Apollo Moon Landings – What can we learn?

50 years ago this month Humanity achieved something that many before them deemed not possible. We set foot on the surface of the moon. It was a mammoth undertaking over many years, costing millions of pounds (well $dollars) and involving hundreds of thousands of people. Personally I find the whole subject absolutely fascinating and hope we not only emulate that achievement, but exceed it in new ways in the very near future. 

The whole subject has me thinking (hence the blog) what, if anything we could learn from the Apollo missions. I have drawn a few parallels and conclusions, all personally speaking of course.

A Clear Goal

There was nothing simple about the Apollo missions.  The F-1 Rocket Engine on the Saturn V remains to this day the most powerful engine ever made. The rockets were an engineering triumph, however the goal was very clear and simple – You didn’t need to be a Rocket Scientist to understand it.

President John F Kennedy stood before Congress on May 25, 1961, and proposed that the US “should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

At the time, it was not really known with any real certainty if a moon landing was even technically possible, let alone within the timescales given. The goal focused not only NASA but a Nation. At its height NASA had over 400,000 people working on the programme (that would be some Scrum of Scrums!), but all the Companies (some 20,000) Departments, Teams and Individuals were all working towards one very clear and understandable goal. Even those not working directly on the rockets, hardware or software were still contributing to the many complex elements required to pull it off. 

Without the overarching goal they may never have achieved anything. Sure they would’ve been busy, but how would they know they were all pulling in the right direction and contributing to the main aim?

Personally, I believe goal setting is a really effective way to achieve anything, especially useful for organising teams when you get over a certain size. 

Looking back at some of the most challenging projects I have been involved with, those that had very clear goals allowed the teams to achieve the huge amounts of work required in short spaces of time (without a NASA sized budget).

The goal, was simple, clear and transparent – nowhere to hide, achieve it, or not.

Focus

Following on from the goal was the deadline. Nothing focuses the mind like a deadline. We have all left things to the last minute with a looming deadline, but somehow (most of the time) always seem to meet it (tasks expand to fill time available). A clear and simple goal makes it much easier to focus, which in turn can lead to greater productivity. Had there been multiple goals, focus would’ve been split – diluted and this would have been a big risk to the project, with quite possibly a different outcome.

We know from our Scrum experience that we are more likely to increase productivity when we stick to one or two clear and well-defined sprint goals. Of course it’s not always possible, but if nothing else we can at least be aware that this is the preferred option where permitted, we can’t all have the budgets NASA had, but we can try to maximise results with what we have available and strive for improvement.

Having a clear goal and focus is also a very powerful way to say no to unwanted distractions that take away your focus and don’t contribute to your goals – one reason we don’t always meet them.

A clear focus can help reduce stress and stop the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Iterative

The missions were like sprints. If you look in detail at all the Missions 1 through to 17, and even the programmes prior to Apollo, Mercury and Gemini, what becomes clear is each mission had a primary purpose (goal), there was feedback from all stakeholders, I’m sure all parties fed back into the process (a retro maybe).  The missions were incremental, with each mission they inched ever closer to their ultimate goal, taking what they learned from the previous one and making adjustments as knowledge was gained.

Iterative Missions Goals

• Apollo 4  –  First uncrewed test flight of the Saturn V launch vehicle
• Apollo 5  – Test in space the functionality of the first Lunar Module to be created
• Apollo 6  – An uncrewed test of the Saturn V launch vehicle. It was the final uncrewed Apollo test mission
• Apollo 7  – First manned test of the Command and Service Module. The crew orbited the Earth 163 times and spent 10 days and 20 hours in space
• Apollo 8  – First crewed spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit, reach the Moon, orbit it, and return
• Apollo 9  – Earth-orbital engineering test of the first crewed lunar module. Check out of launch vehicle and spacecraft systems, the crew, and procedures
• Apollo 10 – Dry run for moon landing. Identify landing site, got to within 15,000 meters of the surface
• Apollo 11 – The culmination of all the mission prior

The beginning of a project is when you know the least about it.  An iterative process helps the design & solution evolve and can end up very different from the original concepts, as more knowledge is gained.

Competition

Competition is a great way to keep motivation levels high. NASA knew if they took their foot off the gas, there was another nation just waiting to beat them to the prize. Competition is healthy and necessary! It can drive innovation and quality. It keeps you on your toes and engaged with Customers to ensure you are meeting their needs, because if you are not, someone else will. I’m sure there would have been healthy competition between the Astronauts as well, to get selected for each mission and the all-important moon landing. You can be confident each and every one raised their game to be in with a shot of the moon.

Competition is a key driver for innovation to occur.

Teamwork

Apollo just couldn’t have been done without teamwork, just not possible. Teamwork is vital to achieving anything significant. One example of this I really liked was that the Apollo 11 crew didn’t want their names on the mission badge (the first Apollo badge not to include them), as they wanted the moon landing to be recognised as a team effort and not just the 3 crew members.

In a broader sense, we like to think individuals are responsible for greatness, inventions or innovation, but actually when you scratch the surface there are teams of people all contributing and collaborating. Many great inventions are the product of work done by previous people or generations, with someone (or team) taking the next step, but certainly not in isolation.

One example of this is the Windows Operating System. Windows exists because of the Apple Macintosh, which in turn exists because of the Xerox Alto, developed by PARC. If you dig deep enough you will discover more and more layers. Point is that one person didn’t go from nothing to something on their own. 

The well-documented events of Apollo 13 just goes to show what teamwork can achieve in the face of near certain adversity.

When the stakes are high, a strong team pulls together and becomes stronger.

Trust

If trust equated to thrust, then trust during Apollo was unparalleled. The Saturn V rocket’s first stage carried 770,000 litres of kerosene and 1.2 million litres of liquid oxygen. At lift-off, the stage’s five F-1 rocket engines ignite and produce 7.5 million pounds of thrust. Imagine sat on top of that knowing there is nothing you can do about it, just trust 100% in all members of your team that they have done their level best. On the flip side image being an engineer on the project, knowing how costly a mistake could be. What absolute trust must the Astronauts of had in their team.

During the actual landing, Michael Collins remained in the Command Module while the other two were on the Lunar surface. Again what trust Neil and Buzz placed in Michael. He was their only ticket back to Earth.

There were accidents and incidents throughout the project, the untimely death of the crew of Apollo 1, must of shook the whole of NASA to the core, but still they carried on and somehow trust must have been regained for the project to continue In the way that it did.

From a business perspective, we need to build good, strong teams and trust in them to deliver what they were hired to do, this can be difficult, letting go of control and trusting in the team. It certainly takes time and effort, but the payoff when it works is worth it and probably (in my view) the results cannot be replicated in any other way.

Constraints

Ok, so they had a near unlimited budget, backed by the Nation and Central Government and with a huge workforce, so what constraints? Well time. We know a deadline was imposed, well this was a constraint and as we all know, a big one. We all have constrains in everyday life, usually time and money, but actually constrains are not always a bad thing – they can be a good thing. Conditions can help boost creativity by focusing and channeling efforts with what you have available, not concerning yourself with what you don’t have or what you could do. I’m sure the time constraint would have played a major part in Apollo. Imagine the same project, but no time constraint, I do wonder if the result would have been the same or would the search for perfection or the next best thing have potentially delayed and delayed progress.

I know from personal experience a few days or week before a Customer demo certainly sharpens my mind in a way that’s hard to replicate by other means. This is why demos are so important in Agile. Get it over the line and show it working. 

On the same theme, but touching on a different subject for a moment, I recently went to the Science Museum in London where there is an exhibition on the Digital Age. There is an exhibit on the ARM processor and how it was developed in an environment with some very severe constrains. They had no money and no resources, yet two people designed the low-powered ARM processor under those conditions – just maybe it was because of those conditions that it was achieved.

Constrains can sometime help us think more creatively and push innovation in ways we didn’t think possible.

Risk

Apollo was risky in pretty much every sense. With regards the cost to human life, I will let you make up your own mind on the subject as to whether or not it is worth the sacrifice of those who have sadly lost their lives in the pursuit of space exploration.

In terms of risk in business (or our own personal development), sometimes we are scared to take the next step or go outside of our comfort zone, as we deem it too risky. It could be argued that greater rewards are possible with greater risk, We all have our own view on risk and how much we are willing to accept. But there is also a risk of doing nothing, staying in that comfort zone, especially in the technology sector, doing nothing or taking no risks can actually turn out to be more risky. By not keeping up with the latest trends, technologies or consumer behaviour, you can fast become obsolete, outdated and irrelevant in the market place, one only has to look at the stories of Nokia and Blackberry, at onetime with huge market shares that we never thought could end quite so quickly, abruptly and irreversibly. 

Maybe sometimes doing nothing is actually the riskiest option.

Ambition

I’ll keep this short – Apollo was certainly ambitious. Last lesson…

Shoot for the moon, you may just get there!