In the two years after Mueller was brought on, Apollo transformed from a group of loosely organized research teams into a tightly run development organization. Even the engineers most ardently opposed to systems management found that many technical problems could be solved only by sharing information. As von Braun put it, “The real mechanism that makes [NASA] ‘tick,’ is . . . a continuous cross-feed between the right and left side of the house.” In half a decade, a space program that had once been a national embarrassment became the best in the world.
