Local engineering and systems engineering: Cultural conflict at NASA's Marshall space flight center, 1960-1966

Technology and Culture

Volumn 46, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 561-583

  Sato, Yasushi ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO   (Japan)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 25444471027     PISSN: 0040165X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/tech.2005.0145     Document Type: Article

References (110)

1. Wernher von Braun, "Reminiscences of German Rocketry," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 15 (1956): 131.
2. Wernher von Braun, "Management in Rocket Research," Business Horizons 5, no. 4 (1962): 44.
3. Although the development of the Saturn launch vehicles continued after 1967, here the focus will be on the years 1960 to 1966. As Roger E. Bilstein observes, this was the period in which most engineering decisions pertaining to the Saturn launch vehicles were made and most design and manufacturing problems solved, although some problems did crop up after 1967. Bilstein, Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles (Washington, D.C., 1980).
4. Bilstein; Andrew J. Dunar and Stephen P. Waring, Power to Explore: A History of Marshall Space Flight Center 1960-1990 (Washington, D.C., 1999).
5. Howard E. McCurdy, Inside NASA: High Technology and Organizational Change in the U.S. Space Program (Baltimore, 1993).
6. Stephen B. Johnson, The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs (Baltimore, 2002).
7. Agatha C. Hughes and Thomas P. Hughes, eds., Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After (Cambridge, Mass., 2000). In their introduction, Hughes and Hughes describe the systems approach as a concept that subsumes systems engineering. The systems approach, which emerged after World War II, spawned a number of new academic disciplines and new modes of engineering and management, including operations research, systems engineering, systems analysis, and systems dynamics.
8. See also Thomas P. Hughes, Rescuing Prometheus (New York, 1998);
9. Stephen B. Johnson, "Three Approaches to Big Technology: Operations Research, Systems Engineering, and Project Management," Technology and Culture 38 (1997): 891-919.
10. Smith examined the culture and value orientations of antebellum artisans at the Harpers Ferry Armory, emphasizing their success in frustrating federal efforts to introduce interchangeable parts manufacturing and standardize and rationalize gun manufacturing. Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977).
11. See also David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore, 1984);
12. Ken Alder, Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815 (Princeton, N.J., 1997);
13. Daniel Nelson, Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management (Madison, Wisc., 1980);
14. Robert Kanigel, The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency (New York, 1997).
15. Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (New York, 1995).
16. Dunar and Waring (n. 4 above), 12-13. Marshall-affiliated historians usually call the group of German engineers "the team." Frederick I. Ordway III and Mitchell R. Sharpe, The Rocket Team (New York, 1979);
17. Ernst Stuhlinger and Frederick I. Ordway III, Wernher von Braun, Crusader for Space: A Biographical Memoir (Malabar, Fl., 1994).
18. In fact, the secretary of the army delegated to Medaris the maximum authority consistent with the law; Medaris could at his discretion take immediate action on procurement of munitions and materials, construction of new facilities, and implementation of projects. John B. Medaris, Countdown for Decision (New York, 1960), 72;
19. David S. Akens, "MSFC Historical Monograph No. 1 : Historical Origins of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center," December 1960, Archives and Special Collections, University of Alabama, Huntsville (hereinafter ASC/UAH), 41.
20. On the authority of Medaris's counterparts, William F. Raborn in the navy and Bernard A. Schriever in the air force, see Harvey M. Sapolsky, The Polaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Success in Government (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 35-36, 64-65;
21. Stephen B. Johnson, The United States Air Force and the Culture of Innovation, 1945-1965 (Washington, D.C., 2002), chap. 3.
22. "ABMA: Integrated Weapons Arsenal," Astronautics 2, no. 3 (1957): 40-42.
23. Neufeld, chap. 3. Neufeld calls this the "everything-under-one-roof" concept.
24. A law enacted after World War I presupposed the in-house production of munitions: "The Secretary of the Army shall have supplies needed for the Department of the Army made in factories or arsenals owned by the United States, so far as those factories or arsenals can make those supplies on an economical basis." Cited in House Committee on Government Operations, Organization and Management of Missile Programs: Eleventh Report by the Committee on Government Operations, 86th Cong., 1st sess., 2 September 1959, 54. The significance of this statute may be appreciated when it is compared with its counterpart for the air force, which used exactly the same language except that the word "may" replaced "shall." Medaris also strongly believed in the arsenal system and sought to defend it vigorously.
25. See House Committee on Government Operations, Organization and Management of Missile Programs: Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, 86th Cong., 1st sess., 3 March 1959, 254, 261.
26. Among these were Kurt Debus, Walter Haeussermann, and Helmut Hoelzer. See biography files at NASA History Office, Washington, D.C., (hereinafter NASA/HO).
27. Neufeld (n. 9 above), 88, discusses the "educated guesses and improvised experiments" in the case of aerodynamic innovations for the V-2.
28. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Inquiry into Satellite and Missile Programs: Hearings before the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, 85th Gong., 1st and 2nd sess., 14 December 1957, 588.
29. Ibid., 591. Von Braun's conception of the role of scientists in rocket engineering makes a clear contrast with that of his counterpart in the air force, Bernard A. Schriever, who strongly believed in the capabilities and visions of scientists.
30. See Johnson, United States Air Force (n. 11 above), 65.
31. Wernher von Braun, "Teamwork: Key to Success in Guided Missiles," Missiles and Rockets 1 (October 1956), 40.
32. Ibid., 41.
33. Neufeld, 102; Medaris (n. 11 above), 75; House Committee on Government Operations, Organization and Management of Missile Programs: Hearings (n. 14 above), 263-66. Some did leave the center, of course. More than one-third of the original Peenemünders who came to the United States after the war had left von Braun's team by 1960, most departing before 1955 for jobs in industry or the air force or to return to Germany. Some became tired of working in a military organization or could not envision a large role for the army in space programs, while others needed higher pay or had personality conflicts. There is some evidence that von Braun himself, in the Fort Bliss period, considered leaving. Even in the ABMA period, there was some attrition in most years. But von Braun perceived "a healthy rate of metabolism" to be necessary.
34. House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Review of the Space Program: Hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, 86th Cong., 2nd sess., 2 February 1960, 406-7;
35. Ordway and Sharpe (n. 10 above), 373-74, 388;
36. Stuhlinger and Ordway (n. 10 above), 83-84;
37. Kurt H. Debus, "From A-4 to Explorer I," speech at the Seventh International History of Astronautics Symposium, 24th International Astronautical Congress, 8 October 1973, 20, NASA/HO;
38. Von Braun, "Teamwork," 38-42.
39. Bilstein (n. 3 above), 16-42. Dunar and Waring (n. 4 above), 21-31.
40. On the arsenal concept, see n. 14 above.
41. Walter T. Bonney to NASA Administrator, "Arsenal Concept," 30 September 1958, NASA/HO.
42. House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Review of the Space Program, 400-401.
43. Saturn I was then called Saturn C-1, and had three stages. The third stage was ultimately dropped from the vehicle's configuration. Bilstein, 58, 265.
44. Saturn V was then called Saturn C-5. In addition to Saturn I and Saturn V, the Marshall Center built an interim launch vehicle, Saturn IB.
45. Don R. Ostrander to Wernher von Braun, 10 June 1960, NASA/HO; Don Ostrander, interview by an unnamed interviewer, 10 June 1972, 44-46, NASA/HO.
46. Joan Lisa Bromberg, NASA and the Space Industry (Baltimore, 1999), 40-41; McCurdy (n. 5 above), 38.
47. Wernher von Braun, "Third National Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space," 9 May 1963, 6, Marshall Space Flight Center History Office, Huntsville, Ala. (hereinafter MSFC/HO).
48. Bilstein (n. 3 above), 193-95; Wernher von Braun, "Management of Manned Space Programs," in Science, Technology, and Management, ed. Fremont E. Kast and James E. Rosenzweig (New York, 1963), 260;
49. "An Interview with Dr. Eberhard Rees," app. A of Managing Millions: An Inside Look at High-Tech Government Spending, ed. Rodney D. Stewart and Ann L. Stewart (New York, 1988), 231-32.
50. Von Braun, "Management of Manned Space Programs," 250.
51. D. M. Daley Jr. and D. C. Jefferys, "Development of Weld Fabrication Techniques for the S-IC Saturn V Vehicle," Welding Journal 43 (1964): 34-41. See also Bilstein, 200-209, 217-22, 230.
52. Bilstein, 112-16; J. R. Thompson, interview by Stephen P. Waring and Andrew J. Dunar, 6 June 1994, 7-9, MSFC/HO.
53. e Session (Paris, 1961), 73-83. NASA headquarters in time turned away from the purely statistical approach. Golovin, the most adamant statistician, left his position, and Gephart came to call for the integration of the opposing views of von Braun and Golovin. While Gephart still saw it as "essentially pointless" to discuss reliability without quantitative technique, he now believed that "reliability engineering can be viewed as a mating of sound engineering disciplines with analytical techniques."
54. Gephart, "Reliability - Propulsion and Launch Vehicles," American Rocket Society, New York, 9-15 October 1961, NASA/HO;
55. "Reliability and Quality," Institute of Radio Engineers Boston Section Meeting, 20 April 1961, 2, NASA/HO;
56. "System Reliability Engineering," IRE Second Conference on Reliability of Electronic Equipment, New York, 20 October 1961, 3, NASA/HO.
57. When Joseph F. Shea, a senior systems engineer, joined NASA headquarters in the beginning of 1962, its reliability philosophy changed even more. With his experience in military missile programs, he took a realistic view of the problem of reliability. Seeing statistical methods as impractical, he asserted that "The statistical confidence must be replaced with 'engineering confidence.'" Shea, "Design Requirements for Spaceborne Digital Systems," Computer Design 2, no. 4 (1963): 43.
58. Wernher von Braun, "What Is an Optimum Program?" Astronautics 5, no. 11 (1960): 27. To be sure, von Braun did not deny the importance of the statistical approach altogether. He admitted that statistical analysis was a powerful tool, although he believed that the vigilant efforts of individual engineers were more fundamental to reliability.
59. William Mrazek, interview by Tom Ray, 6 April 1973, 3, NASA/HO.
60. Eberhard Rees, "Marshall Space Flight Center Approach in Achieving High Reliability of the Saturn Class Vehicles" (paper presented at the Fourth Annual Reliability and Maintainability Conference, Los Angeles, 28-30 July 1965), 5, NASA/HO.
61. John R. Levinson, "Reliability Prediction in Design Decision" (paper presented at the Tenth National Symposium on Reliability and Quality Control, Washington, D.C., 7-9 January 1964), 139-11, ASC/UAH.
62. Bilstein (n. 3 above), 324-29, 414.
63. Bilstein, 148; Dunar and Waring (n. 4 above), 43; Robert Lusser, "The Notorious Unreliability of Complex Equipment," Astronautics 3, no. 2 (1958): 76.
64. House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Centaur Launch Vehicle Development Program: Report of the Committee on Science and Astronautics, 87th Cong., 2nd sess., 2 July 1962, 12.
65. Stuhlinger and Ordway (n. 10 above), 263; Georg von Tiesenhausen, interview by Andrew Dunar and Stephen Waring, 29 November 1988, 12, MSFC/HO; William J. Stubno Jr., "The Von Braun Rocket Team Viewed as a Product of German Romanticism," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 35 (1982): 447-48.
66. William R. Lucas, interview by Howard E. McCurdy, 22 March 1988, 11-13, NASA/HO.
67. Memorandum from Office of the Director to Division Directors and Office Chiefs, "MSFC Management Policy Statement #1," 16 August 1962, MSFC/HO.
68. A report on Marshall's organizational culture in 1963 pointed out that technical divisions had divided technical responsibility "in a sometimes undefined manner where technical responsibilities overlap." D. B. Gardiner, "An Analysis of the Job Environment for Engineers Employed by the Marshall Space Flight Center," 1963, 9, MSFC/HO.
69. "Presentation: MSFC Management," undated, 9-10, MSFC/HO. Although this document is undated, the words "OMSF" (p. 2) and "technical divisions" (p. 4) suggest that it was drafted between November 1961 and August 1963. The phrase "I, as the director at Marshall" (p. 8) shows that von Braun presented this document. Its discussion of the reporting requirements at Marshall and the phrase "this Center is a part of your own organization" (p. 14) shows that the audience was people from NASA headquarters. See also Bilstein (n. 3 above), 263.
70. According to Phillip K. Tompkins, in the late 1960s, von Braun received notes from people two or more layers below him so that his immediate subordinates could not filter information. But there is no evidence that this was the case in the first half of the 1960s. Tompkins, Organizational Communication Imperatives: Lessons of the Space Program (Los Angeles, 1992), 62-66.
71. George Bucker, interview by Roger E. Bilstein, 30 August 1971, 8, ASC/UAH. See also William Lucas, interview by Andrew Dunar and Stephen Waring, 19 June 1989, 20, MSFC/HO; Georg von Tiesenhausen, interview by Dunar and Waring, 29 November 1988, 12, MSFC/HO.
72. Here I focus on MSFC's position on this engineering problem. For a discussion of the problem in its entirety, see John M. Logsdon, "Selecting the Way to the Moon: The Choice of the Lunar Orbital Rendezvous Mode," Aerospace Historian 18, no. 2 (1971): 63-70.
73. Von Braun, "Management in Rocket Research" (n. 2 above), 42;
74. Ernst Stuhlinger et al., eds., From Peenemünde to Outer Space: Commemorating the Fiftieth Birthday of Wernher von Braun, March 23, 1962 (Huntsville, Ala., 1962), vii.
75. "Concluding Remarks by Dr. Wernher von Braun about Mode Selection for the Lunar Landing Program Given to Dr. Joseph F. Shea, Deputy Director (Systems) Office of Manned Space Flight, June 7, 1962," MSFC/HO. Behind this decision was also the fact that NASA headquarters indicated to von Braun its willingness to compensate with other projects for the decrease in Marshall's tasks that would result from the choice of the LOR mode. Joseph F. Shea, interview by Eugene Emme, 6 May 1970, 21-25, NASA/HO; Courtney G. Brooks et al., Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft (Washington, D.C., 1979), 80-81.
76. "Presentation: MSFC Management" (n. 47 above), 3.
77. Ibid., 3-5.
78. Wernher von Braun, speech at the Seventh NASA Management Conference, 5 October 1962, 5, MSFC/HO.
79. "Transcript of Telephone Conversation Mr. Holmes/Dr. von Braun, 5: 30 p.m., 2/19/63," in von Braun Daily Journal, NASA/HO.
80. I b i d.
81. Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox, Apollo: The Race to the Moon (New York, 1989), 174.
82. Joseph F. Shea, "The Apollo Program," July 1966, 23, NASA JSC (Johnson Space Center) History Collection at UHCL (University of Houston - Clear Lake).
83. Von Braun, "Management in Rocket Research" (n. 2 above), 44.
84. For Shea's life history, see Murray and Cox, 121-23. Also refer to his biographical data, available at the NASA History Office, and to interview transcripts, e.g., Joseph F. Shea, interview by Eugene Emme, 6 May 1970, NASA/HO. On von Braun's, see Stuhlinger and Ordway (n. 10 above).
85. For a detailed discussion on configuration management, see Johnson, Secret of Apollo (n. 6 above), esp. chap. 3.
86. Ernst Stuhlinger, interview by J. D. Hunley, 20 September 1994, 30-31, NASA/HO.
87. NASA Office of Manned Space Flight, "Apollo Configuration Management Manual," 18 May 1964, NASA/HO; Samuel C. Phillips to Marshall Space Flight Center Apollo Program Manager, 25 May 1964, NASA/HO;
88. "Saturn V Configuration Management Manual," 1 January 1966, ASC/UAH;
89. Johnson, Secret of Apollo, chap. 5.
90. See N. Lee Cropp, "Evolution of Marshall Space Flight Center Program Management Organization," unpublished manuscript, to have been presented to House Subcommittee on Manned Space Flight, 1973, 26-43, MSFC/HO. See also Bilstein (n. 3 above), 269-71. The communication between Marshall and NASA headquarters was facilitated by a close acquaintance between the head of IO, Colonel Edmund F. O'Connor, and Phillips. Initially the Industrial Operations Directorate was directed by Robert Young, who came from private industry. But he resigned after one year and was succeeded by O'Connor. Then a strong line of command emerged between Phillips at NASA headquarters and O'Connor at MSFC, both career air force officers with experience in the management of missile projects. In fact, Phillips recommended O'Connor to von Braun as the director of the Industrial Operations Directorate.
91. "Telephone Conversation Gen. Phillips/Dr. von Braun/Mr. Young, Friday, September 25, 1964, 10:45am," in von Braun Daily Journal, NASA/HO.
92. It is not appropriate to leave an impression here, however, that Mueller and Phillips rejected any practices that did not conform to the standardized, impersonal methods of systems engineering. As experienced managers, they knew that configuration management and other sophisticated, formalized techniques did not by themselves guarantee good management. Phillips, for example, once discussed the importance of what he called "eyeball-to-eyeball" management, meaning such practices as personal conversations and site visits. He observed that the development of management tools and techniques would not eliminate "the 'art' element." Phillips, "Management Scheme for Apollo" (paper presented to the American Astronautical Society, 16-18 November 1966), 18, NASA/HO.
93. George E. Mueller, "NASA Management Programs," address at the Joint Meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute, 8 July 1968, 2-3, 15, ASC/UAH.
94. Phillips, 15-16.
95. Tompkins (n. 48 above), 111.
96. Ann Markusen, "Cold War Workers, Cold War Communities," in Rethinking Cold War Culture, ed. Peter J. Kuznick and James Gilbert (Washington, D.C., 2001), 44.
97. This theme is discussed from the perspective of "Cold War liberalism" by Brian Balogh, "Introduction,"
98. and Hugh Heĉlo, "The Sixties' False Dawn: Awakenings, Movements, and Postmodern Policy-Making," in Integrating the Sixties: The Origins, Structures, and Legitimacy of Public Policy in a Turbulent Decade, ed. Brian Balogh (University Park, Pa., 1996), 1-33, 34-63.
99. Robert N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley, Calif., 1985).
100. Irene Taviss Thomson, In Conflict No Longer: Self and Society in Contemporary America (Lanham, Md., 2000)
101. and "From Conflict to Embedment: The Individual-Society Relationship, 1920-1991," Sociological Forum 12 (1997): 631-58.
102. William H. Whyte Jr., The Organization Man (New York, 1956).
103. Brian Balogh, Chain Reaction: Expert Debate and Public Participation in American Commercial Nuclear Power, 1945-1975 (Cambridge, 1991). On the long-term ups and downs in the influence of academic experts in the federal government,
104. see Robert Coldwell Wood, Whatever Possessed the President? Academic Experts and Presidential Policy, 1960-1988 (Amherst, Mass., 1993).
105. David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York, 1972). One should note the fluidity of the word "technocracy" here. In the most traditional sense of the word, it means "the control of society or industry by technical experts," or, as Theodore Roszak defines it, the "society in which those who govern justify themselves by appeal to technical experts who, in turn, justify themselves by appeal to scientific forms of knowledge."
106. Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition (Garden City, N.Y., 1969), 7-8. In reality, however, political scientists, historians, sociologists, and philosophers attach wide-ranging implications to the word. Recognizing such implications, I use the term technocracy loosely to mean the predominance of rational, impersonal judgments by experts over moral or ideological considerations made through democratic processes in executing national agendas.
107. Political scientist Frank Fischer notes that the systems approach was "a primary intellectual foundation of technocratic governance." Rational, scientific, analytical, and goal-oriented, it "supplies fundamental codes that underlie technocratic decision making." It performs "the essential technocratic task," for it "translates the political agenda into a technical language of science" through detached processes of optimization. Thus it "attempts to short circuit the basic political task of securing consensus and legitimation," replacing decision making through human interaction with decision making through depersonalized analysis. Fischer, Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise (Newbury Park, Calif., 1990), 198-99, 208-9.
108. For a similar argument, see Guy Benveniste, The Politics of Expertise (Berkeley, Calif., 1972), chap. 4.
109. Dunar and Waring (n. 4 above), 99-159.
110. Stephen B. Johnson notes von Braun's "conversion" at the time Marshall extended its efforts beyond the development of launch vehicles. He argues that, although the informal methods of von Braun and his followers sufficed in the heyday of Saturn development, von Braun came to appreciate the importance of systems engineering as the center's work grew more diverse. Johnson, Secret of Apollo (n. 6 above), 150-52. While this article supports Johnson's view, it also suggests that the gradual collapse of the fundamental social and engineering premises at Marshall facilitated the acceptance of the values and assumptions of systems engineering at the center.