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

Exploring the Unknown 243
Department of Defense framework for all Department of Defense support. Also,
NASA provided such [8] a single point of contact, so that these two could meet;
there was a logical place for the requirements to focus, a logical place for them to
go, and logical place for them to be implemented. And rather than many parts of
NASA trying to work with many parts of the Department of Defense, we had this
single point, and I think, and I don’t think, I know, in the operating end of it at
least, this contributed greatly to the success.
[Slide 9]
I’d like to show how this worked; for example, in the case of our network
and that’s on the next slide. Again, we had this type of thing; we had our DOD
representative, NASA single point of contact and this is for the establishment of
the network. At this level, we reached agreement of what parts of the national
ranges would be used which would be modified, where new stations had to be
implemented and who would operate new stations, how would we work on the
existing ranges. At the direction level, we had our Space Task Group and an
element of the Langley Research Center which handled the Western Electric
contract on the network that provided the detailed implementation, working
directly with the Mercury Support Planning Office and the National ranges. And
here, again, we had to break out working teams and these involved not only the
obvious units shown there, but for example, our spacecraft contractor had to work
with this people so that they would be compatible with the range. And, I think that
it was arrangements like this that allowed us to move on as we did and I must say
that it was also, as Bob Gilruth pointed out, the dedication of a large number of
people that allowed these arrangements to work extremely well.
[9] Now, in these types of systems and at this point in time which was
the development phase, we used this arrangement of working teams. As we
moved into the operating phase, however, we had to go to a more functional
type organization, with direct lines of command, and here again, having this
single point within DOD helped considerably. I’ll not show the entire operating
organization, but I’d like to show an element of it in this next slide to give some
idea of how organizations were intermingled in this line of command. This is
essentially the blockhouse organization and our total operating complex. [Slide
10] The operations director was a NASA man; however, reporting to him was
the launch director from the Air Force’s Space Systems Division. In turn, there
was a launch vehicle test conductor who was a General Dynamics/Astronautics
and in turn, had his associate contractors, reporting to him and, meanwhile,
the spacecraft test conductor was a NASA man who, in turn, had his contractors
reporting to him. And, I think any part of this organization you would find similar
intermingling – intermingling of the Services as well, intermingling of the Civil
servants, military personnel, and contractor personnel, but I think that the
important thing is that it did work; there were direct-line responsibilities and I
think we learned a lot out of that.
Now, I think it’s interesting to talk a little about the resources we used.
(May I have the next slide, please?) [Slide 11] Manpower reached a total, and
this, of course, has to be estimates, even though we’ve got rather small numbers
shown, of about 2,000,000 people. The direct NASA effort, [10] Space Task