Apollo: The Race To The Moon

by Catherine Bly Cox

To get control of the program, Shea called in his new assistant, Tom Markley, and said to him that somehow they had to keep this thing on track. “Go out and fix me a management tool,” he told Markley. Markley sent his men out to look at the major aerospace companies and their sophisticated management control centers. Then Markley himself went to visit what everyone said was the best of them all, at the Martin Company. It was beautiful, Markley thought, sort of a management war room. He figured he would set something like that up for Joe—which would be a big relief to Markley because, until he did, Shea was expecting him to know all the answers. Whenever Markley didn’t know something, he had to live with Joe riding the living hell out of him until he found out—“so it was best if I got a good system going.” Shea turned the Martin model down flat. Markley submitted a revised plan, scaled down a little. Shea turned that down flat too. This is ridiculous, Markley thought, so finally he walked in and asked Shea what kind of management system he wanted. Shea told him. “What he wanted,” Markley said, “was to get a notebook every Thursday night, and in it he wanted the entire program structured, meaning all the interfaces with Marshall, everything going on with the command module, everything going on with the service module, everything going on with the SLA, everything going on with guidance and navigation, everything going on with the LEM, everything going on with the launch pad, ...