I don’t think it is fair to say that Apollo could have been pulled off by a few kind of people. It was a massive undertaking spanning almost all fields of science and engineering. Just read a book like _Stages to Saturn_ to see what an undertaking it was to just conceive, design, implement and _manage_ the Saturn rockets.

But I’m more curious about your second statement. Could you back that up with some evidence? How is ITER’s management and leadership “MBA/Political”? Is it really different from the other projects’? Such a statement needs to be backed up with some evidence.