Doing the Impossible: George E. Mueller & the Management of NASA's Human Spaceflight Program (Springer Praxis Books in Space Exploration) 2012th Edition

Dr. Mueller's engineering and management prowess pervades this interesting "tell all" book about the Gemini and Apollo programs. Soft spoken as he is, another element that jumps out of the book is the incredible number of speeches he made to amazingly diverse audiences; from legislators to workers, from space advocates to media, from contractors to peers. The reader sees clearly the iron will and tenacity Dr. Mueller displayed in his leadership style, in his decision making, and in his persuasiveness to often timid or reluctant managers he worked for. Many of them not as rational as he, and some of them risk-averse.Systems management and all up testing permeates the way he led the program. These are the lasting contributions to leadership that Dr. Mueller left for all disciplines, whether space - oriented or not. These techniques changed the way we manage complex programs of all types.Well covered are the terrible disasters like the Apollo 1 fire, the near misses, and the triumphs. President Kennedy could not have had a better standard bearer to bring his vision of landing a man on the moon in the decade.The book is loaded with quotes that Mr. Slotkin pulled from Dr. Mueller's speeches and writings. Some that appealed to me:Reminding people in the program they were working on "the greatest project man has ever undertaken"."In the exploration of space, man is indeed engaged upon a voyage of discovery which promises to return richer rewards than any expedition up which (he) has (ever) embarked"Published in an article in the New York Times written by Dr. Mueller. "The triumph of Apollo...is only a beginning - it has given us confidence to dream those impossible dreams and the knowledge required to make those dreams reality.""The new knowledge acquired in space exceeds by far the value of the funds so far spent. For knowledge, more than guns and butter, is the true power of modern states."He called human spaceflight "a catalyst to the achievement of the goals of our society""We must now, using this as a foundation, continue to advance. The American public will not permit otherwise - or better yet, history will not permit otherwise.""To a remarkable extent, the space program is founded on faith and on belief. On the faith that there is a future for mankind and the belief that the future is one that will be good for all the people of the world, both as individuals and as nations. On the faith that elsewhere in the universe life and intelligence exists and the belief that finding and sharing knowledge and experience will be good for each race. On the faith that learning more about the stars and about the solar system will improve life here on Earth and on the belief that as man learns the secrets of space travel, he will use these ships to explore and eventually inhabit other planets and tour the stars."There are some very quotable comments, the last one bordering on poetry, that reveal the man behind the scientist and manager.

This is a well written book backed by excellent research. Kudos to Mr. Slotkin for the work.The book covers Mueller's career at NASA where he made major contributions to Gemini as well as Apollo, then skims over his career after leaving NASA. As the book itself states it's not a biography.There are many behind the scenes anecdotes and the interaction between top managers Webb, Seamans and Muelller plus their underlings like Shea and Philips are surprising to me for their highly political nature.One criticism - Mueller is known as a strong advocate of Apollo follow on programs. Early in the book the author makes the point Mueller believed in these but failed to put them in place. However that doesn't stop a great deal of space being devoted to said projects. We read of speeches, budgets and meetings plus moon bases and Mars fuel depots all while knowing these programs went nowhere. While there is value in understanding Mueller thought he was building a capability, not a one-trick pony; the value of devoting so much space to these never-achieved items is debatable to me.Another area that could be improved is graphics. The management layers and relationships were complex at best and some simple organization charts would go a long way at explaining these.On the plus side are two strong points. This is the first book that successfully explains for me the difference between the management of a center and the management of the program at that center.Further I've never realized the distinction between building a product like Apollo for the purchaser (in this case the US nation, through Congress, via top Apollo political management) versus building the product for the user (in this case the astronauts and flight controllers via top Apollo technical management).As can be seen Apollo was a complex program on multiple levels over many years. This book does a good job of giving the political background on the program while concentrating on one of the most important personalities in the program.

This is a magnificent story about an incredible man, unknown to the general public but nearly worshipped in the space community, and among the many laymen who are fascinated by manned spaceflight, and Apollo in particular.Mueller is best known for his insistence on "all up" testing, i.e., testing the entire rocket in the first test flight, which he implemented from nearly day-one of his appointment as the associate NASA administrator for manned spaceflight in the summer of 1963, just after Gordon Cooper's Mercury mission.Wernher von Braun and his German colleagues at Marshall initially resisted Mueller's directive, which they considered crazy. They preferred testing rockets methodically, one-stage-at-a-time. But von Braun came around to Mueller's way of thinking and eventually von Braun acknowledged that absent "all up" testing, America would have never achieved JFK's goal of sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to the earth before the decade was out.The validation and vindication of Mueller's "all up" approach came on November 9, 1967, with the launch of AS-501, which was the first launch of the Saturn V.PS -- I would post a link to a video of Walter Cronkite watching the launch and yelling "look at the rocket go!," but Amazon's "review guidelines" evidently preclude that. GMAFB! If you are interested, then look up "apollo 4 walter cronkite" on your favorite search engine and you should find it.

This is a terrific book on a fascinating subject.