# CHAPTER 9

# MANAGEMENT

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Biddle, Wayne. "Two Faces of Catastrophe." Air and
Space/Smithsonian. 5 (August/September 1990): 46-49. Discusses
the different ways in which NASA handled the Apollo 204 fire in
1967 and the Challenger disaster in 1986. Biddle concludes that
the comparison shows NASA had become more fragile and lost direction
following the Moon landing.

Bilstein, Roger E. Stages to Saturn: A Technological History
of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles. Washington, DC: National
Aeronautics and Space Administration SP-4206, 1980. This thorough
and well-written book gives a detailed but highly readable account
of the enormously complex process whereby the Marshall Space Flight
Center under the direction of Wernher von Braun developed the
launch vehicles used in the Apollo program ultimately to send
twelve humans to the Moon. Based on exhaustive research and equipped
with extensive bibliographic references, this book comes as close
to being a definitive history of the Saturn rocket program as
is ever likely to appear. Moreover, it is not simply a technical
history but covers the decision-making process that lay behind
the technological development, making it not just a history of
hardware development but also an analysis of technical management
and organization. As one reviewer said in Air University Review,
"This volume is just one of many excellent histories produced
by government and contract historians for the NASA History Office....The
book is enhanced by many excellent appendixes and charts, and
it has a thorough essay on sources and documentation....Author
Roger Bilstein...gracefully wends his way through a maze of technical
documentation to reveal the important themes of his story; rarely
has such a nuts-and-bolts tale been so gracefully told."

Chapman, Richard L. Project Management in NASA: The System
and the Men. Washington, DC: NASA SP-324, 1973. Based on almost
150 interviews and contributions by NASA officials, this slight
and somewhat uncritical study does provide a useful look at NASA's
project management system that contributed significantly to the
success of the Apollo program. Although far from a definitive
treatment, this volume provides useful information on management
within NASA during the Apollo era, even though it does not focus
specifically on Apollo. It covers especially the Office of Space
Science and Applications, the Office of Advanced Research and
Technology, and field center organization. Equipped with useful
if dated and selected reference notes and bibliography.

Goldstein, Stanley H. Reaching for the Stars: The Story of
Astronaut Training and the Lunar Landing. New York: Praeger,
1987. This is a detailed account of the development and management
of the astronaut training program.

Houbold, John C. "Lunar Rendezvous." International
Science and Technology. 14 (February 1963): 62-65. Discusses
the author's role in the development and promotion of lunar rendezvous,
the method ultimately chosen for reaching the Moon in the Apollo
program.

Kraft, Christopher C., et al. "Flexible Yet Disciplined Mission
Planning." Astro- nautics and Aeronautics. 8 (March
1970): 84-88. Four managers at the Manned Spacecraft Center discuss
the evolution of mission planning for Apollo since the inception
of the program. They stress the need for flexibility in the development
program and the capacity to react to major readjustments in the
program.

Lambright, W. Henry. "James E. Webb: A Dominant Force in
20th Century Public Administration." Public Administration
Review. 53 (March/April 1993): 95-99. This discussion of the
life and management practices of the NASA administrator during
the bulk of the Apollo period provides an important perspective
on the ways NASA reached President Kennedy's goals for Apollo.

______. "James Webb and the Uses of Administrative Power."
In Doig, James W. and Hargrove, Erwin C. Editors. Leadership
and Innovation: A Biographical Perspective on Entrepreneurs in
Government. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1987, pp. 174-203. This lengthy analysis of Webb's administrative
practices furnishes a biographical perspective on the way he managed
NASA during the Apollo years. It discusses his triadic division
of labor among the three top managers--himself, his deputy Hugh
L. Dryden, and Associate Administrator Robert C. Seamans, Jr.;
Webb's political astuteness; his struggles with the Air Force;
his management during the Apollo 204 fire; and his attempts to
"sell" post-Apollo programs in the post-fire political
environment.

Levine, Arnold S. Managing NASA in the Apollo Era. Washington,
DC: NASA SP-4102, 1982. A narrative account of NASA from its origins
through 1969, this book analyzes key administrative decisions,
contracting, personnel, the budgetary process, headquarters organization,
relations with the Department of Defense, and long-range planning.

Logsdon, John M. "Selecting the Way to the Moon: The Choice
of the Lunar Orbital Rendezvous Mode." Aerospace Historian.
18 (Summer, 1971): 63-70. In this well-written article, Logsdon
heralds the landing on the Moon as "one of the greatest technological
accomplishments of western civilization" and points to the
selection of the lunar orbital rendezvous (LOR) as one of the
key decisions in successfully carrying out the Apollo mission.
He shows that while few NASA managers were initially convinced
of the merits of this approach, a few individuals within NASA
convinced the remaining leaders in the space agency to support
this approach, resulting in "one of the most important choices
in the history of technology."

Low, George M. The Apollo Program: A Midstream Appraisal.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1966. Edwin A.
Link Lecture Series, Smithsonian Publication no. 4693. This 22-page
reprint of a lecture by the deputy director of the Manned Spacecraft
Center assesses the Apollo program from a management perspective
at a time when even Gemini was incomplete. He devotes considerable
attention to astronaut training and the problems of flight control.
Useful for a sense of where the program was almost 5 years after
President Kennedy's proclamation of the intent to land an American
on the Moon and more than three years before the actual landing.

McCurdy, Howard E. Inside NASA: High Technology and Organizational
Change in the U.S. Space Program. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, New Series in NASA History, 1993. While not
devoted exclusively to the Apollo period, this study of NASA's
organizational culture over the course of its entire history includes
coverage of that culture during the Apollo period. Based on archival
sources and extensive interviews, McCurdy covers such topics as
the Apollo fire, Apollo 13, the lunar orbit rendezvous, approaches
to contracting, the relationships between NASA's centers and the
headquarters, and much else. He attributes NASA's relative success
during the Apollo period to a number of factors including extensive
testing, technical capabilities maintained within the agency,
and a willingness to accept risk and failure. Then he shows how
with age, the agency's performance tended to decline. An important
and provocative study with which, naturally, not everyone will
agree.

Mueller, George E. "Apollo Actions in Preparation for the
Next Manned Flight." Astronautics and Aeronautics.
5 (August 1967): 28-33. Reviews the program from materials to
management, comments on the Apollo 204 fire and the changes made
in response to it, and states that an open-ended 1968 mission
will be a major milestone in the program.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. What Made Apollo
a Success? Washington, DC: NASA SP-287, 1971. Reprint of eight
articles from Astronautics and Aeronautics, March 1970,
by such key Apollo program managers as George M. Low, Kenneth
S. Kleinknecht, Eugene F. Kranz, and Howard W. Tindall, Jr. Discusses
topics ranging from design principles to mission planning.

Perrow, Charles. Complex Organizations. New York: Random
House, 1979. A general study, this work investigates the management
of sophisticated organizations such as NASA and offers some general
insights into the way in which the Shuttle program was handled.

Roberts, Christopher B. "NASA and the Loss of Space Policy
Leadership." Technology in Society. 12 (1990): 139-55.
As the title suggests, this article discusses NASA's inability
since Apollo to obtain adequate funding for programs it wants
to pursue. The author argues that the reason for this failure
lie in the "dominance of bureaucratic goals over program
goals." While not specifically focused on Apollo, this discussion
does cover the reasons for its success as background for the succeeding
failures.

Roland, Alex. "Barnstorming in Space: The Rise and Fall of
the Romantic Era of Spaceflight, 1957-1986." In Byerly, Radford,
Jr. Editor. Space Policy Reconsid- ered. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1989. Pp. 33-52. This interesting article says little directly
about Apollo but argues that its success led NASA to develop a
long- range plan in 1969 that it continued to follow for the next
two decades. "Believing that only manned spaceflight sells
before Congress and the public, [NASA, he argues] has never given
proper exposure to its unmanned programs. NASA's truly spectacular
achievements in space science, earth resources monitoring, geodesy,
and weather analysis have gone comparatively unnoticed."
Roland believes that NASA should invest its limited budgets since
Apollo in less expensive but more productive automated missions
instead of ones carrying humans. Not everyone will agree with
this assessment, but it represents one knowledgeable scholars
perception of the effect of Apollo on NASA management.

Seamans, Robert C., Jr. "The National Commitment to Apollo."
Astronautics and Aeronautics. 7 (August 1969): 32-48. The
former deputy administrator of NASA presents an insider's view
of the history of the Apollo program dating back to the Eisenhower
administration and discusses how its architects got the program
started and its managers carried out its goals. He concludes that
management needed continually to monitor the program's elements,
formulate alternate plans when difficulties arose, ensure good
vertical communication in both directions, remain flexible, and
retain capable, dedicated people for "both making and executing
decisions." Discusses the "Apollo Effect," which
inspired national debates on the efficacy of such an approach
to achieving other national goals.

______. "Action and Reaction: Part 2, Lessons Learned."
Astronautics and Aeronautics. 7 (September 1969): 44-52.
Although bearing a different title, this is part 2 of the article
above in which the author draws management lessons from the Apollo
program in the areas of allocating resources, managing actions,
dealing with overlapping authority, competition in space, and
cooperation.

______. "Action and Reaction--Conclusion: The Space Program
and the Needs of the Nation." Astronautics and Aeronautics.
7 (October 1969): 62-75. The conclusion of the three-part article,
this segment proposes national priorities for research and development,
then measures the space program against them.

Seamans, Robert C., Jr., and Ordway, Frederick I., III. "Lessons
of Apollo for Large- Scale Technology." In Durant, Frederick
C., III. Editor. Between Sputnik and the Shuttle: New Perspectives
on American Astronautics. AAS History Series, 3. San Diego:
Univelt, 1981. Pp. 241-87. This article by the former deputy administrator
of NASA during most of the Apollo period and a knowledgeable writer
on space subjects first appeared in Interdisciplinary Science
Reviews (London) in late 1977. It discussed the Apollo program
in terms of its "object lesson[s] for the management of large-scale
technological endeavors." Among the lessons the two authors
derived from NASA's impressive achievements in the program as
well as its problems such as the Apollo 204 fire were that without
support and "a solid use of relevant technology" no
large-scale program could succeed. Also crucial was the need to
offer benefits to significant numbers of people, whether those
benefits were tangible or intangible, such as national security
or pride. Finally, Apollo and its successor, Skylab, showed that
triumphs in one venture did not necessarily translate into support
for future ventures, as NASA found out when funding shrank in
the late 1960s and the 1970s in the wake of other national commitments.

Stuhlinger, Ernst, and Ordway, Frederick I., III. Wernher von
Braun: Crusader for Space. Issued in two separate, unnumbered
volumes: An Illustrated Memoir and A Biographical Memoir.
Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company, 1994. The illustrated
volume consists of 132 pages of photographs and plates plus a
biographical sketch and some appendices on von Braun's awards
and honors, honorary degrees, lectures, and selected works. The
much longer biographical memoir covers his life, with one chapter
on Apollo, presented from the perspective of the authors, who
were both co-workers under von Braun, Stuhlinger having worked
under the German rocket developer and manager from 1943 to 1970
and Ordway from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. Contains a list
of references but no specific reference notes, in character with
its billing as a memoir rather than a critical, scholarly study.
Provides a number of insights into von Braun's inimitable management
style.

Tompkins, Phillip K. Organizational Communication Imperatives:
Lessons of the Space Program. Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing
Company, 1993. Although sloppily written in places, this useful
study examines the leadership and management at the Marshall Space
Flight Center going back to the Apollo period. It discusses Wernher
von Braun's authoritarian but effective leadership style and carries
the analysis forward through the Shuttle Challenger accident in
1986 and the changes that followed.

Turner, Sarah H. "Maxime Faget and the Space Shuttle."
NASA Activities. (November/December 1990): 22. This brief
biographical sketch of the designer of the Mercury, Gemini, and
Apollo spacecraft also covers his involvement in Shuttle design.
Not specifically concerned with management matters, this article
is nevertheless useful in providing a context for the understanding
of Apollo management decisions.

______. "Sam Phillips: One who Led us to the Moon."
NASA Activities. (May/June 1990): 18-19. This biographical
sketch of the Air Force general from the Minuteman program who
became deputy director and then director of the Apollo program
provides more of an overview of his life than an assessment of
his managerial contributions to Apollo, but it does offer some
perspectives to use in conjunction with true management studies.

United States Congress. House Committee on Science and Aeronautics.
Apollo Program Management: Staff Study for the Subcommittee
on NASA Oversight of the Committee on Science and Astronautics,
U.S. House of Representatives, Ninety-first Congress, First Session.
Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1969. Less the study
indicated in its title than a collection of summaries of presentations
made to the Subcommittee on NASA Oversight by five key NASA contractors
and the three principal NASA centers involved in the Apollo program--the
Kennedy Space Center, the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston,
and the Marshall Space Flight Center--this is nevertheless a highly
useful compilation if hardly a critical one. It includes appendices
containing correspondence with industrial managers and Manned
Space Flight Center directors plus a bibliography of key Apollo
documents and program directives. As such, this volume provides
a good deal of insight into the ways in which Apollo program management
operated, although obviously other sources need to be consulted
as well.

United States Congress. House Committee on Science and Aeronautics.
NASA Lunar Orbit Rendezvous Decision. Hearing, Eighty-seventh
Congress, Second Session, July 12, 1962. Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office, 1962. This 11-page committee print contains primarily
a briefing by D. Brainerd Holmes, director of the Office of Manned
Space Flight, to Congress on the decision to employ a lunar orbit
rendezvous rather than an Earth orbit rendezvous as the mode for
reaching the Moon. Also included are comments by Clyde Bothmer
and Joseph F. Shea plus answers to queries by congressmen.

United States Congress. House Committee on Science and Aeronautics.
Pacing Systems of the Apollo Program: Staff Study for the Subcommittee
on NASA Oversight of the Committee on Science and Astronautics,
U.S. House of Representatives. Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office, 1965. This committee print analyzed the lunar
excursion module and the command and service modules plus their
critical subsystems. It concluded that NASA management was "employing
its resources effectively in" solving problems with these
pacing systems. The analysis itself comprises only 9 pages of
the print, the remainder consisting of testimony by NASA officials
under questioning by subcommittee members. Includes 44 figures
illustrating the points made by NASA managers.

Webb, James E. Space Age Management: The Large-Scale Approach.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969. This book is an attempt by the second
NASA administrator, who presided over the agency during most of
the Apollo era, to distill what he learned from this experience
for use in other large-scale efforts. He discusses such issues
as doctrines and practices, the environment in large-scale endeavors,
how to safeguard the democratic process in such efforts, the impact
on society, leadership as a factor, organizational structure,
and the executive at work.

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