It has been said that the Apollo Program was the greatest human achievement since the construction of the pyramids in Egypt. It was certainly one of the greatest achievements of modern times. But how was this miracle accomplished?Superficially, Apollo was the culmination of less than a decade of work by the greatest scientific and engineering minds anywhere in the world, but it was also an astonishing logistical and management achievement.
Before President Kennedy was elected to office, military planners on both sides of the Cold War were convinced that the moon might represent the ultimate safe haven for military assets. If an enemy was to launch a first strike, whoever controlled the moon would always have the last word. With the goal of ensuring that safeguard, the US Army and the US Air Force began making plans for going to the moon long before NASA was even created. However, President Eisenhower chose to put America's space program in the hands of a civilian agency and the military moon program ended.
Three years later, when President Kennedy announced his nation's goal of landing men on the moon, the sheer scope of the task required more than just scientists and engineers, it required men and women who were used to planning on a scale rarely seen outside of military conflict. It would also require the requisitioning of many of those old military assets, from ships, to tracking systems, to contractors.
USAF Four Star General Samuel C. Phillips would sit astride of the colossal program named Apollo and with the aid of nearly half a million of his fellow citizens would achieve the seemingly impossible.
This book contains the entire plan, as it was summarised for a very limited number of people who were highly placed in the organizational structure. This rarely seen document is reproduced here in its entirety and spells out how the greatest logistical program of the 20th century was achieved.
posted 11-13-2017 09:13 AM
advertisement