Category The Secret of Apollo

The air force’s R&D methods trace back to the creation of aircraft in the first decade of the twentieth century. Because the army did not create an arsenal to develop aircraft, contractual relationships between the Army Air Corps and the aircraft industry governed military aircraft development. The Army Sig­nal Corps ordered its first aircraft from the Wright brothers in 1908 using an incentive contract that awarded higher fees for a higher-speed aircraft.2 Army evaluation and testing of aircraft began near the Wrights’ plant in Dayton, Ohio. These facilities soon grew into the Air Corps’s primary complex for air­craft development and testing.

While European powers rapidly developed aircraft for military purposes, the U. S. Army kept aircraft development a low priority. World War I broke American lethargy; in 1915, Congress created the National Advisory Com­mittee for Aeronautics (NACA) to promote aircraft research, evaluation, and development for the military and the aircraft industry. Engineers at NACA’s facility at Langley Field in Hampton, Virginia, concentrated on the testing and evaluation of aerodynamic structures and aircraft performance, using new wind-tunnel facilities to test fuselages, engine cowlings, propeller designs, and pilot-aircraft controllability. The United States mass-produced a few Euro­pean designs during the war but rapidly dismantled most of its capability after the war’s end.3

Between World War I and World War II, the Army Air Corps fostered air­craft development at a leisurely pace. Typically the engineering and procure­ment divisions at Wright Field in Dayton contracted with industry for aircraft, which officers, civilians, and operational commands then tested. Army Ord­nance and the Army Signal Corps developed the armaments and electronic gear that Wright Field personnel then integrated into the aircraft. Wright Field procured the components, then modified them as necessary to inte­grate them into the aircraft. Funding constraints were more important than schedule considerations, leading to a rather deliberate development and test­ing program commonly described as the ‘‘fly before you buy’’ concept.4

After the Air Corps released design specifications, contractors designed, built, and delivered a prototype known as the X-model to the Air Corps. The Air Corps tested this model, making recommendations for changes. After completion of X-model testing, the contractor made the recommended design changes, then developed the Y-model production prototype. The Air Corps then ran another series of tests and made further design recommendations. After approval of the Y-model, the contractor released the production draw­ings and built the required number of aircraft.5

From the mid-1920s, Wright Field assigned a project engineer from its Engineering Division to monitor all aircraft design and development. By the late 1930s, Wright Field assigned a project officer to each aircraft in develop­ment, along with the project engineer and a small supporting staff. For ex­ample, in the Bombardment Branch before World War II, Col. Donald Putt and five other officers managed six aircraft projects with the assistance of a few secretaries and Wright Field engineers assigned to tasks as needed. Be-

‘‘Fly before you buy’’ sequential development, typical of the Army Air Corps in the 1920s and 1930s. Adapted from Benjamin N. Bellis, L/Col USAF Office DCS/Systems, ‘‘The Requirements for Configuration Management During Concurrency,” in AFSC Management Conference, Air Force Systems Command, Andrews Air Force Base, Washington, D. C., AFHRA Microfilm 26254, 5-24-2.

cause of the slow pace of development, the limited role of the government in testing and approving designs, and the fixed-price contracting method typi­cal before the war, this small staff sufficed. Project officers focused on aircraft safety and on finding design weaknesses.6

As war loomed in 1940, Congress legalized negotiated cost-plus-fixed-fee (CPFF) production contracts. With a flood of funding and a goal of build­ing 50,000 aircraft, the Air Corps immediately signed letters of intent to get design and production moving, with cost negotiations deferred until later. Under the prior competitive bidding process, procurement officers did not need to understand the financial details of a manufacturers’ bid, because the manufacturer — not the government-lost money if it underbid. However, under CPFF arrangements, cost overruns were the government’s problem. The Air Corps Procurement Branch grew rapidly to collect information and negotiate with contractors to assess the validity of cost charges and determine a fair profit.7

Unless Congress extended the authority to negotiate contracts after the war, the military’s capability to control industry and influence scientists and their new technologies would dramatically decrease. Fortunately for the mili­tary, the Procurement Act of 1947 extended the military’s wartime authority and tools, including the formerly controversial negotiated contract mecha­nism, into peacetime.

The importance of the 1947 act should not be underestimated, for it per­petuated government use of CPFF contracts. This had several significant rami­fications. First, the CPFF contract reduced risk for industry. Where high risk was inherent, as it was in R&D, this drew profit-making corporations and uni­versities into government-run activities. Second, to reduce government risk, CPFF contracts required a government bureaucracy sufficient to monitor con­tractors. Third, CPFF contracts turned attention from cost concerns to tech­nical issues. This “performance first’’ attitude led to higher costs but also to a faster pace of technical innovation and occasionally to radical technologi­cal change. Last, the CPFF contract provided some military officers with the means to promote technological innovation along with their own careers.8

Negotiated contracts formed the basis for Cold War contractual relation­ships between government, industry, and academia. Government officials be­came both partners and controllers of the aircraft industry in a way unimag­ined before the war, with expanded procurement organizations that made the federal government a formidable negotiator. To fully exploit their extended authority to create new weapons, however, the Army Air Forces would also have to solidify its relationships with scientists and engineers.

JPL’s entry into the space program came through an alliance with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) on the Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missile program. In 1955 and 1956, JPL worked with ABMA on a backup radio guidance system and the reentry test vehicle for Jupiter. The radio guidance work gave JPL the funding and opportunity to improve radio communica­tions between ground systems and flight vehicles, later evolving into JPL’s Deep Space Network. The reentry test vehicle was a spacecraft in all but name. ABMA and JPL performed reentry test flights between September 1956 and August 1957. The Army Ordnance commander, Gen. John Medaris, ordered the remaining rocket hardware to be put into storage, hoping to launch a spacecraft.34 For the moment, Medaris had to wait; the navy’s Vanguard was to launch the first U. S. spacecraft. However, the failure of Vanguard’s first test flight in December 1957 paved the way for the army.35

With public pressure building in the wake of Sputnik, President Eisenhower gave the army the green light to unleash Wernher von Braun’s ABMA team and Pickering’s engineers at JPL. Pickering seized the opportunity. By partici­pating in the space race, Pickering could return JPL to engineering research instead of the drudgery of weapon systems development. In a brief discussion immediately preceding a meeting to assign responsibilities for the orbital at­tempt, Pickering convinced Medaris to assign JPL the spacecraft and tracking network. JPL engineers quickly designed a high-speed stage, eventually des­ignated Explorer 1, consisting of clusters of Sergeant solid motors and a cylin­drical can that contained telemetry equipment and scientific experiments.36

JPL engineers used processes developed on Sergeant and the reentry test vehicle. By the summer of 1956, ABMA and JPL had tested rocket motors in small vacuum chambers to ensure that they would operate in space. Engineers expanded these tests to examine the Explorer spacecraft’s capacity to with­stand large temperature variations in a vacuum, such as it would encounter when in the Sun or in the shade of the Earth. JPL engineers replaced vac­uum tubes with transistors, repackaged electronic components, and tested the entire package with random-vibration tests. In addition, they used re­dundancy to increase the chances for success if one component failed. JPL’s ground telemetry systems were ready. When in January 1958 the ABMA’s Jupiter rose from Cape Canaveral, JPL’s Explorer 1 spacecraft and ground sys­tems functioned perfectly, returning scientific data leading to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts and confirming that micrometeorites were not a problem.37

ABMA and JPL followed Explorer 1 with a series of spacecraft in the Ex­plorer and Pioneer series. Because the primary goal was to compete in a prestige race with the Soviets, engineers hurriedly lashed together existing technologies to jury-rig space missions. Explorer 2-Explorer 6, Pioneer 3, and Pioneer 4 had a mixed record, with several successes and several failures. Be­cause of the urgency of the space race, neither the army nor Congress ques­tioned this record. Spacecraft failures occurred out of sight, unlike spectacu­lar rocket explosions and their unpleasant publicity. JPL engineers, used to the army mentality of firing many test rounds, thought of these early space­craft as test rounds and were not overly concerned with achieving a perfect record. They rushed into space and reverted to the earlier Corporal mentality of small project groups using informal methods.38

Despite the exploits of ABMA and JPL, the army lost its battle against the air force and the new NASA for a significant space role. On January 1, 1959, President Eisenhower transferred JPL to NASA, and the ABMA soon there­after.39

For NASA, JPL proposed a new program for lunar and planetary explo­ration known as Vega. Vega was to develop a third-stage rocket and spacecraft similar to Explorer’s high-speed stage and payload. Its spacecraft design was far more complex than Explorer’s because it needed to operate for months in transit to the Moon, Venus, or Mars. The Vega spacecraft was to feature important new technologies, including solar panels, three-axis attitude stabi­lization, and a flight computer. Just as after Corporal, when JPL managers and engineers planned the Sergeant missile as a ‘‘systems job,’’ JPL engineers and managers carefully planned for Vega, succeeding the hastily built Explorer and Pioneer spacecraft.40

JPL Director Pickering selected Clifford Cummings as Vega project direc­tor. Cummings had worked under Pickering on Corporal and Sergeant, de­veloping analytic tools. He believed that better maintenance required better analysis of training programs and costs, supply networks and logistics, test equipment, and vehicle design. Vocal and outspoken, Cummings believed that scientists and engineers could work out difficult problems through work­ing groups and a thorough test program.41

Cummings and his deputy, James Burke, organized Vega’s test program using lessons from Corporal, Sergeant, and Explorer. He and Burke planned a mockup spacecraft for structural and mechanical tests as well as an engineer­ing model for environmental and electrical tests. Only after the engineering model passed these tests would JPL build the flight spacecraft. Vega featured a new ‘‘systems test’’ that would simulate the flight sequence and events with all of the spacecraft subsystems working together. Engineers were to record test results on specialized forms for later analysis. After engineers assembled and tested the spacecraft in this manner, they would then perform the same tests in a large vacuum chamber, then in a vibration test facility, and finally at Cape Canaveral prior to launch.42

Plans for Vega did not come to fruition because NASA Administrator Keith Glennan canceled the program in December 1959 to avoid duplication of the air force’s previously secret Agena upper stage. Glennan decided to use the air force’s Atlas-Agena for NASA’s early missions instead of Vega. Never again would JPL work on the rocket designs upon which it had made its reputation. In place of Vega, JPL acquired NASA’s robotic lunar and planetary missions, which became the Ranger, Surveyor, and Mariner programs. Time spent plan­ning for Vega was not completely wasted, as its design studies and test plans carried over to Ranger.43

As was typical for other large projects in Europe and the United States, ELDO managers distributed tasks to a number of organizations. ELDO funded the British Ministry of Aviation for the first stage. The ministry, in turn, chan­neled funds to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, which contracted with De – Havillands for most of the stage and with Rolls Royce for the engines. De – Havillands subcontracted with Sperry Gyroscope for the guidance package. ELDO funded the French Space Agency for the Coralie second stage. The agency, in turn, contracted with the French Army Laboratory for Ballistic and Aerodynamic Research for second stage development and the government’s National Company for Study and Construction of Aviation Engines for en­gines.26

West Germany, which had no space organization prior to the ELDO dis­cussions, initially placed its space activities under the German Ministry for

Atomic and Water Power. In August 1962 the Germans formed the govern­ment-owned Space Research Company to study space activities, under the guidance of the German Commission for Space Research. The Ministry for Atomic and Water Power expanded to become the Ministry for Scientific Research, under the Ministry for Education and Science. ELDO delegated the Ministry for Education and Science as the national agency to oversee the Europa I third stage, and this agency in turn contracted with the newly created industrial consortium Arbeitsgemeinschaft Satelitentrager (ASAT). ASAT was an uneasy—and according to some, involuntary-alliance between two major German aerospace firms, Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm (MBB) and Entwicklungsring Nord Raumfahrttechnik (ERNO). Similar unwieldy ar­rangements held for the Italian, Belgian, and Dutch portions of ELDO.27

Complexity of the organizational structure contributed to ELDO’s difficul­ties but was not the most significant problem. The difficulty was that work­ing groups, usually private companies and government-industry consortia, did not report to ELDO but to their national governments. These, in turn, reported to the ELDO Secretariat in Paris. Because ELDO distributed funds to the national governments, which distributed them using their own pro­cedures, the industrial and engineering groups took their orders from the national governments, not the ELDO Secretariat. This ‘‘indirect contracting’’ structure interposed an extra layer of bureaucracy and gave that layer final authority.28

The Secretariat had no authority to force governments or contractors to make changes; it could only make suggestions to the national governments. Nor could the Secretariat take legal action, both because contractual authority lay with the national governments and because the contracts themselves were vaguely worded. As late as 1972, the Europa II Project Review Commission stated, ‘‘There is no clear definition of responsibilities within the ELDO orga­nisation, nor between ELDO staff and ELDO contractors.’’29

Uncertainty about roles and responsibilities led to two kinds of situations. When the national agency was ‘‘strongly structured,’’ as in Britain and France, it led to ‘‘a complete effacement of the Secretariat’s role.’’ On the other hand, when the national agency was weak, as in the case of Germany’s new organi­zations, it led to ‘‘confusion in the minds of firms about the technical respon­sibilities of the Secretariat and those of the national agency.’’ In some cases the Secretariat ‘‘did not respect the responsibilities of the national agencies’’ and undermined their authority.30

Having unclear and changing requirements did not help. The 1972 review commission concluded, ‘‘Europa II seems in a continuous state of research and development with major changes made from one launch to the next almost independently of whether the previous flight objectives have been achieved.’’ No single, complete specification existed for the entire vehicle. Without clear specifications, engineers did not have clear goals for defining telemetry mea­surements, for limiting the weight of the vehicle, or for ensuring quality and redundancy across the project. The end result was ‘‘a launch vehicle with little design coherence, and posing complicated integration and operational problems.’’31

Because the British and French designed their first and second stages before ELDO existed, they ensured that their government organizations determined methods and standards for their own stages. ELDO itself had no authority to impose standards. This led to inconsistent and incomplete specifications, documentation, quality standards, and procedures. The Secretariat had no quality organization until 1970, relying upon national teams to enforce good manufacturing practices, use high-quality components, and adhere to testing procedures. At best, the result was components, processes, and documenta­tion of variable quality. In practice, variable quality led to flight failures.32

With only a small engineering staff, the Secretariat’s ability to analyze problems was also limited. Before ELDO came into official existence, the Pre­paratory Group relied on engineers supplied by the national governments. After February 1964, the Secretariat built a small engineering staff in the Tech­nical Directorate. Often the engineering staff ‘‘endeavored to promote the solution of technical problems, but in some cases important solutions [were] refused on budgetary grounds.’’ Without access to necessary information, adequate staff, or authority to make changes, the Technical Directorate per­formed little systems engineering. Unless contractors resolved interface prob­lems among themselves, the problems remained unresolved.33

Problems lingered in this way because of poor communication. No single location existed for project documentation. Nor did ELDO define what docu­mentation should be produced. Project reviewers noted that ‘‘while certain documents were available, there was nothing systematic about this.’’34 For communication across national boundaries, barriers of language, industrial competition, and national factionalism took precedence. The most extreme case was with the German third stage contractor ASAT, which had ‘‘total dis­interest in the IGS [Inertial Guidance System-built by British contractor Marconi], a refusal to attend acceptance or bench integration tests, a lack of cooperation in defining strict working procedures, a total refusal of respon­sibilities.’’ The ELDO Secretariat failed to bridge the gap between ASAT and Marconi. Communications between manufacturing and testing were poor, as were communications between the launch and engineering teams. In the case of the guidance systems, Marconi ‘‘built a wall between users and manufac­turers, a wall which was accepted, if not liked, by everybody and which ELDO, among others, did not make much effort to destroy.’’35

The ELDO Secretariat’s financial and scheduling groups were better staffed than its technical teams, but the problems were similar. ELDO created a Proj­ect Management Directorate, which used tools such as the Program Evalua­tion and Review Technique (PERT) to track three levels of schedules: the con­tractors, national programs, and the ELDO Secretariat.36 Unfortunately, the Secretariat had no authority to force timely or accurate reporting. Analysts la­mented, ‘‘The reports of the member states are always late.’’37 Even when the Secretariat could acquire timely data, it could do little more than watch the schedule slip and remind offenders that they were deviating from the plan. Tools and organizations to report schedule slips and cost overruns were of little use to personnel in the Secretariat, other than to remind them of their lack of power with respect to the national governments and contractors.

By design, ELDO’s member states created a weak organization. ELDO’s Secretariat had few staff members and little authority to do anything but watch events happen and try to coordinate its unruly member states and con­tractors. When troubles came-and come they did-the Secretariat tried to coordinate and plan around the problems. What it could not do was manage or control them.

During World War II, scientists vastly increased the fighting capability of both Allied and Axis powers. The atomic bomb, radar, jet fighters, ballistic missiles, and operations research methods applied to fighter and bomber tactics all had significant impact on the war. Recognizing the contributions of scientists, Gen. H. H. ‘‘Hap’’ Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces, advocated maintaining the partnership between military officers and scientists after the war’s end. His plans led to the creation of several organizations that cemented the partnership between technically minded Army Air Forces officers and the community of scientific and technological researchers.

In 1944, Arnold met briefly with eminent aerodynamicist Theodore von Karman of the California Institute of Technology and asked him to assemble a group of scientists to evaluate German capabilities and study the Army Air Forces’ postwar future. Among the group’s recommendations were the estab­lishment of a high-level staff position for R&D, a permanent board of scien­tists to advise the Army Air Forces, and better means to educate Army Air Forces officers in science and technology.9 The Army Air Forces acted first to maintain the services of von Karman and his scientific friends. Supported by General Arnold, the Army Air Forces established the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) in June 1946 as a semipermanent adviser to the staff.10

Arnold recognized that establishing an external board of scientists would do little to change the Army Air Forces unless he also created internal posi­tions to act as bridges and advocates for scientific ideas. He established the position of scientific liaison in the air staff and elevated his protege Col. Bernard Schriever into the position in 1946. Schriever had known Arnold since 1933, when as a reserve officer Schriever was a bomber pilot and main­tenance officer under Arnold. Schriever’s mother became a close friend of Arnold’s wife, leading to a lifelong friendship with the Arnold family. Arnold encouraged Schriever to take a full commission, which Schriever did prior to World War II. Schriever served with distinction in the Pacific, and his work in logistics brought him into contact with procurement officers at Wright Field. After the war, Arnold moved him to the Pentagon. As scientific liai­son, Schriever helped create the air force’s R&D infrastructure, including test facilities at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles as well as research centers in Tennessee and near Boston. He worked closely with the SAB, an association that would have far-reaching conse­quences.11

Despite the creation of a research office in Air Materiel Command (AMC),12 an increasing number of military officers believed that AMC did not pursue R&D with sufficient vigor. The controversy revolved around the conflict be­tween technologically oriented officers who promoted the ‘‘air force of the future’’ and the traditional pilots who focused on the ‘‘air force of the present.’’ Advocates of the future air force had powerful allies in General Arnold and in Lt. General Donald Putt, a longtime aircraft procurement officer from Wright Field. Putt had been a student of von Karman at Caltech and in the late 1940s was director of R&D in the air force headquarters staff.13

Putt and an energetic group of colonels under him discussed how to im­prove air force R&D, which in their opinion languished in AMC. As bud­gets shrank after the war, AMC gave high priority to maintaining operational forces, leading to R&D budget cuts. This concerned members of the SAB as well as Putt’s allies. Putt and his colonels plotted how the SAB could aid their cause.14

Capitalizing on an upcoming meeting of the SAB in the spring of 1949, Putt asked the chief of the Air Staff, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, to speak to the board. Vandenberg agreed, but only if Putt would write his speech. This was the opportunity that Putt and his proteges sought. Putt asked one of his allies, SAB military secretary Col. Ted Walkowicz, to write the speech. Walkowicz included ‘‘a request of the Board to study the Air Force organization to see what could be done to increase the effectiveness of Air Force Research and Development.’’ Putt ‘‘rather doubted that Vandenberg would make that re­quest.’’ Fortunately for Putt, Vandenberg at the last minute backed out and had his deputy, Gen. Muir Fairchild, appear before the board. Fairchild, an advocate of R&D, read the speech all the way through, including the request. Putt had already warned SAB Chairman von Karman what was coming, so von Karman quickly accepted the request.15

Putt and his colonels knew that this was only the first step in the upcoming fight. They also had to ensure that the report would be read. Putt’s group carefully picked the SAB committee to include members that had credibility in the air force. They selected as chairman Louis Ridenour, well known for his work on radar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Radiation Laboratory. More important was the inclusion of James Doolittle, the famed air force bomber pilot and pioneer aviator who was also Vandenberg’s close friend. Putt persuaded Doolittle to go on a duck hunting trip with Vandenberg after Ridenour and von Karman presented the study results to the Air Staff. Putt later commented that ‘‘this worked perfectly,’’ gaining the chief’s ear and favor. Putt’s group also coordinated a separate air force review to assess the results of the scientific committee. After hand-picking its members as well and ensuring coordination with Ridenour’s group, Putt noted that ‘‘strangely enough, they both came out with the same recommendations.’’16

The Ridenour Report charted the air force’s course over the next few years. It recommended the creation of a new command for R&D, a new graduate study program in the air force to educate officers in technical matters, and im­proved career paths for technical officers. The report also recommended the creation of a new general staff position for R&D separated from logistics and production, and a centralized accounting system to better track R&D expen­ditures. After a few months of internal debate, General Fairchild approved the creation of Air Research and Development Command (ARDC), separating the R&D functions from AMC. Along with ARDC, Fairchild approved creation of a new Air Staff position, the deputy chief of staff, development (DCS/D).17

With the official establishment of ARDC and the DCS/D on January 23, 1950, the air force completed the development of its first organizations to cement ties between technically minded military officers and scientific and technological researchers. These new organizations, which also included the RAND Corporation,18 the Research and Development Board (RDB),19 and the SAB, would in theory make the fruits of scientific and technological research available to the air force. The RDB and SAB coordinated air force efforts with the help of the scientists and engineers, similar to how the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development had operated, but RAND was a new kind of organization, a ‘‘think tank.’’ ARDC and the DCS/D would attempt to centralize and control the air force’s R&D efforts. They would soon find that for large projects, they would have to centralize authority around the project, instead of the technical groups of AMC or ARDC.

JPL’s lunar and planetary programs developed under very different organi­zational regimes. In the lunar program, Cliff Cummings and James Burke ran the Ranger program on an academic model; Burke coordinated the ac­tivities of the subsystem engineers who worked under the technical division chiefs. JPL contracted with Hughes Aircraft Company (HAC) to design and build the Surveyor lunar lander. Surveyor lacked support from JPL, whose per­sonnel concentrated on Ranger and Mariner. Because of JPL’s neglect, HAC ran the program as it saw fit. By contrast, Robert Parks and Jack James ran the planetary program, which consisted initially of the Mariner spacecraft to fly by Venus, on the formal model they had developed on Sergeant. Al­though Mariner’s design was a modification of Ranger, the spacecraft achieved quite different results: disastrous failures on Ranger and spectacular success on Mariner. Their contrasting fates illustrate the significant influence of orga­nizational structure and processes on the technical success or failure of space­craft.

Ranger and Surveyor were intended to support NASA’s lunar program both by attaining space achievements before the Soviets did and by helping the Apollo mission. Ranger was to take close-up pictures of the lunar surface be­fore the spacecraft crashed onto the Moon and to help engineers develop spacecraft technologies for use on other programs. Ranger had an additional goal: ‘‘to seize the initiative in space exploration from the Soviets.’’ Surveyor was to perform a soft landing on the lunar surface. Conflict between scientific and engineering goals hampered both projects. Scientists desired on-board experiments, but for engineering purposes and for Apollo support, experi­ments were a nuisance. By contrast, Mariner was a purely scientific program to explore Venus and Mars, relaying photographs and scientific data back to Earth. It did not support Apollo and, consequently, had clearer mission ob­jectives.44

By late 1959, some of JPL’s managers believed that JPL needed to change its organizational structure. They thought that Pickering’s academic structure did not work well for large projects. To investigate, JPL hired management consulting firm McKinsey and Company to assess JPL’s organization. Based on the firm’s recommendations and pressure from managers like Jack James, Pickering established project-oriented Lunar and Planetary Program offices, but he maintained the authority of JPL’s functional divisions and added the Systems Division. Pickering selected Cliff Cummings to head the Lunar Pro­gram Office. Cummings, in turn, selected his protege James Burke to head Ranger.45

Burke, a Caltech mechanical engineer, had a reputation as a brilliant engi­neering researcher and technical specialist. He had an easygoing attitude with others but drove himself very hard.46 On Ranger, which began in December 1959, Burke’s mild demeanor turned out to be a handicap. The 1959 reorga­nization created project managers, but the division chiefs from Pickering’s functional organization controlled the personnel. Project managers had little authority and had to negotiate with powerful division chiefs for personnel and support. Burke did not have the authority to force division chiefs to abide by project decisions. For example, when Mariner needed personnel, division chiefs compromised Ranger by transferring some of Ranger’s most experi­enced engineers to the more glamorous Mariner. Biweekly meetings with the divisions focused on program status and scheduling, not technical problems or systems engineering.47 Burke’s project office consisted of a single deputy, and he gave the critical systems engineering tasks to the Systems Division, ad hoc committees, and technical panels.

Although JPL had developed substantial expertise in reliability on Cor­poral and Sergeant, reliability and quality assurance engineers could only advise design engineers, who could reject their advice. With many senior engineers transferred to Mariner, Ranger’s reliability suffered. Design incon­sistency resulted from continuing changes in the scientific experiments re­quested by NASA headquarters. Ranger also suffered from a requirement to sterilize components by baking them at high temperatures, which signifi­cantly reduced electronic component reliability.48

Burke’s lack of authority inside JPL was a small problem compared to his lack of authority over external organizations. JPL reported to the Office of Space Flight Programs at NASA headquarters. Air force Atlas and Agena ve­hicles were to launch Ranger, yet launch vehicles fell under the jurisdiction of the Office of Launch Vehicles at NASA headquarters, which assigned respon­sibility for Atlas and Agena to Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). MSFC had responsibility for, but no authority over, the air force for these vehicles. Thus, authority for the Ranger program was divided between two NASA field centers, two headquarters offices, and NASA and the air force.49

Ranger was not a priority for MSFC or for the air force. MSFC was busy designing the Saturn I rocket, a step toward von Braun’s dream of manned space flight. For the air force, NASA’s use of Atlas and Agena was secondary to developing ballistic missiles. Agena contractor Lockheed gave priority to the hundreds of upper stages slated for the air force as opposed to the nine pur­chased by NASA. NASA did not help matters, assigning responsibility for the Agena program to a headquarters-chaired committee, where Ranger was only one of several NASA Agena users. Project personnel had to work through the committee, which reported to MSFC, which in turn coordinated with the air force, which then directed Lockheed.

With this confusing organization, launch vehicle problems were a virtual certainty. Having many organizations interposed between JPL and Lockheed led to misunderstandings about the electrical and physical connections be­tween JPL’s spacecraft and Lockheed’s Agena upper stage. Exasperated JPL engineers could not get crucial Agena information from the air force or Lock­heed because they did not have the ‘‘need to know’’ required by air force security.

In September 1960 Lockheed sent a mockup of the Agena upper-stage inter­face hardware to JPL. Not surprisingly, the hardware did not match JPL’s expectations. After the ensuing investigation, the air force granted security clearances, then let NASA sign its own contract with Lockheed in February 1961. The problems also led managers and engineers in the air force and NASA to hold a design review covering interface hardware in December 1960. JPL engineers sent tooling and spacecraft mockups to Lockheed to check interface designs, so that when they manufactured flight spacecraft, they would match Agena’s interfaces.50

Mariner was JPL’s showcase project, intended to fly two spacecraft past Venus in 1962 and two more past Mars in 1964. Originally slated to launch with the new high-energy Centaur upper stage, NASA canceled the Mariner A spacecraft (the first of the series) when it became clear that Centaur would not be available in time. Regrouping, JPL engineers lightened the design to launch on Atlas-Agena launch vehicles. NASA approved the new Mariner R

spacecraft in the fall of 1961. Mariner benefited from its allure as a planetary mission and from its stable complement of onboard science experiments.51

Although Mariner’s organization included elements similar to Ranger’s, a number of features significantly strengthened Mariner’s management. As with Ranger, project managers emphasized interfaces between the spacecraft and launch vehicle, required significant testing, used JPL’s matrix structure, and had a small project office. There the similarities ended. Robert Parks, former Sergeant program manager, ran JPL’s planetary programs, and he selected his Sergeant deputy, Jack James, as project manager. The two Sergeant vet­erans decided to use Sergeant’s best management features, particularly fail­ure reporting, design freezes, and change control. Mariner engineers began by writing functional specifications to resolve spacecraft interface problems. They then created a design specification manual that defined the preliminary design, mission objectives, and design criteria. James created a development operations plan outlining the communication processes for the project, in­cluding interfaces, technical design decisions, schedule reporting, and design status meetings. James’s plan even specified what topics each status meeting should cover and who should attend. Unlike on Ranger, on Mariner James tracked the development of specifications and design drawings, not just hard­ware.52

James believed that the most innovative management feature of Mariner was the use of progressive design freezes. After a survey of subsystems to de­termine when to freeze each design element, the project periodically pub­lished a Mariner R change freeze document, along with any approved changes to drawings or specifications. Once frozen, a component’s design could be modified only through an engineering change requirement form approved by James.

Problem reporting became one of the project’s significant innovations. Project manager James instituted the ‘‘P list,’’ a list of critical problems. Any problem that made the P list received immediate attention and extra re­sources. The project implemented a failure reporting system for Mariner in November 1961, starting with system integration tests for the entire spacecraft. Failure reports were distributed to division chiefs, the project office, and engi­neers responsible for designing components and subsystems.53

As JPL prepared for its first Ranger and Mariner flights, its engineers and

Mariner Venus 1962, also called Mariner 2. Mariner’s success helped convince NASA to reform JPL rather than reject it. Courtesy NASA.

managers were confident that they would succeed. Even if faults occurred, five Ranger test flights and two Mariner spacecraft gave ample margin for the un­expected. Despite last-minute changes to Ranger’s science experiments and occasional testing glitches, both projects remained on schedule. The Ranger project planned to build five ‘‘Block 1’’ spacecraft, only one of which had to work properly for Ranger’s initial objectives to be met. Surely one of them would.

ELDO’s technical troubles traced in most cases to problems with inter­faces: component boundaries that were also organizational boundaries. Here ELDO’s inability to either impose standards or ensure communication among its engineering groups produced its logical result: failure. ELDO engineers and managers soon recognized that they had a major problem with inter­faces and communications. Through the Secretariat and national organiza­tions they tried to make this point to the politicians who governed ELDO. Despite efforts to improve ELDO’s communications and systems engineering, ELDO’s basic flaw was a lack of authority that no piecemeal measures could repair. Symptoms of this problem became evident first in cost overruns and schedule slips, then in flight failures.

In 1964 and 1965, the first test flights of Britain’s Blue Streak were decep­tively promising.38 DeHavillands’s first stage design incorporated several years of design experience prior to the formation of ELDO, as well as American techniques from the Atlas program, which itself had developed for a num­ber of years before Britain acquired some of its technologies. Because the first tests flew only the British first stage, they did not involve interfaces with any other stage. Because a single government organization with prior rocket and missile experience managed Blue Streak, and because firms experienced with these technologies and with each other built it, communications were not a problem. Blue Streak’s success was not to be repeated.

Problems soon appeared in the interfaces between the rocket stages and the organizations responsible for them. Under ELDO agreements of 1963, mem­ber states divided interface responsibility by having the lower stage contractor responsible for interfaces between any two stages. Thus the British were re­sponsible for the interface between the first and second stages, the French for the interface between the second and third stages, and the Germans for the third stage-test satellite interface. Meetings in 1965 further defined interface procedures, specifying that the Interface Design Authority (the lower stage contractor) would freeze the design, make the information available to all parties, and provide for hardware inspection. The Interface Design Authority would submit a Certificate of Design to ELDO to certify the correctness of the interface. However, the scheme had a fatal flaw: ‘‘It was not the intention that an Interface Authority should do again work already allocated and being per­formed by another Design Authority. The Interface Design Authority would therefore base his design declaration on statements, made by the other Design Authorities concerned, that the relevant specifications had been met.’’39

The contractor documenting the interface merely ensured that the other organizations involved provided the appropriate documentation, but no or­ganization analyzed both sides of the interface for discrepancies. ELDO docu­mented the interface specifications and trusted contractors on each side ofthe interface to abide by them. Without anyone checking both sides, misunder­standings about specifications went unnoticed until the organizations tried to connect the stages or test them in flight.

Misunderstandings became painfully evident the moment contractors tried to connect hardware. In an early test of the interface between the French sec­ond stage and the German third stage, the structure failed because of the wrong kinds of connecting bolts. When the ELDO Secretariat decided to make changes to the French second stage, the French complained, question­ing who had the ‘‘power to impose a solution.’’ In another case, the Germans developed a table to mimic the structural interface of the Italian test satellite ‘‘before the Italian Authorities had completed their examination [of] the re­quirements.’’ This led to a mismatch between the assumed size ofthe connect­ing ring and the actual ring later designed by the Italians, and the Germans had to scrap their hardware and build a new table.40

Complaints about communications and integration problems reached the ELDO Council through member state delegations, leading to a study of ELDO’s organization in early 1966. Belgian engineers, who had to collect data from all ELDO members to design the telemetry system, were the first to con­front the interface problem. They suggested that the Secretariat be given sub­stantially more authority in a two-level management scheme. The first level would be a study bureau to establish specifications. It would be at the national level but under the “functional authority’’ of the ELDO Secretariat, and it would have authority to approve modifications and make technical decisions. Through control of the national bureaus, the Secretariat would impose con­sistent standards and processes. At a higher level in the organization, the Sec­retariat would have greater power, ‘‘corresponding in the English sense to the word ‘control’ (monitoring plus decision authority).’’ Belgian delegates pro­posed to staff this level with seventy engineers, with seven ‘‘inspector gen­erals’’ from each national program under the direction of a management di­rector. The engineers would focus on integration problems and look for future problems, while the seven inspector generals and the seven national program managers would meet with the Council to discuss problems at least every other month.41

Countering the Belgian proposal, the French proposed an Industrial Inte­grating Group that would exchange information among the government and industrial firms. The French solution provided information but did not give the Secretariat the power to enforce solutions. The Industrial Integrating Group would collect information and pass its recommendations to the Sec­retariat, which in turn could recommend changes with the member states and the ELDO Council. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Industrial Integrating Group would be led by SEREB, the French organization that coordinated the French rocket program.42

In matters political, French proposals carried more weight. German dele­gates supported the French because they did not want a strong project man­ager. Not wanting the project manager to have financial control, the Dutch supported the Germans. The ELDO Council decided to appoint a project manager for Europa I but to strictly limited the manager’s authority. Council members directed, ‘‘The Project Manager shall remain within the approved technical objectives, timescale, programme cost to completion and total ap­propriations under each country chapter in the current budget.’’ The manager would have to ‘‘pay due regard to the opinions and advice of other directors, but the decisions would be his own responsibility.’’ The Council also required that he ‘‘act in agreement with the Member States concerned regarding bud­get transfers.’’43 Without authority over budgets, the project manager could take no significant actions without agreement from the member states.

Along with appointing a project manager, the ELDO Council requested that the Secretariat investigate program management procedures and agreed with ‘‘the necessity of adopting a system for providing delegations and the Secretariat with continuous and full preventative information on the prog­ress of the current programmes.’’ Secretary-General Carrobio reported back, agreeing that a ‘‘Corps of Inspectors’’ should review ELDO and make rec­ommendations concerning processes, structure, and management. Carrobio also proposed an “integrating group set up by industry and subordinate to the Secretariat’s authority.’’ Such a group would enhance ELDO’s position.44

The French proposal prevailed. In July 1966, the ELDO Council approved the Europa II vehicle,45 which could place a small communications satellite into geosynchronous orbit, and agreed to create an integration group, known as Societe d’Etude et d’Integration de Systemes Spatiaux (SETIS [Company for the Study and Integration of Space Systems]), to strengthen the Secre­tariat. Beginning as a division of SEREB, SETIS had the same analysis and integration functions and was then spun off into a separate organization.46

SETIS had only advisory capacity, reporting to the ELDO Project Manage­ment Directorate, which the Council also created at that time. Under the new system, the Project Management Directorate assigned project managers to Europa I and Europa II. Each country selected its own project manager, who reported to the national organization and to the ELDO project manager, who distributed information to member states through the Scientific and Techni­cal Committee. SETIS worked only on Europa II because Europa I was soon to begin integration testing. For Europa II, the Secretariat now had authority to place contracts directly with industry. ELDO’s Europa I project manager remained virtually powerless.47

Secretary-General Carrobio expected that SETIS would strengthen ELDO’s technical capabilities. Because the SETIS engineers came from Europa II con­tractors, SETIS would ensure better communication between ELDO and the manufacturers ‘‘by means of direct contacts.’’ SETIS planned to hire forty engineers for the Europa II program and sixty more after that, arranged in three divisions: PAS Vehicle (Europa II) Development, Planning and Infor­mation, and System Integration. Despite SETIS’s apparently broad charter, its power was strictly limited; it could not amend contracts or change costs, schedules, or technical performance except through the Secretariat. Because the Secretariat did not have much power in these matters, SETIS could only analyze information that member states and their contractors were willing to provide.48

In December 1966, the chairman of the Corps of Inspectors delivered his committee’s report, which described ‘‘the problems ofthe interfaces’’ and ‘‘the role played in this matter by the Secretariat.’’ The report noted, ‘‘The Ger-

man Authorities and the German industrials repeatedly stressed the difficul­ties which have resulted from an incomplete solution of the interface prob­lems, which they attribute to gaps in the methods of coordination.’’ A number of interface problems bedeviled the project, and the Corps of Inspectors con­cluded that the Secretariat should define its methods and intentions to deal with interface issues.49

Carrobio responded the next month, first to specific problems noted by the Corps of Inspectors. The Secretariat had ‘‘played a determining role in recon­ciling the viewpoints’’ of the French and Germans in making design changes after a test failure in February 1966. However, in the case of problems with the German third stage, neither the German authorities nor ELDO could con­trol foreign suppliers for third stage components. Even here, Carrobio stated, ‘‘These were not so much a matter of principles as of practical difficulties due to slippages in the development programme of Germany’s foreign suppliers.’’ Because German contractor Bolkow had no control over the suppliers, Carro – bio argued, ‘‘It is then up to the Secretariat to intervene and endeavour to find and win acceptance for the least harmful compromise, and this has been done on all occasions.’’ Carrobio believed that only minor fixes to ELDO’s organization were necessary, not a complete overhaul.50

ELDO member state delegates took some time to approve the new pro­cesses and procedures proposed by the Corps of Inspectors. After an ELDO visit to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to learn more about project management techniques, the ELDO Council finally ratified the new program management procedures in September 1967. SETIS came into official exis­tence on January 1,1968. Both project management and SETIS strengthened ELDO’s Europa II project. Europa I remained hampered by indirect contract­ing and a lack of authority.51

As ELDO, the national governments, and the contractors started to build and integrate Europa I, they found numerous communication and interface problems. Complaints bubbled up from the contractors through the national delegations to the ELDO Council, leading to an enhancement of ELDO’s project management capability. The new procedures gave the Europa II proj­ect manager the authority to make direct contracts and gave him a staff that could monitor events more closely. However, even for Europa II, the Secre­tariat still had limited authority to modify contracts, costs, and schedules. Un­fortunately, ELDO’s immediate future hinged on Europa I and its less effective organization.

The air force had to develop two kinds of technologies. The majority of the projects were concerned with component development. On account of their great cost and complexity, however, large-scale weapons such as bombers, fighters, and missiles took up the bulk of the air force’s R&D resources. To manage these so-called weapon systems, air force officers found that their loosely organized prewar methods did not suffice. For the new systems, the air force looked to new models of centralized project management.

Two World War II aircraft projects fit the bill. The complex B-29 and P-61 projects both used committees to coordinate the development ofthe airframe, electronics, and armament during development, instead of after airframe manufacture and testing.20 For the complex and pressurized B-29, engineers designed armament and communications together from the start, because the aircraft’s computer-controlled fire-control systems were integrally connected to the airframe. For the B-29 and the P-61, officers considered the entire air­craft a system that included manufacturing and training as well as hardware.21

Another influential World War II program was the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Gen. Leslie Groves of the Army Corps of Engineers managed the project, gathering physicists, chemists, and engineers at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to design the bomb. Groves administered the project with a staff of three and made major decisions with a small committee con­sisting of himself, Vannevar Bush, James Conant, and representatives of each of the services. Army officers directed day-to-day operations at each of the project’s field sites, most of which had traditional hierarchical organizations, albeit cloaked in secrecy. Because of technical and scientific uncertainties, the project developed two bomb designs and three methods to create the fissile material.22

The organization at Los Alamos differed from the organization at other project sites. Director Robert Oppenheimer wrested a degree of freedom of speech for the scientists and ensured that they remained civilians. Oppen- heimer, to respect the traditional independence of scientists and maintain open communication, initially adopted the loose department structure of uni­versities. This changed in the spring of 1944, when tests showed that the pluto­nium gun assembly bomb would not work. The tests led to an acceleration of work on the more complex implosion design. As R&D teams grew, the project needed and obtained strong managers like Robert Bacher and George Kistia – kowsky, who transformed the project’s organization from an academic model to divisions organized around the end-product — a project organization.23

Americans also learned from the organization of the German V-2 proj­ect, headed by Wernher von Braun. Reporting to General Arnold on Ger­man scientific capabilities at the end of World War II, von Karman stated that one of the major factors in the success of the German V-2 project was its organization:

Leadership in the development of these new weapons of the future can be as­sured only by uniting experts in aerodynamics, structural design, electronics, servomechanisms, gyros, control devices, propulsion, and warhead under one leadership, and providing them with facilities for laboratory and model shop production in their specialties and with facilities for field tests. Such a cen­ter must be adequately supported by the highest ranking military and civilian leadership and must be adequately financed, including the support of related work on special aspects of various problems at other laboratories and the sup­port of special industrial developments. It seems to us that this is the lesson to be learned from the activities of the German Peenemunde group.24

In the Ridenour Report of 1949, the SAB remembered the lessons of the Manhattan and V-2 projects for organizing large new technologies. They noted that new systems were far more complex than their prewar counter­parts, making it necessary for some engineers to concentrate on the entire system instead of its components only. Project officers also needed greater authority to better lead a task force of ‘‘systems and components specialists organized on a semi-permanent basis.’’ Because the air force had few qualified technical officers, the committee recommended that the air force draw upon the ‘‘very important reservoir of talent available for systems planning in the engineering design staffs of the industries of the country.’’25

Despite the recommendations of the Ridenour Report, AMC officers at Wright Field continued to organize projects on functional lines mirroring aca­demic disciplines and to coordinate projects through small project offices. As late as 1950, typical project offices had fewer than ten members, and engi­neering expertise, parceled out from Wright Field’s functional divisions, were, as one historian put it, ‘‘only casually responsible’’ to the project office.26 At the time, AMC’s Col. Marvin Demler stated: ‘‘Due to the complexity of the mechanisms which we develop, and our organization by hardware special­ties, a very high degree of cooperation and coordination is required between organizations at all levels. In fact, an experienced officer or civilian engineer coming to Wright Field for the first time simply cannot be effective for perhaps six months to one year while he learns ‘the ropes’ of coordination with other offices. The communication between individuals necessary for the solution of our problems of coordination defy formal organizational lines.’’27

For large projects, this informal structure was not to continue for much longer. When the Korean War broke out in late 1950, the air force found itself with numerous unusable aircraft. In January 1951, Vice Chief of Staff Nathan Twining instructed DCS/D Gen. Gordon Saville to investigate the air force’s organization to determine whether it contributed to the poor aircraft readiness. Saville ordered the formation of a study group, led by Colonel Schriever, to investigate the problem. The group returned to the comments of the Ridenour Report regarding the lack of technical capability in the air force and the problems caused by separating airframe development from compo­nent development.28

Schriever’s group completed its study in April 1951 and released an influen­tial paper called ‘‘Combat Ready Aircraft.’’ It pinpointed two major problems with current aircraft: requirements based on short-term factors, leading to continuous modifications, and insufficient coordination and direction of all elements of the ‘‘complete weapon.’’29 The latter concern probably arose from the Ridenour Report and the examples of the B-29, the V-2, and the Manhat­tan Project.

To solve these problems, the group recommended that the air force cre­ate an organization and process with responsibility and authority over the complete weapon by adding ‘‘planning, budgeting, programming, and con­trol’’ to the functions of the responsible air force organizations. The organiza­tions would have complete control over the entire projects, enforced through full budget authority.30 Examples of this kind of organization already existed in the air force’s guided missile programs. These weapons differed substan­tially from piloted aircraft, and the separate procurement of airframe, en­gines, and armament (payload) made little sense.31 The study group suggested that the air force let prime contracts to a single contractor to integrate the entire weapon and that the air force organize on a project basis.

Changes to the procurement cycle had to be addressed as well. The group noted that in World War II, decisions to produce aircraft occurred haphaz­ardly and that aircraft rolled off the assembly line directly to combat units at the same time as they were delivered to testing. Because production con­tinued rapidly and little testing occurred, invariably the operational units found numerous problems, leading to the grounding of aircraft for modi­fications. Believing the current emergency did not allow for the fly-before – you-buy sequential approach and that the delivery of the production aircraft to combat units was dangerous and wasteful, the group selected a solution that was a compromise. It recommended eliminating the X – and Y-model air­craft but slowing the initial production line until test organizations found and eliminated design bugs. Only then should production be accelerated, it said. The air force would select contractors based on the best proposal instead of through a ‘‘fly-off’’ of aircraft prototypes. These ideas, along with project – centered organization and simultaneous planning of all components through­out the weapon’s life cycle, defined the weapon system concept.32

Brigadier General Putt, now commander of Wright Air Development Cen­ter, immediately campaigned for the weapon system concept among the com­ponent developers at Wright Field. He had a difficult sell because the new organization had moved power from the functional organizations to the proj­ect offices. The project office was to act on a systems basis, making compro­mises between cost, performance, quality, and quantity. Putt admonished the component engineers: ‘‘Somebody has to be captain of the team, and decide what has to be compromised and why. And that responsibility we have placed on the project offices.’’ He also stated in no uncertain terms who had the au­thority, telling the component engineers that they needed to be ‘‘sure that all the facts’’ had ‘‘been placed before’’ the project office. ‘‘At that time,’’ he told the engineers, ‘‘your responsibility ceases.’’33

Without a large number of technical officers, the air force handed substan­tial authority to industry. Under the weapon system concept, the air force ‘‘purchased management of new weapon system development and produc­tion.’’ However, contractors had to ‘‘accept the Air Force as the monitor of his [the contractor’s] plans and progress, with the cautionary power of a partner and the final veto power of the customer.’’ The air force stated that it could not ‘‘escape its own responsibility for system management simply by assigning larger blocks of design and engineering responsibility to industry.’’ Although the new process gave industry a larger role, air force officers would not remain passive.34

Adoption of the weapon system concept throughout the air force did not go smoothly, because of continuing disagreements between the DCS/D and ARDC on one hand, and the deputy chief of staff, materiel (DCS/M), and AMC on the other. The key question that divided the fledgling ARDC and its parent, AMC, was when ‘‘development’’ ended and ‘‘production’’ be­gan. If production started early in a weapon’s life cycle, then AMC maintained greater control, whereas if development ended relatively late in the cycle, then ARDC acquired more power. Not surprisingly, AMC leaned toward a defi­nition of production that encompassed earlier phases of the life cycle, while ARDC opted for late-ending development. Because development continued as long as changes to the weapon occurred, and because production began

Weapon System Project Office implementation of the ‘‘system concept.’’

the moment the first prototype was built, no objective definition tipped the scales one way or another. Under such circumstances, the air force’s official arbitrator between ARDC and AMC, James Doolittle, had to intervene.

In April 1951, Doolittle reported that because development continued through a system’s entire life cycle, the ARDC definition should hold. In con­sequence, ARDC should control production engineering.35 The new agree­ment led to the issuance of Air Force Regulation (AFR) 20-10, ‘‘Weapon Sys­tem Project Offices,’’ in October 1951. The regulation specified that every major project should have a Weapon System Project Office (WSPO), with offi­cers from ARDC and AMC in charge.

A marvel of diplomacy, the document stated that during the early portions of development, the ARDC representative would be the ‘‘team captain,’’ and in the later portions, after a decision to produce the article in quantity, the AMC representative would be the ‘‘team captain.’’ In practice, the line between the two was fuzzy, leaving the two officers to work it out for themselves based on circumstances or personalities. The team captain coordinated the activi­ties for the entire project but did not have authority over the other officer. If the two could not agree, they would both have to take the problem to higher authorities, potentially all the way up to the DCS/D and DCS/M at air force headquarters.36

The resulting ambiguities continued to cause organizational headaches, leading once again to intervention by Doolittle. This time Doolittle did not feel comfortable forcing a solution, so he recommended another Air Staff study to investigate the problem. His only proviso was that the group pro­tect the importance of R&D. The Air Staff gave the DCS/M, Lt. General Orval Cook, responsibility for solving the interface problems. In cooperation with DCS/D Laurence Craigie, Cook appointed a task group, the ‘‘Cook-Craigie Group,’’ to work on the issue. Group members decided that ARDC should keep responsibility for weapon systems until the Air Staff stated in writing that the weapon should be purchased.37 The new process, known as the Cook – Craigie Procedures of March 1954 and formalized by modification of AFR 20-10 in August of that year, momentarily ended the bickering between the development and materiel groups. Their unity would be tested severely with the development of the air force’s most radical new weapon, ballistic missiles.

In the summer of 1961, JPL engineers prepared the first Ranger spacecraft for flight. Having successfully passed through a series of structural, electrical, and environmental tests, Ranger 1 was scheduled for launch in July. After two hardware component failures in the spacecraft and one in the launch vehicle delayed the launch, the Atlas-Agena took off in August. Within minutes, engi­
neers found that the Agena upper stage did not ignite, stranding Ranger 1 in Earth orbit. The spacecraft operated properly but burned up in Earth’s atmo­sphere on August 30. Ranger 2 launched in November. Its Agena also failed, placing Ranger 2 in a low orbit, from which it soon disintegrated in the Earth’s atmosphere. The air force launched an investigation of the failures and pres­sured Lockheed for solutions.54

Ranger 3 was the first of JPL’s Block 2 design, which included new science experiments as well as a television camera to take lunar surface photographs for Apollo. In January 1962, the air force’s launch vehicles placed Ranger 3 on a trajectory that would miss the Moon, but JPL decided to operate the spacecraft as close as possible to the normal mission. While performing the first-ever trajectory correction maneuver (firing thrusters to change the space­craft’s course), a reversed sign between the ground and flight software re­sulted in the spacecraft’s course changing in exactly the opposite direction from that desired. Two days after launch, the spacecraft computer failed, end­ing the mission prematurely.55

Launching in April 1962, Ranger 4’s computer failed almost immediately after separating from Agena. This made the spacecraft blind and dumb-able to send no data to Earth and unresponsive to commands. Its trajectory was nearly perfect; the spacecraft crashed onto the Moon’s surface three days later. Although NASA and the newspapers proclaimed the mission a great success, which it was for the air force’s launcher, it was a complete technical failure for JPL. Engineers hypothesized that the failure was due to a metal flake floating in zero gravity that simultaneously touched two adjacent electrical leads.56

JPL next scheduled its two Mariner R spacecraft for launch. The first launch on July 22 failed after five minutes, when Atlas’s guidance system malfunc­tioned. Air force and General Dynamics engineers traced the problem to a missing hyphen in a line of software code. Mariner 2 launched in August and successfully flew past Venus in December. Its outstanding performance kept Congress and NASA headquarters from losing all confidence in JPL.57

Burke and his team made several changes to Ranger’s design and organi­zation between Ranger 1 and Ranger 5. On early flights, division chiefs inter­fered with spacecraft operators, so Burke reserved authority to command the spacecraft to project managers and engineers. Engineers also added redun­dant features to the spacecraft. Despite proof that heat sterilization compro-

Ranger. The failures of the first six Ranger flights led to NASA and congressional pressure to strengthen project management. Courtesy NASA.

mised electrical component reliability, lunar program chief Cliff Cummings maintained NASA’s sterilization policy. In any case, Ranger 5’s components had already been subjected to sterilization. Project engineers formed investi­gation groups to study interfaces and spacecraft subsystem interactions. They also added a system test to check interfaces and interactions between the spacecraft and flight operations equipment and procedures.58

These changes did not completely resolve the project’s problems. Ranger 5 launched in October 1962 and began to malfunction within two hours. This

time, the power system failed, losing power from the solar panels. Shortly thereafter the computer malfunctioned, and the battery drained within eight hours, causing complete mission loss. The spacecraft’s disastrous failure con­vinced JPL and NASA headquarters managers that the project was in serious trouble. Both launched investigations.59

The headquarters investigation board’s findings left no doubt that JPL’s organization and management of Ranger were at fault. They criticized JPL’s dual status as a contractor and a NASA field center, noting that JPL received little or no NASA supervision. Project manager Burke had little authority over JPL division chiefs or the launch vehicles and no systems engineering staff and showed little evidence of planning or processes for systems engineering. JPL’s approach-using multiple flight tests to attain flight experience-had strong traces of its army missile background. The board believed this “mul­tiple shot’’ approach was inappropriate. Spacecraft had to work the first time, and testing had to occur on the ground, not in flight. The board character­ized Ranger’s approach as ‘‘shoot and hope.’’ Supervisors left design engi­neers unsupervised, and design engineers did not have to follow quality as­surance or reliability recommendations.60 The Board’s position was clear: ‘‘A loose anarchistic approach to project management is extant with great empha­sis on independent responsibilities and individual accomplishment. . . This independent engineering approach has become increasingly ingrown, with­out adequate checks and balances on individual actions. Pride in accomplish­ment is not a self-sufficient safeguard when undertaking large scale projects of international significance such as JPL is now undertaking for NASA.’’61

JPL’s rapid growth also caused problems. From 1959 to 1962, JPL’s budget grew from $40 million to $220 million, while its staff grew from 2,600 to 3,800. Most of the new budget went into subcontracts, yet JPL’s business manage­ment capability did not expand accordingly. Often JPL personnel ‘‘failed to penetrate into the business and technical phases of subcontract execution.’’ This was due in part to JPL’s ‘‘two-headed’’ nature, as a contractor to the gov­ernment, and as a de facto NASA field center. NASA did not require JPL to use NASA or Department of Defense regulations, treating it as a contractor. On the other hand, NASA headquarters did not supervise JPL tightly like a con­tractor, because of its quasi-field center status.62 Ranger managers had neither

the authority and resources to carry out their mission nor the oversight that might lead to discovery and resolution of problems.

Failure in the race for international prestige was no longer acceptable to NASA headquarters.63 The board recommended strengthening project man­agement, establishing formal design reviews, eliminating heat sterilization, assigning launch vehicles either to NASA or to the air force, instituting a fail­ure reporting system, clarifying Ranger’s objectives, and eliminating extra­neous features. To spur JPL into action, the board recommended that NASA withhold further projects until it resolved Ranger’s problems.64

JPL Director Pickering quickly replaced lunar program chief Cummings with Robert Parks and project manager Burke with former Systems Divi­sion chief Harris Schurmeier. He gave them the authority that Cummings and Burke only dreamed of: power over division chiefs in personnel matters. He also created an independent Reliability and Quality Assurance Office with more than 150 people and gave this office authority over the engineers.65

Schurmeier instituted process changes to strengthen Ranger’s systems en­gineering. He levied an immediate design review, adopted Mariner’s failure reporting system, and ensured that engineers took corrective action. Schur­meier also instituted Mariner’s system of engineering change control and de­sign freezes. Ranger expanded the use of its Design Evaluation Vehicle to test component failure modes and inter-subsystem ‘‘cross-talk and noise.’’ Schur- meier required that engineers plan and record each test on new test data sheets. Ranger 6 also adopted conformal coating, a method to cover all ex­posed metal wiring with plastic to preclude short circuits from floating debris. NASA headquarters and JPL delayed the next Ranger flight until early 1964 to ensure that the changes took effect.66

During 1963, JPL scheduled no launches but concurrently worked on Ranger 6, Surveyor, and Mariner Mars 1964 (MM64). MM64 was JPL’s next planetary project, planned to launch in November 1964 to fly by Mars. Ad­ministrative mechanisms for Ranger 6 and MM64 converged during this time, while managers paid relatively little attention to Surveyor, which JPL con­tracted to HAC.67

The first test of Ranger’s enhanced management was Ranger 6’s launch in January 1964. Whereas Ranger 5 had fourteen significant failures in testing prior to launch, Ranger 6 had only one subsystem failure during its life cycle testing, boding well for its future. The only hardware that caused trouble was the single new major element, the television camera from Radio Corporation of America (RCA). Ranger 6’s launch was flawless, except for an unexplained telemetry dropout. So too were its cruise and midcourse correction. Expecta­tions rose as Ranger 6 approached its final minutes, when the spacecraft was to take pictures just prior to crashing onto the surface. Reporters, engineers, managers, and scientists waited anxiously in a special room at JPL during the last hour for the first pictures to be broadcast. None ever came. Pickering, who arrived just prior to Ranger 6’s impact, was humiliated, saying ‘‘I never want to go through an experience like this again—never!”68

Investigations ensued, followed this time by congressional hearings. JPL’s board isolated when the failure had occurred and which components had failed. Board members could not determine the cause of the failure but none­theless recommended engineering changes to deal with the several possible causes. NASA Associate Administrator Robert Seamans assigned Earl Hilburn to lead the headquarters investigation of the troubled program. Hilburn’s re­port claimed that the spacecraft had numerous design and testing deficien­cies and called for the investigation to be expanded to the entire program. Project personnel vehemently disagreed with the tone and many specific rec­ommendations. JPL incorporated some minor changes but refused to modify its testing practices.69

Minnesota congressman Joseph Karth headed the congressional investiga­tion, which focused on JPL’s status as a contractor and NASA field center as well as its apparent refusal to take direction from NASA headquarters. Con­gress recommended that JPL improve its project and laboratory management. Pickering complied by strengthening project management, but he hedged on hiring a laboratory operations manager to assume some of his responsibili­ties. When NASA Administrator James Webb refused to sign JPL’s renewal contract unless it complied, JPL finally hired Maj. General Alvin Luedecke, retired from the air force, as general manager in August 1964. While the suc­cessful flight of Ranger 7 in July 1964 finally vindicated the troubled project, NASA managers became concerned with JPL’s third program, Surveyor.70

By late 1963, JPL managers spotted trouble signs as Surveyor moved from design to testing. Despite indications of escalating costs and slipping sched­ules, personnel limitations and preoccupation with Ranger and Mariner pre­vented JPL managers from adding personnel to Surveyor.71 However, NASA headquarters managers held a design review in March 1964 to investigate.

The headquarters review uncovered difficulties similar to those on Ranger. Surveyor’s procurement staff at JPL was ‘‘grossly out of balance’’ with needs, far too small given that the project consumed one-third of JPL’s budget. The review team recommended that both JPL and HAC give project managers more authority over the technical staff. It also recommended that JPL have ‘‘free access to all HAC subcontractors,’’ that JPL schedule formal monthly meetings with HAC and the subcontractors, and that JPL’s Reliability and Quality-Assurance Office closely evaluate hardware and testing. HAC’s man­agement processes also received criticism. The HAC PERT (Program Evalua­tion and Review Technique) program did not account for all project elements, leading to inaccurate schedule estimates. HAC’s change control system, in­herited from manufacturing, was unduly cumbersome. Most critically, HAC did not ‘‘flag impending technical problems and cost overruns in time for project management to take corrective action.’’72

JPL engineers began their own technical review in April, using twenty ex­perienced Ranger and Mariner engineers. Their primary finding was the in­adequacy of HAC’s systems engineering. HAC divided the spacecraft’s tasks into one hundred discrete units, instead of the eight to ten subsystems typical for JPL. JPL found that many groups ‘‘showed a surprising lack of informa­tion or interest’’ about the impact their product had on adjacent products or on the spacecraft as a whole. The spacecraft’s design showed HAC had per­formed few trade-offs between subsystems, leading to a complex design. This led to reliability problems because HAC’s design had more components and critical failure points than necessary.73

The design reviews came too late to fully compensate for three years of in­attention. In April 1964 the first lander ‘‘drop test’’ came to a premature end when the release mechanism failed and the lander crumpled upon ground impact. JPL management responded by increasing JPL’s Surveyor staff from under one hundred in June 1964 to five hundred in the fall of 1965. In the meantime, five independent test equipment and spacecraft failures doomed the second drop test in October 1964.74

HAC partially complied with NASA recommendations — it strengthened

its project organization in August 1964. JPL resisted the headquarters pres­sure to change, but after some pointed letters from Office of Space Sciences and Applications head Homer Newell, and not-so-subtle pressure from Con­gress and Administrator Webb, JPL relented and “projectized” Surveyor and its other programs. Both JPL and HAC added personnel and improved bud­geting, scheduling, and planning tools. JPL created the Project Engineering Division, which assisted flight projects in ‘‘launch vehicle integration, system design and integration, system test and launch operations and environmental requirements.’’75

JPL reassigned engineers from Ranger and Mariner to Surveyor, and it in­stituted an intense program of contractor penetration. While JPL stated that this led to a clearer picture of problem areas and a better relationship be­tween JPL and HAC, HAC engineers and managers frequently viewed it as an exercise in educating JPL personnel, instead of letting them fix the pro­gram’s myriad problems. In 1965, HAC estimated that approximately 250 JPL engineers were at HAC’s facility on any given day. Numerous changes led to months of intense contract negotiations between the two organizations.76

Surveyor’s problems caught Congress’s attention, leading to a House in­vestigation in 1965. The subsequent report identified “inadequate prepara­tion’’ and NASA’s inattention as the primary problems, resulting in ‘‘one of the least orderly and most poorly executed of NASA projects.’’ Congress did not believe further changes to be necessary but severely criticized NASA for its past performance. The investigation concluded, ‘‘NASA’s management per­formance in the Surveyor project must be judged in the light of a history of too little direction and supervision until recently.’’ Nonetheless, five of Surveyor’s seven flights eventually succeeded.77

Ranger and Surveyor were JPL’s trial by fire. Embarrassing failures and cost and schedule overruns plagued early efforts in both programs. They humbled JPL and provided leverage for Congress and NASA headquarters to impose their will on JPL. JPL managers and engineers learned that they needed strong project management, extraordinary attention to design details and manufac­turing, change control, and much better preliminary design work before com­mitting to a project.

When Pickering finally agreed to change JPL and its processes, Jack James’s

Mariner project provided the model. JPL survived its early managerial and technical blunders on Ranger and Surveyor primarily because of its solid suc­cesses on Mariner. Jack James’s strong project organization, backed by pro­gressive design freezes and change control, made Mariner a much different organization than Ranger or Surveyor. Based on the Mariner model, later projects would earn JPL its reputation as the world’s leader in the art of deep space exploration.

To uncover technical problems prior to the upcoming test flights, ELDO con­tracted with Hawker Siddeley Dynamics to develop an electrical mockup of the Europa I and Europa II launchers at its facility in Stevenage. The company, in conjunction with engineers from other contractors, assembled complete stage mockups (sometimes without engines) prior to the F5 through F11 tests and flights. Hawker Siddeley ran several kinds of tests, including injection of faulty signals, electromagnetic interference, and flight sequence testing. These uncovered numerous design problems, which Hawker Siddeley then reported to the ELDO Secretariat and participating companies.52 Although Hawker Siddeley engineers found numerous problems, they did not find enough of them.

ELDO’s next major flight test, originally scheduled for 1965, mated France’s Coralie second stage with Britain’s Blue Streak first stage. After engineers aborted eight launch attempts because of various technical glitches and un­favorable weather, the ninth finally flew in August 1967, with the first stage operating properly. The second stage successfully separated, but its engines never fired, sending the stage crashing prematurely to Earth. Subsequent in­vestigations showed that the problem stemmed from an electrical ground fault in the second stage, which deenergized a relay in the first stage, leading to a failure of the second stage sequencer, which then failed to issue commands for the second stage to fire. In short, the launch failed because of an electrical interface problem between the first and second stages.53

The next attempt with Coralie came in December 1967. It failed just as the first flight had, with its engines ‘‘failing to light up.’’ In this case the failure occurred because of an electrical interface problem between the second stage and its connection to the ground system on the launch pad. Electromagnetic interference also hampered communication with the vehicle’s safety system, causing the loss of flight data and the potential of an inadvertent explosion.54

After the loss of the first Coralie in August, the French considered second stage problems to be minor. However, with another failure of French equip­ment, French authorities reacted with urgency. In a major internal reorganiza­tion, the French contracted with SEREB to manage the second stage program. SEREB had been involved with the program until 1963, performing feasibility studies and initial designs. After that time, authority rested with the military Laboratory for Ballistic and Aerodynamic Research (LRBA) and the Bureau Permanent Nord Vernon. The French Space Agency now interposed SEREB between itself and LRBA to ensure closer surveillance and management of the program.55

SEREB proposed a major vehicle redesign to improve reliability. The pro­posals involved performing more qualification tests on Coralie components and replacing several major components with others that SEREB used in its Diamant rocket design. ELDO’s technical group rejected the French propos­als because they were very costly and, more importantly, because they would disrupt the entire program, including designs for the first and third stages.56

ELDO engineers supported LRBA rather than SEREB, rejecting SEREB’s proposal to replace components. They stated, ‘‘The approach adopted by the French authorities is mainly due to the formation of a new technical di­rection team which is naturally anxious to use equipment with which it is familiar while being less familiar with the equipment it proposes to replace.’’ ELDO engineers chided SEREB: It ‘‘will have to make great efforts to be as familiar with the programme as the present team—which has ‘lived with’ the EUROPAI launcher for five years and is at present very experienced — not only in order to develop its equipment but also to take account of the specific con­tingencies of ELDO.’’ The member states rejected SEREB’s proposal in favor of ELDO’s proposal to upgrade and test existing second stage components.57

While the French regrouped, ELDO management assessed the impact of the project management reforms. The Secretariat divided its Project Manage­ment Directorate into two divisions, ‘‘one responsible for technical and time­scale aspects and the other for financial and contract aspects,’’ while other directorates provided support to them. Secretary-General Carrobio noted, ‘‘The principle is now acknowledged, inside and outside the Secretariat, that additional work or modifications to approved work require the prior agree­ment of the project management directors.’’ The coordination between mem­ber states and the Secretariat was improving, but still there were problems with schedule reporting (member states delivered PERT reports late) and cost control (member states did not thoroughly check contractor proposals). On Europa II, ELDO’s system of monthly progress reports and meetings worked smoothly.58

In the next Europa I flight, in December 1968, ELDO engineers felt vin­dicated in their earlier resistance to SEREB’s proposals because both Blue Streak and Coralie worked perfectly. Even though the German Astris exploded shortly after separation, ELDO and German engineers believed that they would isolate and repair the propulsion system problems they thought re­sponsible.59

Their confidence was unfounded, for on the next attempt, in July 1969, Astris failed precisely as before, with an explosion within one second of sepa­ration from the second stage. The Germans realized, just as the French had two years before, that they had major problems. The Germans formed four committees: a government committee to investigate the failure, a committee to investigate the rest of the design, an internal committee of the contractor ASAT, and a committee to oversee and coordinate the other three committees. Contrary to expectations, the investigators found that the explosions resulted not from a third stage propulsion problem but from an electrical failure in the interface between the third stage and the Italian test satellite that ignited the safety self-destruct system. The Italians had already noticed sensitivity in these German circuits during their tests, but neither they nor the Germans recognized the importance of the finding.60

German engineers fixed the electrical troubles, but the third stage showed new problems in the last flight of Europa I, in June 1970. This time, the result­ing investigation showed two third stage failures. First, an electrical connector disconnected prematurely, preventing separation of the Italian test satellite. Engineers traced this mechanical failure to the pressure between trapped air in the mechanism and the vacuum of space. Second, the third stage propul­sion feed system failed, probably because of contaminants that kept a pressure valve open. These failures led the ELDO Council to create a quality assurance organization in 1970, but because of a lack of staff, it could not cover all sites and processes.61

In November 1971 Europa II flew for the first and last time. This vehicle, which included a new Perigee-Apogee stage, blew up two and one-half min­utes into the flight because of an electrical malfunction caused by a failure of the third stage guidance computer. This too was an interface problem; the computer had been manufactured in Great Britain and delivered to Ger­man contractor ASAT, which took no responsibility for proper integration. At last, ELDO member states reacted strongly. As stated by General Aubi – niere, ELDO’s new secretary-general, ‘‘The failure of F11 in November 1971 brought home to the member states — and this was indeed the only positive point it achieved — the necessity for a complete overhaul of the programme management methods.’’62

The ELDO Council appointed a committee to review every aspect of the program. The committee, which included senior engineers and executives from government and industry in the United States and Europe,63 issued a devastating indictment of ELDO’s organization and management, finding nu­merous technical problems that resulted from the lack of authority and inade­quate communications. Poor electrical integration in the third stage was the immediate problem, having caused the failures of flights F7-F11. This was a function both of the poor management of the German company ASAT and of the contracting of the Secretariat, which did not assign integration authority to any of the contractors working on third stage components. Failures resulted from interface problems with components delivered by foreign contractors to ASAT, and between ASAT’s two partners, MBB and ERNO.

Communications between ASAT and its two partners were extremely poor. ASAT was a small organization created by the German government solely to coordinate the large companies MBB and ERNO on the ELDO third stage. Communications between ASAT and other firms supplying third stage com­ponents were even worse, leading to a design that obeyed ‘‘none of the most elementary rules concerning separation of high and low level signals, separa­tion of signals and electrical power supply, screening, earthing, bonding, etc.’’ This made the British guidance computer and sequencer extraordinarily sen­sitive to noise and minor voltage variations, which in turn caused it to fail in the F11 flight.64

By far the most significant recommendations were to abolish indirect con­tracting and to ensure the definition of clear responsibilities for interfaces. Member states at last gave the Secretariat the authority to place contracts. Now desperate for solutions, ELDO adopted a number of American tech­niques, including the full adoption of phased planning, work breakdown con­tractual structures, and preliminary and final design reviews for the Europa III program, ELDO’s hoped-for improvement to Europa II.65

General Aubiniere, the new secretary-general and former director of the French Space Agency, hoped that stronger project management would turn ELDO around. Unfortunately, ELDO never got another chance. After the British withdrew financial support in 1971, the remaining partners had to de­velop a new first stage or purchase Blue Streak stages. Disillusioned after the F11 failure, the Germans threatened to withdraw. With continuing political disagreements over launch vehicles and over cooperation with the United States space shuttle program, ELDO’s support evaporated. The member states eliminated Europa II while the F12 launch vehicle was on its way to Kourou in April 1973. ELDO bid for a part in the American shuttle program, but when the Americans withdrew its proposed Space Tug, a vehicle to boost payloads to higher orbits, ELDO’s time was up. The member states dissolved it in Feb­ruary 1974.66 Twelve years of negotiation, compromises, and struggle came to an end.

Conclusion

Political and industrial interests drove the formation of ELDO, Europe’s larg­est cooperative space project. All of the major powers preserved national interests through indirect contracting, by which national governments main­tained authority. Even after being strengthened in 1966 by adding a Project Management Directorate and an integrating organization, SETIS, the Secre­tariat was limited to collecting information and distributing it through the Technical Directorate to the ELDO Council. Member states compounded the Secretariat’s weakness by changing objectives, as British support weakened and French leaders lobbied to create a more powerful rocket that could boost communications satellites to geostationary orbit.

ELDO’s weakness resulted in a series of failures caused by interface prob­lems. The ELDO Secretariat could neither create nor enforce consistent docu­mentation, processes, or quality. Nor could it force contractors to commu­nicate with each other. These problems resulted in badly designed electrical circuitry between the British, French, and German stages as well as internal to the German third stage because of the poor management and attitude of Ger­man and British contractors. Six consecutive failures were the result, all but one because of interface failures traceable to poor communications between member countries and contractors.

While rocket and space programs in the United States and the Soviet Union all confronted numerous failures in the process of learning how to build these complex technologies, inadequate organizational structures and processes compounded ELDO’s problems. Like James Burke, the Jet Propulsion Labo­ratory’s first Ranger project manager, Europa I project managers had no con­trol over major elements of the project. ELDO’s unbroken series of failures mirrored Ranger’s early problems, showing the criticality of organizational issues. Europeans had the capability to build rockets, as shown by successes with Nazi Germany’s A-4 in World War II, and the postwar British Blue Streak and French Veronique and Diamant. However, all of these projects benefited from strong, centralized organizations and close working relationships be­tween government and contractors to ensure better communication. The ill – fated Europa launchers had none of these advantages.

ELDO combined many of the worst management ideas into a single, piti­ful organization. Its engineers, managers, and directors struggled against a fatally flawed management structure that was almost the exact antithesis of systems management in the United States. Where systems management pro­moted strong authority for the project manager, in ELDO the manager’s au­thority was virtually nil. Systems management required critical attention to interfaces, but ELDO initially ignored them; no single individual or group ever analyzed both sides of the interface to ensure compatibility. Compo­nent quality assurance-through inspections, testing, and documentation — was standard in the United States but only randomly present in ELDO. ELDO’s hapless record and defective structure was a warning to European leaders that cooperative technology development required true cooperation. Europeans would begin launcher development again, but this time on a much sounder basis. The new effort would build upon Europe’s successful science satellite group, ESRO.

SEVEN

Missiles, particularly ballistic missiles,38 disrupted the air force’s culture, oper­ations, and organization in several important ways. First, and most obviously, missiles had no pilots, relegating humans to only pushing a button. Second, maintenance and long-term operations of missiles amounted to storage and occasional refurbishment, as opposed to the ongoing repairs typical for air­craft. Third, because missiles were used just once, missile testing required the creation of a missile production line. Unlike aircraft, where a few prototypes could be built and tested with dozens or hundreds of flights each, every mis­sile test required a new missile. This implied that the fly-before-you-buy con­cept, where aircraft could be tested before instigation of full-scale production, no longer applied. For missiles, testing required a production line. Finally, missiles involved a variety of challenging new technical issues, as described in the previous chapter. Simply put, many of the air force’s existing organiza­tional and technical processes did not work for missiles.

Ballistic missile programs languished at a low priority during and after World War II, as the air force concentrated its efforts first on manned bomb­ers, and then on jet fighters for the Korean War.39 The rapidly escalating Cold War provided the impetus to transform the loosely organized missile projects. Successful testing ofthe Soviet atomic bomb in 1949 spurred the United States to develop a fusion weapon. In March 1953, Assistant for Development Plan­ning Bernard Schriever learned of the success of American thermonuclear tests from the SAB. Recognizing the implications of this news, within days Schriever met renowned mathematician John von Neumann at his Princeton office. Von Neumann predicted that scientists would soon develop nuclear warheads ofsmall enough size and large enough explosive power to be placed on ICBMs. Because of their speed and in-flight invulnerability, ICBMs were the preferred method for nuclear weapons delivery, ifthe air force could make them work. Realizing that he needed official backing, Schriever talked with James Doolittle, who approached Chief of Staff Vandenberg to have the SAB investigate the question.40

The Nuclear Weapons Panel of the SAB, headed by von Neumann, reported to the air force staff in October 1953. In the meantime, Trevor Gardner, assis­tant to the secretary of the air force, volunteered to head a Department of De­fense (DOD) Study Group on Guided Missiles. Gardner learned of Convair’s progress on its Atlas ICBM and met with Dr. Simon Ramo, an old friend and head of Hughes Aircraft Company’s successful air-to-air missile project, the Falcon. Based on the results of his study group, Gardner and Air Force Sec­retary Talbott formed the Strategic Missiles Evaluation Committee, or Teapot Committee, to recommend a course of action for strategic ballistic missiles.41

Von Neumann headed the group, and Gardner selected Ramo’s newly cre­ated Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation (R-W) to do the paperwork and man­age the day-to-day operations of the study. Ramo had partnered with fellow Hughes manager Dean Wooldridge to form R-W.42 In February 1954 the Tea­pot Committee recommended that ICBMs be developed ‘‘to the maximum extent that technology would allow.’’ It also recommended the creation of an organization that hearkened back to the Manhattan Project and Radiation Laboratory of World War II: ‘‘The nature of the task for this new agency re­quires that over-all technical direction be in the hands of an unusually com­petent group of scientists and engineers capable of making systems analyses, supervising the research phases, and completely controlling the experimental and hardware phases of the program — the present ones as well as the subse­quent ones that will have to be initiated.’’43

On May 14, 1954, the air force made Convair’s Atlas its highest R&D pri­ority. Because Convair and the majority of the aircraft industry hailed from

Southern California, the air force established its new ICBM development or­ganization, the Western Development Division (WDD), in a vacant church building in Inglewood, near Los Angeles airport. Air force leaders placed newly promoted Maj. General Bernard Schriever in command on August 2, 1954. Because the Teapot Committee had recommended creation of a ‘‘Man­hattan-like” project organization, one of Schriever’s first tasks was to see if this made sense and determine who would oversee the technical aspects ofthe project.44

Schriever rejected the Manhattan Project organization because ICBMs were significantly more complicated than the atomic bomb.45 Because neither he nor the scientists believed that the air force had the technical expertise to manage the program, Schriever could hire Convair as prime contractor, or he could hire R-W as the system integrator, with Convair and other contrac­tors as associate contractors. The air force used the prime contractor proce­dure on most programs, but this assumed that the prime contractor had the wherewithal to design and build the product. Schriever was already unhappy with Convair because he believed Convair kept “in-house” elements such as guidance and electronics in which it had little experience, to the program’s detriment.46

Scientists with whom he had worked for nearly a decade also deeply influ­enced Schriever. Von Neumann and his fellow scientists believed the Soviet threat required a response like the Manhattan Project a decade earlier, bring­ing together the nation’s best scientists to marry ballistic missiles to thermo­nuclear warheads. Schriever later explained:

Complex requirements of the ICBM and the predominant role of systems engineering in insuring that the requirements were met, demanded an across – the-board competence in the physical sciences not to be found in existing orga­nizations. Scientists rated the aircraft industry relatively weak in this phase of engineering, which was closely tied to recent advances in physics. The aircraft industry, moreover, was heavily committed on major projects, as shown by existing backlogs. Its ability to hire the necessary scientific and engineering tal­ent at existing pay-scales was doubted, and with the profit motive dominant, scientists would not be particularly attracted to the low-level positions accorded to such personnel in industry.47

Organization of the Inglewood complex: the Western Development Division, the Special Aircraft Projects Office, and Ramo-Wooldridge.

Many years later Schriever described his admiration of the scientists: ‘‘I be­came really a disciple of the scientists who were working with us in the Penta­gon, the RAND Corporation also, so that I felt very strongly that the scientists had a broader view and had more capabilities. We needed engineers, that’s for sure, but engineers were trained more in a, let’s say a narrow track having to do with materials than with vision.’’48

To capitalize on the vision and expertise of physical scientists and mathe­maticians such as von Neumann and von Karman, Schriever created an or­ganizational scheme whereby the leading scientists could guide the ICBM program. Following the von Neumann committee recommendations, Schrie­ver selected R-W for systems engineering and integration.49 Free of civil ser­vice regulations, R-W could hire the requisite scientific and technical tal­ent. The air force could more easily direct R-W than Convair, because R-W had few contracts and no production capability. The aircraft industry dis­puted this unusual arrangement, fearing that it established a precedent for ‘‘strong system management control’’ by the air force and also that it might create a powerful new competitor with inside information about air force con­tracts and contractor capabilities. On both counts, the aircraft industry was correct.50

Selecting the best and brightest technical officers from ARDC, Schriever’s talented staff quickly took charge of ICBM development. Because AMC re­tained procurement authority, it set up a field office known as the Special Air­craft Projects Office (SAPO) alongside Schriever’s ARDC staff in Inglewood. By September 1954, air force headquarters approved Schriever’s selection of R-W, confirming the triumvirate of the WDD, the SAPO, and R-W. Schriever’s next battle would be to establish the authority and credibility of his team in the face of skepticism at air force headquarters and the outright hostility of the aircraft industry.51