What Made Apollo a Success?

by National Aeronautics and Space Administration

(Introduction by G. M. Low) On July 20, 1969, man first set foot on another planet. This "giant leap for man­kind'' represented one of the greatest engineering achievements of all time. This article and the others in this document describe and discuss some of the varied tasks behind this achievement. We will limit ourselves to those tasks that were the direct responsibility of the NASA Manned Spacecraft spacecraft development, mission design and mission planning, flight crew operations, and flight operations. We will describe spacecraft design principles, the all-important spacecraft test activities, and the discipline that evolved in the control of spacecraft changes and the closeout of spacecraft anomalies; and we will discuss how we determined the best series of flights to lead to a lunar landing at the earliest possible time, how these flights were planned in detail, the techniques used in establishing flight procedures and carrying out flight operations, and, finally, crew training and simulation activities-the activities that led to a perfect flight execution by the astronauts. In short, we will describe three of the basic ingredients of the success of spacecraft hardware that is most reliable, flight missions that are extremely well planned and executed, and flight crews that are superbly trained and skilled. (We will not discuss two equally important aspects of Apollo -the launch vehicles and launch operations. These elements, the responsibility of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and the NASA Kennedy Space Center, go beyond the scope of this series of articles.)

Genres: Engineering, Space

84 pages, Paperback

First published February 5, 2014

About the author

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.

Reviews

[Gerhard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Turns out. Not scrum.... 😲

[Sarah Hopkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I often hear references in my NASA weekly team meetings for SLS that go something like, "Well, this is how Apollo did it!" Unfortunately, I wasn't around during that era, so the only way for me to understand Apollo engineering is to read about it. This was quite the technical overview detailing why it worked! It certainly explains the fundamentals behind why NASA does some of the things it does today.

[advik · Rating 3 out of 5]

a bit technical,
this book explains each important step necessary for planning, testing, training, simulating, controlling basically every aspect of making the whole mission successful,.

[Zeke Noller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great document. Very technical, so an engineering or scientific background is helpful. There are still a lot of non-technical to be made from this report though, especially about team and project management. I started reading this after watching Dustin Sandler's 2023 speech.

General:
1. Steps in a project or operation should be not too big and not too small. Too big and you introduce unnecessary risk. Too small and you risk not completing the task in a timely and cost-effective way.
2. In meetings, encourage everyone to speak up. Problems should not be avoided, but put it in the open for discussion.
3. Data management and control is very important. Centralise procedures and data

Apollo-specific / technical learnings:
1. Reduce interfaces between systems. Example: only 100 wires between launch vehicle and lunar module
2. Reduce crew work-load! Rely on telemetry beaming back to mission control and then either mission control team or computers making decisions.
3. Test wisely. Individual components must be tested, and so must larger subsystems. But, by its nature, the whole vehicle can't be tested before flight. Similarly, it is important not to overtest. Lastly, ensure that testing itself provides as much information as possible while still being non-destructive
4. Redundant hardware and systems, as well as simulations are important. If redundant systems aren't used or backup procedures prove unnecessary - great! They are not a waste, because they gave the crew the confidence and headspace to focus on the more important tasks.
5. Simulators in parallel to the 'real' crew module are invaluable. This allows the mission control team to simulate (potentially in real time) what the crew is experiencing
6. Minimise display in the crew module. Do you really need those numbers? Is that screen really necessary? Can this display be covered by default and then only uncovered when it is necessary to see? Think about minimising what the crew is seeing as well as doing
7. Redundancy is not always duplicating hardware or wires - it can also be building two or more systems or procedures with completely different designs. This helps to isolate higher-level problems that might affect a redundant system just the same as its twin
8. There are different modes of failure. Design failure can be mitigated with extensive testing of high-level systems. Workmanship can be mitigated by the testing of lower-level systems and components. Some failures still persist though. The residual, flat-rate failure rate on the Apollo was 1.5%. The random failure of components is mitigated through designing redundancy, by fail-safe systems (systems that are designed to still work if one component fails) and thinking of failure modes (thinking about the implications of the failure of different combinations of components).
9. When problems are found, fix them. But also ask higher-level questions. Why did this not get spotted earlier? What is the deeper, operational cause of this? What systems or procedures would prevent this problem from being created or slipping through in the first place? How can future, possibly unrelated problems like this be prevented in the future. This was certainly what was done after the Apollo 1 fire.

[Douglas Sellers · Rating 3 out of 5]

50% outdated and 50% still very relevant

[BigBrain · Rating 4 out of 5]

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