the longest F-14 Tomcat combat mission in history, 1,800 miles at that time, for an attack in Afghanistan on October 2001, after 9/11. I didn’t know “Chip,” but I worked with his Mom at KSC.

Jack King, the first Chief of Public Information for NASA's Launch Operations Center, briefs the media on the lunar roving vehicle (LRV) prior to the launch of Apollo 15 during a press conference in the Operations and Checkout Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in March 1971. (NASA photograph via Kennedy Space Center/Flickr)

I always had good dealings with Jack and his KSC public information staff, whom I supported on a daily basis in my regular job. Jack stuck to the countdown facts, as did his Houston counterparts during missions. He also was very helpful when I was co-writing a free-lance book, published in 1966, before working at the spaceport. Its title was Cape Kennedy, America’s Spaceport. In those days the Cape had been renamed to honor the late President Kennedy. And it regained its original name from the Sixteenth Century, Cape Canaveral, after the Kennedy family approved this change in 1973.

Editor's Note: In addition to serving as public affairs officer for 17 years at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Steve Milner was also a public affairs contractor with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at Cape Canaveral during the manned Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs.