What Made Apollo a Success (3/3): The Team
Author: Peter Schnoor | Reading time: 9 minutes
Review
In the first part, we looked at how the technology for the Apollo moon missions was developed and which points were crucial. The second part highlighted the role of thorough mission planning and NASA's criteria for it. But the entire project would have been completely useless and impossible without the people behind it. The astronauts who were personally in space. But also the ground crews, the staff in the control center, the engineers, scientists, mathematicians, IT specialists, craftsmen, doctors, and the countless other helpers across America. Everyone had their place in this massive undertaking and contributed with their talents to make it a success.
My goal with this article is not to provide an introduction to team building, crew resource management, or employee motivation in general. Experts in these fields can certainly do that better. However, I still want to briefly highlight what was important to NASA in the selection and training of their crews and consider how we can transfer that to IT projects.
A Strong Team is Formed
At the beginning of the Apollo project, it was determined which suppliers and employees NASA wanted to engage for this great undertaking. The selection was primarily focused on the professional and personal qualifications of those involved. With Apollo, the boundaries of human experience and knowledge were pushed. Relying on companies and employees who were not optimally qualified for their jobs would have been dangerous and foolish.
What criteria do you use to select your employees and those you surround yourself with? The answer to this question certainly depends on the significance of the project. If you want to build a house or have a tumor removed, you will not assign these tasks to people who are not perfectly knowledgeable. And what about your website?
As an agency, we find ourselves in the same situation. Our business model is based on not building a large full-service agency with numerous permanent employees, but rather assembling agile and professional teams that can look very different depending on the client and their requirements. We believe that this way we can provide our clients with the best and most cost-effective service without compromising on quality. Everyone we assign to our client projects is a professional in their field and has excellent qualifications. Because we are convinced that the website remains the cornerstone of a successful online presence. And accordingly, we carefully select our collaborators.
Gemini, or: The Importance of Experience
Project Apollo did not arise in a vacuum. For many years, the USA had been in competition with the Soviet Union for the conquest of space. So it is not surprising that both ground and flight crews had already gained some experience when it came to how a moon mission could look and what qualifications were necessary. And the list is impressive.
The astronauts were all trained and experienced fighter pilots, and most of them had already completed at least one space flight with Gemini. They were trained in the operation and development of computers, in navigation (both computer-assisted and manual), in controlling two different spacecraft in various flight phases and behavior patterns, in operating various rocket engines and life support systems, in working in zero gravity, and with space suits. All of this would have been unthinkable without the prior experience gained in the Gemini project. Here, future Apollo astronauts were able to learn and gain experience in most of these areas. Their feedback also directly contributed to the further development of the spacecraft.
But not only the astronauts, but also all other project participants benefited from the experience they gained in the Gemini project. Rocket launch procedures, docking maneuvers in space, spacewalks, and much more could also be trained, revised, and improved by the ground crews and the staff in the control center before the decision for Apollo was made.
In this context, it is important to note that almost our entire lives are determined and influenced by the experiences of previous generations. It has become rare for us to venture into completely unknown territory. But we ourselves have also been shaped by our experiences and the things we have learned in our lives. And these do not always have to be positive things. We can learn a lot from the mistakes of the past.
Developing and operating a website or web app is no longer rocket science. There are already initial AI models that can do this completely autonomously. However, what will always be needed is experience. Experience is hard to replace. It makes a difference for a client whether they or their agency only know how to build a website at the push of a button, or whether they truly understand the system being used, know the pitfalls, and are able to respond quickly and efficiently when things do not go as planned. Beware of agencies that develop fancy websites or apps but do not want to be responsible for maintenance afterward. Beware of agencies where one person wants to do everything. And beware of people who always want to use the latest and coolest technologies. Often, these are also the least tested and documented solutions—there is little experience behind them.
How to Simulate the Moon
With all the experience: Apollo was a different beast than Gemini. In Gemini, many techniques (e.g., docking maneuvers in space) were tested and perfected for the first time. But Apollo was a project with even more unknowns. It was not just about working and flying in the weightlessness of space, but about safely landing a spacecraft in the Moon's gravitational field and allowing astronauts to exit and work there. How do you simulate an environment where no one has ever been?
The NASA team started with the spacesuit. They quickly realized that parabolic flights, which temporarily created weightlessness, were not perfect for simulating the exhausting work in a heavy spacesuit. So they constructed huge water pools, which are still used today for realistic weightlessness simulation. Landing a vehicle on the Moon was also a challenge. The astronauts were experienced pilots, but the Moon has only 1/6 of Earth's gravity, and aircraft behave completely differently there. So NASA designed the so-called "flying bed frame" to simulate the flight behavior on the Moon. It nearly cost Neil Armstrong his life once, but in the end, the astronauts figured it out.
And the list could go on. The emergency stage designed to save astronauts in the event of an explosion of the massive Saturn V rocket had a performance comparable to that of the Gemini mission rocket. It was a huge undertaking with many unknowns.
We are far from such scale in web projects today. (Almost) everything has already been developed, tested, and implemented by others. We rarely tread into unknown worlds. And yet, for us developers, simulation is a daily companion. Whether we present a new design to clients as a mockup before developing the actual design (here we developed a color demo a while ago, where one can experiment with possible website color combinations). Or during development, when we simulate functions and content to test them thoroughly before going live. Like NASA, we also aim to get as close to the real thing as possible to avoid unpleasant experiences later on.
Training, Training, Training
In the development of the spacecraft, the motto was: "Test, Test, Test." In the training of the crews, the motto is "Training, Training, Training." Countless hours have been spent by both astronauts and ground crews in simulations and training. Every to-do list was internalized multiple times, every action memorized. Because only when all routine matters function without much thought does mental capacity remain free to look beyond the immediate tasks and keep the big picture in mind. And for possible unforeseen events that everyone experiences in life from time to time.
Here, mission planning was also an important factor, as effective training and safe flight would have been nearly impossible without the many "if-then" procedures for every conceivable incident.
Our relationship with our clients is quite similar. Many agencies create significant dependencies for their clients because they want to do everything themselves and do not even grant clients access to their own website. They behave like the Soviets, who (at least initially) did not want to allow their cosmonauts any influence over the spacecraft. We believe that clients—if they wish—should have full control over their website. That is why training is so important to us.
In practice, it is often the middle ground that NASA (and later the Soviets) chose: We empower the client to successfully accomplish everything they want to do. At the same time, we stand behind them with our experience as a web agency and support them in ongoing operations where it is necessary and sensible.
What Can We Learn?
At the end of this small series on the Apollo program, we want to briefly reflect and consider: What can we learn from the successes and experiences for our daily work? What makes a web project efficient, sustainable, and successful? Here, in bullet points, are some thoughts summarized:
- New, untested technologies should only be used where they truly provide significant added value—and where they are not critical to the success of the mission.
- Through testing and experience, many problems can be avoided in advance.
- Adhering to established safety standards protects against dangerous and costly mistakes.
- Redundancy is paramount for all essential functions.
- The maintenance and monitoring of all critical functions keep you on course over the long term.
- The simpler a system, the more robust it is. The more complex it becomes, the more prone to errors it also becomes.
- Previous experiences and mistakes should be consciously used to grow from them.
- It is crucial to aim for the right goals before the launch.
- It is wise not to implement everything at once, but to reach the goal in consciously chosen, sequential steps.
- Checklists increase safety.
- Pilots fly, the flight control supports.
- Simulations are essential to avoid ending up with a completely different result.
- Training and education create freedom and enable a successful collaboration between client and agency.
I hope you enjoyed this small article series. Feel free to write to me if you have any further thoughts on this! And follow us on LinkedIn or Instagram to not miss future articles!
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