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The Journal of Military History 68.1 (2004) 304-305



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The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs. By Stephen B. Johnson. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8018-6898-X. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Essay on sources. Index. Pp. xvii, 290. $41.50.

Why review this book in a military history journal? As explained by Stephen B. Johnson of the University of North Dakota, "the secret of Apollo"—systems management—was primarily invented by the U.S. Air Force (USAF), and chiefly in the ICBM program. Far from being a single systematic management theory, however, systems management actually evolved as a "mélange of techniques" (p. 17) during the Cold War by four social groups inside and outside the Air Force: military officers, scientists, engineers, and professional managers.

Johnson's relatively short, well-written book is really a series of case studies, rather than a full-length history of the origins and evolution of systems management. After an introductory chapter on the technical and administrative challenges posed by Cold War ballistic missile and space programs, he devotes two chapters to the evolution and consolidation of this body of knowledge in the Air Force, from the late 1940s to the creation of Systems Command in the early 1960s. One chapter follows on Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which morphed from an Army contract missile laboratory into a contractor-operated National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) center for lunar and planetary exploration, during which time JPL "independently" learned the same hard lessons about the need for strict management control. Chapter 5 details the imposition of USAF systems management on NASA's Apollo program by veterans of the ICBM projects, in order to overcome the gigantic challenges posed by the moon-landing project. Johnson then contrasts in two chapters the miserable failure of the European Launcher Development Organization and the ultimate success of the European Space Research Organization, which became the European Space Agency in 1975. In Johnson's account, the adoption of American systems management techniques such as configuration control and project management was the crucial difference between the embarrassing fiasco of the Europa launch vehicle project and the sterling successes of [End Page 304] the Ariane launcher and the Spacelab laboratory for the Space Shuttle. A final chapter outlines a scheme for understanding the relationship between the four social groups and the various components of systems management.

The Secret of Apollo is soundly based on the secondary literature and on archival research in the United States and Europe and provides an excellent overview of the topic within Johnson's chosen boundaries. Such a short history inevitably leaves questions unanswered, such as the role of the U.S. Navy and the reasons for continuing huge cost overruns in some defense and space projects, systems management notwithstanding. The book's summary nature also means that many of the techniques described by opaque labels such as "phased planning," "configuration management," and "systems engineering" are often too abstract. A bit of elaboration of the documentation and formal methods required would have been helpful. In sum, however, I can highly recommend Johnson's book to historians of both the Cold War military and civilian space programs.



Michael J. Neufeld
National Air and Space Museum
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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