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Space Exploration

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    $\begingroup$ +1 and thanks for the link. They do give a "simple" root cause though (p. 858), which is, basically "Their politicians did not understand the tech, and so their techies got too much power, which they abused". I don't think anyone would argue that the US politicians are great scientific minds. So this kind of reads like "the US managed to keep the techies in their place", which is ... interesting. $\endgroup$
    – MWB
    Commented Nov 27, 2023 at 20:01
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    $\begingroup$ @MWB In a manner of speaking, we did, by keeping an insulating layer between the engineers and politicians: the NASA administration. A dedicated management who can play politics and push the merits of various missions, while letting their subordinates focus on the technical details, changes the calculus immensely. For instance, read up on the Apollo debate between Earth Orbit Rendezvous and Lunar Orbit Rendezvous and then imagine that each side had their own bureau complete with their own political patrons! $\endgroup$
    – Cadence
    Commented Nov 28, 2023 at 8:48
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    $\begingroup$ To this day, NASA is very strict about having Headquarters in between engineers, and Congress and the public. There's also a realization that NASA had talented politicians on board during Apollo... one of them got a space telescope named after him. $\endgroup$
    – user71659
    Commented Nov 28, 2023 at 9:09
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    $\begingroup$ @Cadence "the NASA administration" -- And then these admins commissioned a study to find out why the US won the space race, and the study discovered that it was the admins? :-) $\endgroup$
    – MWB
    Commented Nov 28, 2023 at 9:15
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    $\begingroup$ @mwb make sure to check the sources, and the dates. There was a lot of new, or at least newly formalised project management stuff that came out of Apollo (waterfall) that gets credited for the success. There is also some modern re-assessment that maybe some of what they did only worked with an Apollo sized budget and should only be directly copied by your business if you also want to spend money like they did. $\endgroup$
    – GremlinWranger
    Commented Nov 28, 2023 at 13:04