The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs (New Series in NASA History)

Dr. Johnson's book The Secret of Apollo provides the reader with the critcial overview of how systems management was development by the American military and how it became to be applied in the civilian space program. The book provides a unique persepective on how success was achieved through the utlization of concurrency and systems management. There are many success and failure stories spread throughout he book as examples that tell the story. The book is easy to read and to undesrtand without having advanced degrees in either engineering or project management. Therefore, I commend this book as worthwhile reading from a histoc standpoint. Systems management, clearly, has been the American space program strength that was been transferred to our European allies.

Without a doubt, Johnson has meticulously researched and documented the systems engineering and management processes as they arose in the Air Force, NASA, and other government research organizations. However, the book reads like a dry and dense textbook. While it may be that presenting this material any other way is difficult, I suspect that more attention to organization (of the text) and better editing would greatly improve the reading experience.That said, the content remains fascinating and Johnson must be applauded for packaging so much in such a small book. Definitely required reading for those in the area, but not worth the time of casual science or engineering enthusiasts accustomed to the (exceptional) writing of Simon Singh and the like.

Johnson is one of the best historians of technology. This book explains the importance of systems engineering, a paradigm that permitted the United States to manage the complexity of the Apollo program, the most complex engineering achievement in history.

This important book by Stephen B. Johnson of the University of North Dakota's Space Studies Department, skillfully interweaves technical details and fascinating personalities to describe the rise of systems management in the U.S. and Europe. It is a very important work that uses Apollo as its key example. Only through the application of sophisticated management concepts were such a complex activity as the Apollo Moon landings accomplished.Reviewers received Johnson's work warmly and it has been accepted as an exceptionally important study of how Apollo technology succeeded. As Erik Rau of Drexel University commented: "[Systems management (SM)] forced new temporal and financial discipline on contractors and engineers, imposed practices that undermined functional organization and loyalties, and subjected to scrutiny all institutions and firms involved in the project. Schedule and cost slippages on large government-sponsored projects may have continued, but Johnson asserts that SM minimized their rate. In fact, Johnson persuasively argues that without the bureaucracy of SM, success on several large aerospace projects would have been unlikely" ("Enterprise & Society" 3 (2003): 372-74).While Johnson argued that systems management allowed the accomplishment of large-scale technological endeavors such as Apollo, it did not do so on the cheap. Costs rise as the engineering team manage for schedule and reliability, since they are interrelated and must be managed as a group. This held true for the Apollo program. The schedule, dictated by the president, was firm. Since humans were involved in the flights, and since the president had directed that the lunar landing be conducted safely, the program managers placed a heavy emphasis on reliability.Accordingly, Apollo used redundant systems extensively so that failures would be both predictable and minor in result. The significance of both of these factors forced the third factor, cost, much higher than might have been the case with a more leisurely lunar program such as had been conceptualized in the latter 1950s. As it was, Johnson concludes, this was the price paid for success under Kennedy's lunar landing mandate. Of course, understanding the management of complex structures for the successful completion of multifarious complex tasks was an important outgrowth of the Apollo effort.This is a critically important book in the historiography of Project Apollo and human spaceflight. It is must reading for anyone interested in the evolution of spacefaring in the last fifty years. I recommend it highly as a worthy study of the history of the systems management that allowed the success the Apollo program.

Dr. Johnson provides an outstanding and fascinating look at the history of Apollo. He provides a great review of all the lessons and leadership requirements necessary to accomplished such an amazing feat. Sadly though, this feat has never been repeated.

This book is more a history of how systems engineering evolved than a look at the apollo program. It starts with a long look at the problems with the early military ICBM program and the hard lessons learned from its development as well as going into a look at the major players in the early military space program. It then goes on to problems with the early spacecrafts at the jet propulsion lab and how these were fixed through applying principles of systems engineering. And of course it goes in depth into a look at the managing of the Apollo program. This ends with a good look at the early failings of ELDO (initial european rocket program) and the successes of ESRO (precursor to the European Space Agency).Reading this book, you begin to get a clear understanding of the complexity involved in trying to develop massive systems such as rockets and spacecraft. This is a must read for anyone looking to go into management in the aerospace sector or is interested in learning how the sector is managed or anyone interested in the history of the players in military space program.

Valuable and insightful / I was part of the European Space fraternity in the 1960's.....

For those amateurs like me who find the overall program management of Apollo awesome, this is a fascinating read.

A bit dry in parts - but definitely worth reading the introductory chapters and then going from there more selectively