> "...Only Apollo 17 had a long launch delay of 2 hours 40 minutes, Apollo 14 of 40 minutes. Most delays were less than a second..."
NASA is out of practice (and it's not being run by Germans anymore).
NASA is out of practice (and it's not being run by Germans anymore).
...This was an enormously expensive and time-consuming process, grinding the stage's production schedule almost to a standstill and jeopardizing the Presidential timetable.
When this happened Webb told von Braun to desist, adding that "We've got to trust American industry." The issue came to a showdown at a meeting where the Marshall rocket team was asked to explain its extreme measures. While doing so, one of the engineers produced a rag and told Webb that "this is what we find in this stuff." The contractors, the Marshall engineers believed, required extensive oversight to ensure they produced the highest quality work. A compromise emerged that was called the 10 percent rule: 10 percent of all funding for NASA was to be spent to ensure in- house expertise and in the process check contractor reliability..."
Literally laghed out loud on this one and had to explain to coworkers what was so funny :)
We are way past the original timeline and budget. You fail!
After 2 decades, time to acknowledge it:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/04/08/the-wrong-stuff/