Foreword

Robert C. Seamans, Jr., has written a uniquely comprehensive report of the Apollo Manned Lunar Landing Program. It goes well beyond the normal reporting that we have seen of the events leading to and results achieved in that major national space program. Bob Seamans has relied on his very personal involvement, responsibility, and experience during his long tenure in the top leadership of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), first as an Associate Administrator and then as the Agency’s Deputy Administrator, from less than two years after NASA was formed until January 1968, to present a detailed timeline of the key elements of NASA’s extensive analyses, decisions, activities, capabilities, and responsibilities that led to the creation of the program and its outstanding success. In fact, this manuscript presents the most detailed and specific assembly of personal and archival records to identify the comments, events, meetings, decisions, and actions taken in the initiation and conduct of the program. This detailed report demonstrates NASA’s broad capabilities and, despite his unassuming presentation, also shows Bob Seamans’s strong contributions. Both of those demonstrated characteristics have always been clear to all of us who worked in NASA.

The report reviews the major Mercury and then Gemini precursors for the Apollo mission program and its development and mission sequence. But, very importantly, it describes the major and often complex deliberations that encouraged inputs from the broad range of informed internal Agency individuals in order to arrive at the resulting actions taken; it recognizes differences among their various views, including even sensitivities within the leadership of the Agency, and it acknowledges NASA’s relationships with the President and key executive branch personnel, as well as the very important and often complex relationships with members of Congress. The process of writing this book was searching and comprehensive. The achievement of the world’s first manned lunar landings, after the earlier Mercury and Gemini programs played catch-up to match the Soviet Union’s advanced position, clearly established the United States’ preeminence in space. Early in the book, Bob describes an extended meeting in the White House in which the President’s views and those of Mr. Webb were seriously discussed. Bob tells how, through Apollo’s lunar landing, NASA clearly met both President Kennedy’s goal to overcome the Soviets’ leadership image and James Webb’s goal to use Apollo as a major part of his program to demonstrate U.S. technological preeminence.

Apparent throughout this report is the outstanding competence and capability of the NASA organiza tion in its Centers and Headquarters. The Agency’s leadership was clearly committed to providing the budget and other requirements to achieve the clearly defined program goals. The major progress in establishing the mission flight system elements and facility infrastructure was started under NASA’s first Administrator, Keith Glennan, well before the Apollo mission was defined. This report shows the major new capabilities that were required in this still-new organization to achieve this objective—operational Field Centers; entirely new facility capabilities; the technology development and equipment base; the organizational strengths, including the integrated management systems; and overall in-house competence in all of the necessary areas even while the Agency relied heavily on significant outside contractor and university capabilities to implement many of the required functions. Ultimate responsibility always remained within the NASA organization. The lunar landing was an outstanding achievement that met all its goals.

A clear requirement in achieving this success was establishing the fully integrated management structure and leadership for the various elements of the program. That task obviously received major attention from NASA’s top leadership, with strong emphasis on management clearly enunciated by Administrator James Webb. His focus on management was always very clear to me, especially when he said to me, “How do I make a technical man like you understand the importance of management?” He then made me a special advisory Assistant to the Administrator while I was still serving in my technical program roles. In this new position, I analyzed the need for changes in procedures and functional alignments in Headquarters. I was then appointed the Associate Administrator for Organization and Management, combining the various Agency management functions, as Bob Seamans describes. But, well before that, with the initiation of the Apollo program, there was the need to integrate the activities of the Centers and bring strong in-house NASA people together into the newly established Office of Manned Space Flight. The need to identify a strong leader was urgent. During extensive consideration by Webb, Hugh Dryden, and Seamans of various possible candidates for that position, Bob Seamans suggested and then recruited Brainerd Holmes of RCA as that leader. When he left, George Mueller was identified by Bob Seamans and was the clear leader of Apollo through its mission achievement. As the program proceeded and as conditions changed, it is apparent through-out this report that there was a continuing emphasis on management and its changing requirements.

Clearly indicated throughout this report are the very important free and open discussions and objective analysis of perceived issues, concerns, and alternative approaches, including various mission concepts, among all of the competent technical and management members of the internal staff, even if those discussions might indicate differences of opinion regarding planned approaches. This interchange was certainly strongly encouraged and pursued by Bob Seamans. The most dramatic example of that open view and the examination of alternative approaches and suggestions was the result of Bob Seamans’s actions in responding to the persistent recommendations from John Houbolt that a lunar orbit rendezvous approach was superior to the then-preferred direct lunar landing flight plans even after extensive analyses had led to that preference. Bob’s willingness to consider recommendations that clashed with previously approved plans led to further examination and decision in favor of what became John’s very successful lunar orbit approach for the mission. This process succeeded in spite of the repeated pessimism of President Kennedy’s Science Advisor about the concept and even his pessimism about the lunar landing mission more generally.

Yes, there were tragic and painful events during this period of great progress, and these are also described in Bob’s report. Certainly, the assassination of President Kennedy on 22 November 1963, only six days after he had visited the launch facilities and walked around the Saturn I launch vehicle, was devastating to the entire United States, including all of us who had been involved in fulfilling his commitment to spaceflight goals. Bob Seamans’s discussion of that terrible event and of his meeting and correspondence with Jacqueline Kennedy shortly after the funeral service depicts one of the warmest, most emotional situations imaginable. That period will never be forgotten. In addition, Bob reports comprehensively on the Apollo fire during ground testing in January 1967 in which Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed. It was a shocking and demoralizing hit to all of us in the space program and to the nation at large. President Johnson’s decision to allow NASA to investigate the accident internally led to a quick, thorough, very solid report that produced the explanation for the accident and identified ready solutions in its operations. Bob Seamans reviews that entire situation in depth, but the recollection of that terrible event is still painful.

All of this very detailed information, upbeat as well as terrible, is conveyed by Bob Seamans in his factual presentation of the sequence of major activities involved and is amplified by his personal and professional anecdotes. This is truly a unique and important record of the Apollo program’s achievements and the United States’ demonstrated capability and technological preeminence. I hope this capability will be advanced broadly as we move forward with innovative and beneficial aeronautics, space exploration, space science, and applications activities. This book adds substantially to our knowledge base about the Apollo program’s conduct and accomplishments and provides a firm path for further progress.

As one who worked closely with Robert C. Seamans during those challenging years, even though I was notdirectly responsible for any Apollo activities, I must add that I benefited and learned greatly from that association. And I have especially appreciated the warm friendship that developed then and has continued since.

—Harold B. Finger, NASA Associate Administrator, Office of Organization and Management, 1967–69