4 ms·
Space flight is essentially a systems engineering enterprise. You live or die by your systems engineering expertise. The fire forced NASA to become a systems e
by GlenTheMachine 9y ago
Space flight is essentially a systems engineering enterprise. You live or die by your systems engineering expertise.
The fire forced NASA to become a systems engineering center, probably the best such team ever assembled. The fact that they were able to land on the moon on schedule, with no schedule margin, given where they were in 1966, is astounding.
- maxxxxx 9y agoIt's interesting that today they can't even build a rocket like the SLS from already tested components in a comparable time.
- jpk 9y agoTo be fair, the political will today isn't comparable to what it was during the Apollo program.
- sithadmin 9y agoAlso, way, way more of the design and production process is farmed out to aerospace/defense contractors than it was during the early space program. The extra layers of bureaucracy between teams is a big problem, and the profit motives of the contractors almost always influences solution design and delivery in a negative way.
- maxxxxx 9y agoTotally agree. Still pretty sad.
- avar 9y agoThere's way more political will today, it's just directed at maintaining jobs programs in perpetuity instead of at a worthwhile goal like going to the moon.
- monocasa 9y agoIt might be (at least in part) because they're trying to build a hodge podge rocket out of existing .gov contracts rather than a new cohesive system for an unwavering goal.
- Hextinium 9y agoI personally think that they have taken the defensive and with every political flip-flop have stopped dumping money into new projects for a single presidency and then dealing with them getting ditched next. To an approach that is building a bit at a time and not exactly telling the rest of the government so that they don't keep getting projects dumped.
- pjmorris 9y agoI do think that the systems engineering culture led to the program's success, but that it was in place before the fire. For example, Joe Shea, manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office before, and for some time after, the fire, had come from a systems engineering role in missile development [0]. [0] 'Apollo: Race to the Moon', Murray, Cox.
- setpatchaddress 9y agoThe Murray, Cox book really is the best book on this topic. Criminal that it's out of print.
- kqr2 9y agoI believe it was republished in 2004 with a new forward by the authors under the shorter title Apollo. It is available as an ebook: https://smile.amazon.com/Apollo-Catherine-Bly-Cox-ebook/dp/B003KN3Z4M https://smile.amazon.com/Apollo-Catherine-Bly-Cox-ebook/dp/B...
- maxxxxx 9y agoThere is a ton of really detailed technical books about Apollo and the Space Shuttle. Have people stopped writing this kind of book or are there any on the market that look at more modern technology not just from the people's angle but go into the tech? I was deeply disappointed by the Steve Jobs book because it didn't really give any insight how Jobs influenced product development. I would love to read about how the iphone was started and how it was developed and what technical decisions they made. I don't'really care about the people that much.