Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in ... - The Black Vault

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First Steps into Space: Projects Mercury and Gemini
I would like to talk now a little, because we will describe all of this in much
more detail – I would like to talk about how we managed this program, because I
think this was one of the important things we learned. As you know, this program
started on – go-ahead was given on October 7, 1958 and a small organization, the
Space Task Group, was set up to handle [6] it. The overall management, of course,
was the responsibility of NASA Headquarters, but the project management rested
in Space Task Group. And of course, it was recognized from the beginning that
this had to be a joint effort of many organizations and of many people, because
it was an extremely complex program and it would be probably involve more
elements of Government and industry than any similar development program
that had been undertaken. So, the task was that of establishing an overall plan
that would best fit the program and accomplish the objectives at the earliest date,
pulling all of these varied groups together, and the scheme that we used to pull
people together and pull organizations together is best shown in this next slide,
where we might look at this at three levels: At the policy level, which was the
overall management of level where general policy decisions were reached and
carried out as to how the two organizations would work together; the next level
down which was the approval review and direction level; and then, a third level
of implementation where we used a system of working teams, with the specialists
and design people from each of the various units concerned with any particular
problem, and these were action committees and decisions could be reached at
their meetings, with formal documentation to follow at a later date, and teams
were set up as required wherever there were interfaces to be solved and common
problems involving more than one organization. And I might add, and I think
this is very important, teams were set up as they were needed; they were dissolved
when they were no longer needed. We did not have committees for the sake of
committees.
[7] [Slide 8]
And, I think a matter—To put some names and numbers into a chart
such as this, I’d like to show the next slide which shows an arrangement we
used in the launch vehicles. The manner whereby NASA could get Atlas launch
vehicles for the space program was reached in an agreement at the level of NASA
Headquarters and the Department of Defense, and this was spelled out in a
working agreement. Then, it became the task of NASA Space Task Group and
the then Air Force Ballistic Missiles Division to translate this policy into a launch
vehicle we could use and then we brought together at the working level members
of Space Task Group, members of the Ballistic Missiles Division, as well as their
contractors and our contractors, and out of this evolved the details of things,
such as the automatic abort system, the structural interface, the launch complex
modifications, the launch countdown, that were required. Now, another bit of
management arrangement that was established that also worked very well, and
this fell primarily in the operational support area and in the network areas, was
the fact that NASA, as such, had very little resources to carry out the program
of this nature. For example, for recovery, we didn’t have a navy. It’s this type of
resource I am addressing myself to. We did not have a range; so, in order to
effectively provide this support from the Department of Defense, and arrangement
was made whereby a Department of Defense Representative for Project Mercury
Support was appointed and he was the NASA, the single point contact within the