MANAGING THE MOON JOURNEY

JAMES E. WEBB AND APOLLO
As the first explorers of space, astronauts garnered most of the public attention. But the sheer scale and complexity of the moon journey required many extraordinary individual contributions.
A special challenge of the Moon project was management. At its peak, more than 400,000 people in NASA, universities, and industry worked on Apollo and the supporting human and scientific exploration programs. The effort was the largest and perhaps most technically daunting engineering enterprise ever undertaken.
In 1961, President Kennedy selected James E. Webb to succeed Keith Glennan as Administrator of NASA and to guide a program that would require the talents of nearly every community in the nation.
An experienced manager, attorney, and businessman, Webb had served as Director of the Bureau of the Budget and as Undersecretary of State in the Truman administration. Webb also served as president and vice president of several private firms and served on the board of directors of the McDonnell Aircraft Company. Only three months after Webb's appointment to NASA, President John F. Kennedy stated the national goal of landing a man on the Moon before 1970. Webb served until October 1968, departing just months in advance of the historic moon landing. Under his leadership, NASA transformed space exploration from a partly-realized dream to one of the greatest American success stories.

NASA Under Webb