The Apollo Tradition An Object Lesson for the Management of Large-scale Technological Endeavors

Abstract

The Apollo project which landed a team of American astronauts on the Moon is generally considered as one of the greatest technological endeavors in the history of mankind. But in order to achieve this, a managerial effort, no less prodigious than the technological one, was required, and is here described. There were many aspects to the successful management, and often these had to be learnt during the project, and more important still, they had to be changed a experience accumulated. In this review, demonstrating dearly the interdisciplinary nature of the management process, the authors evaluate amongst other considerations, the political support, funding, manpower and industrial team management, the visibility of the project and the basic question of reliability of the millions of components. Finally, Apollo is compared with other, successful and unsuccessful, projects. The review was written whilst Dr Robert C. Seamans Jr held the position of Administrator, US Energy Research and Development Administration.