Placide D. Nicaise

Many people are dreamers, but only a few are prophets. Real prophets have no magical insight into the future, but they have a vision of what can be done and the advantages of doing it. Of course, only a few visionaries have the ability to inspire others to their vision and only a tiny fraction of those have the ability to lead the way to its fulfillment. This very rare combination of traits, under the right conditions, can revolutionize institutions, usher in a new technology and alter the course of history.

Such visionaries often appear as founders of a new business or industry. They seem to have a clearer vision of where they are going and how to get there than those that follow them. Companies blaze into prominence under leaders like Henry Ford, Thomas Watson, Sam Walton or Bill Gates, then decline as the second generation of management takes over. It doesn’t matter how many competent people are in line as replacements, whenever the prophet is gone; the organizations lose something that they never recover.

The people that lead organizations to greatness must have an ideal vision, even a romanticized vision, of their goals and they must also have charisma and persuasiveness. No one will invest their time or money, unless someone can show them the vision and convince them they could be part of it. To build any organization you must get the support of others—members of Congress, military leaders, corporate directors, investors and the people with the skills to get the work done. Everyone must be sold on the idea that your vision can fulfill his or her dreams. An organization might have people in the ranks with better management ability, more technical ability, better financial skills or more efficient organizers, but there must be someone at the top that can sell the dream to the rest of the world.

Von Braun was the prophet of the space age, and he was able to share his dream of space flight with everyone that he met. Of course, he was much more than just a dreamer. He could grasp concepts, he had great technical depth, he was an organizer and most of all—he knew how to motivate people. He was a very rare and very great leader in the broadest sense of the word. The team that he put together, first in Germany, then later in the United States, was of very capable, but not extraordinary people. It was just that working toward the dream, under his leadership, everyone realized they could do extraordinary things.

Von Braun was a true visionary about space flight, and he had the charisma to share that vision with the people that could make his vision a reality. Undoubtedly, he was at the right place at the right time. He had come to a country with vast resources and industrial capacity at a time when the population was traumatized by the thought of nuclear annihilation and mortified by the thought that the Soviets had out-paced us in a vital technology. When the window of opportunity opened, he was ready. He leaped through it and took the nation to uncontested leadership in space technology—an achievement that electrified the public and took Apollo Astronauts to the moon.

The Saturn stages developed by the von Braun team at MSFC provided the muscle that made the Apollo missions possible. The Saturn was the largest rocket vehicle ever built, and will probably remain the benchmark for large space boosters until mankind makes another expedition beyond earth orbit. The development program for Saturn incorporated many new technologies, yet was completed in a remarkably short time and achieved a near perfect record of success. Thirty-three missions, with seventy-five active propulsion stages, were flown without a single catastrophic failure—the only rocket program in history to achieve this record. Not every component worked perfectly on every flight, but because of conservative design and built-in redundancy, they worked well enough to avoid a mission failure. This remarkable record of reliability and success was not happenstance. The people that designed, built, tested and operated the machines took it as a personal responsibility that their machines would work perfectly. They were fanatical in their diligence and devotion to their job. They were inspired by their leadership and shared their vision.

The people that undermined von Braun, and later the organizational structure of his German team, had no idea of the key role the team played in achieving that level of commitment, and of promoting the future course of space technology. Of course, it might not have mattered anyway. Some people are swayed more by their personal ambitions than by idealistic goal such as space flight or the national interest. When leadership goals are compromised by jealousy, retaliation, and personal gains the organization crumbles and the dream dies.

The new leaders that moved into the vacuum left by the Germans may have thought that they could do a better job. After all, many of the policies insisted on by the Germans were widely considered to be outmoded and out of place. For instance, their policy of maintaining a hands-on, in-house capability of dedicated professionals was said to be an infringement on private businesses. Their conservative approach with fanatical attention to detail, followed by in-house testing, was certainly out of place with the new NASA management that favored a cheaper, faster, riskier development approach. Their policy of independence and outspokenness among their technical people allowing a free exchange of information up and down the management chain was in direct conflict with the tighter, more formal management control practiced by industry and most government project offices. These policies might not have originated with the Germans. They had long been used in scientific development groups such as NACA and ABMA that preceded NASA. However, the German managers insisted on holding the line on these policies while they were in charge, and this was certainly one of the reasons they were forced out.

The policy of letting the technical culture within NASA decline in favor of contractors was a political decision that may have looked good on paper. The problem was not that the contractors didn’t have competent specialists with aerospace experience. They just didn’t have a reservoir of generalists with the vision to see where the space program should go, and the oversight to make sure that nothing went wrong along the way. That is NASA’s job—a job that they once did well. It is a job that they must do again if they are to have a space program of innovation and success.

In looking back over the changes in NASA and the history of the space program over the past 40 years, it is pretty easy to see that the old policies had some real advantages. It is also obvious that some decisions made within NASA management were not based on the purest of motives. One of these decisions was luring von Braun away from his power base at MSFC, and forcing him out of the agency just when the space program was most in need of a visionary and a leader. Another was the arbitrary decision to expel the remainder of the von Braun team. These actions were detrimental to MSFC, the national space program and the image of American justice.

NASA started out with President Eisenhower’s directive for the peaceful advancement of aerospace technology. It had some of its most dramatic successes when it was a technically inclined, freewheeling research organization with enough in-house expertise to chart its own course. NASA culture has changed dramatically from those early years when everyone seemed to have the vision. The old NASA did not have legions of managers, staff and administrative people—the technical elite dominated the culture. They hired and promoted based on qualifications, not to conduct social experiments into advancing minorities (even if such advancement was for the greater good of society). NASA contracted out jobs that they did not have the in-house expertise or capacity to perform. The agency was not a conduit for handouts to contractors on dubious studies or to buy contractor influence with Congress. Even in the old days, high level managers would sometimes rotate into NASA headquarters for a few years before going back to their old companies. In recent years they have essentially taken over the agency, making their objectivity and motives more questionable than ever. These practices have the appearance of impropriety that sets a bad example within the agency and leaves it open to criticism by the public.

The problem is not only that mistakes were made in the evolution of NASA, but these mistakes were downplayed, excused, or covered up. To read the press releases, one would think that things had never been better within NASA. The sad fact is that people who succeeded the original team and the policies that they brought in with them have not worked well. The rising costs, lowered expectations, and a space tragedy now and then is a testament to that fact. Perhaps these policies would be more efficient or cost effective on some other projects but in a program that takes years, costs billions of dollars and can lead to a national tragedy, only the most diligent people and the most reliable machines will do. This is one of the things that von Braun and his team understood and tried to preserve.

This story of the German Rocket Team rising from the ashes of defeat to lead their adopted country in one of mankind's most daring adventures is a saga that is well known throughout the world. The ending of this story is little known because there was no fanfare when these rocket pioneers were driven out of their jobs. The shameful attempt to downplay the role of this team and to drive its members into exile on the basis of threat and innuendo is a dark chapter in American history. It is too late to correct this injustice, but it is not too late to admit it and reconsider some of the policies that carried us to the Moon and returned us safely to Earth.