Question

Apollo 11 Moon Landings

10 different reliable sources

• What difficulties did the team face?
• How were they able to overcome these difficulties? What happened?
• What are the lessons that we can learn from this team about effective teamwork?
• What was the team's extraordinary achievement? Why was it so significant?
• What was their philosophy/approach toward teamwork that allowed them to meet their objective?
• Use of reliable sources and APA referencing

Answer 1

Apollo 11

Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. The first steps by humans on another planetary body were taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969. The astronauts also returned to Earth the first samples from another planetary body. Apollo 11 achieved its primary mission - to perform a manned lunar landing and return the mission safely to Earth - and paved the way for the Apollo lunar landing missions to follow.

This is What the Apollo 11 Crew Faced During the Moon Landing

The first Apollo crew to reach the moon faced incredible difficulties on their flight, but the world of space flight was never the same after.

(i) Getting to the Moon's Surface

By the time that Apollo 11 launched, the Saturn V launch system had been well proven. In fact, nearly everything about the mission had been done before, except the actual landing of the lunar module on the surface of the moon.

Making this happen meant that the astronauts had to undock the landing module from the command module, which would stay in orbit around the moon. When the Apollo 11 astronauts initiated this sequence, residual pressure in the connecting passage shot off into space, giving the module an extra bit of thrust. Initially, Neil Armstrong didn't think this was going to be an issue, but after a while, he calculated that they would miss their planned landing site by 3 miles. It ended up being 4.

As they continued their descent into an unforeseen territory, the lunar module was sounding alarms and communications with the ground were becoming patchy. Another issue arose too; they were burning way too much fuel.

Since they overshot the planned landing site, they were trying to find a new suitable place to land. If they didn't do it quick enough, they'd burn too much fuel and wouldn't be able to get off the surface.

Armstrong and Aldrin persevered through all of this difficulty though, and with 30 seconds of fuel left, they landed on the moon.

(ii) The Danger on the Surface

One might think that now that the astronauts were safely on the surface of the moon that all of the difficult times were behind them, but that wasn't the case for the Apollo 11 crew.

As soon as they touched down, ground control started getting signals from the lander module that the descent-stage fuel line was building pressure. The extreme coldness from the lunar surface had caused an ice build-up in the fuel line, causing a blockage. If this wasn't remedied, it could burst and explode. Luckily, luck was working in their favour that day, as heat from the engine slowly started melting the fuel line and remedied the blockage.

But there was more...

Now that there weren't any alarms blaring, the question became "Do we moonwalk?"

Because the crew had overshot the original well-studied landing site, no one knew what lied beyond the doors of the lander. Mission control was concerned that the dirt might act like quicksand, or have jagged rocks that could puncture the astronauts' suits.

NASA had sent Surveyor landers to study the lunar surface before, but they had no way of being absolutely sure what the moon would be like.

Finally, the decision was made to initiate an extravehicular activity or EVA. While we now know that the first walk on the moon was a success, lunar dust proved to be no joke. The moon lacks any ability to erode the sharp jagged nature of its particles, so lunar dust was sharp and stuck to absolutely everything. Later missions had troubles with jammed zippers and valves and it reportedly coated everything inside the landing modules.

(iii) Food Safety

While up in space, the astronauts also had to eat... and not get food poisoning from old food. This meant that engineers had to tackle food safely intensively prior to the missions. Initial testing demonstrated that existing food safety measures wouldn't cut it, so scientists had to grapple with making new discoveries in food science.

NASA teams actually worked with Pillsbury, who developed a new method of food handling that controlled products from raw material to final distribution. This became the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system and was used in the first Apollo missions and is now mandated for all meat, poultry, seafood, and juice produced in the US.

In the end, NASA isn't just an organization devoted to space, it's an organization devoted to technological development to benefit the entire world. Investment in NASA has long been directly tied to an increase in technological discover.

Lessons Learn From Their Team Effective Teamwork

Lesson #1: Visions Can Come True. JFK’s memorable 1962 “Moon Speech” set forth the vision of Apollo. It included the famous “because it is hard” acknowledgment, and the equally inspiring charge that “to do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out then we must be bold.” Some 57 years later, vision, boldness and the motivation they generate in others remain essential tools by which leaders take organizations to great heights. Their absence can create insurmountable barriers to growth.

Lesson #2: Teamwork Matters. The three Apollo 11 astronauts were not close friends. They had different personalities. Armstrong was emotionally remote. Aldrin acerbic and abrasive. Collins more “happy go lucky.” But they made it work; they interacted successfully under the most extreme circumstances. For leaders don’t need to be BFFs with their colleagues in order to be effective. They do, however, need to be accepting and respectful of who their colleagues are, and the contributions they offer.

Lesson #3: Confidence. They believed in their systems in spite of the risks: the Saturn V liftoff, the LM ascent engine firing, trans-earth injection, the re-entry and splashdown. Even at NASA’s famous 99.9% reliability standard, much could still go wrong. Yet they moved forward in reliance on confidence in the technical competency of the workforce and the efforts to remove risk from the conceptual design. Where leaders can establish an organizational commitment to quality, safety and risk management, managers can more comfortably implement even the most aggressive of products.

Lesson #4: We Need The Michael Collinses. It was not for Collins to land on the moon. It was for him to orbit the moon in solitude, waiting/hoping for the return of Armstrong and Aldrin from the lunar surface. His glory would be less; history would not treat him nearly as prominently. And he was good with it. Indeed, every organization needs leaders content to do their job, who are willing to be part of a larger effort and not likely to complain or worry about more glamorous tasks being assigned to others.

Lesson #5: Command Decisions Count. The legend is indeed the fact. Armstrong really did land the Lunar Module, manually, with just 16 seconds of fuel remaining. Aborting the descent was not an option. Like all good leaders, Armstrong was in charge. He knew the terrain. He knew his machine. He knew the stakes and he was going to get the job done. The absolute ultimate command decision. Leaders who “sit in the left seat” must be prepared to “make the call,” to make the most difficult of decisions, often in the most trying of circumstances.

Lesson #6: Encourage Ideas. It wasn’t store-bought. There wasn’t a model or prototype. The enormous “crawler” that transported the Saturn V from the Vehicle Assembly Plant to the launchpad was the brainchild of a member of the launch operations team, whose name is now lost to history. He reportedly got the idea from watching the strip-mining process. Ingenuity and creativity often have wildly diverse parentage, and smart leaders will encourage ideas from all elements of the workforce, starting with the mailroom and continuing up the ladder.

Lesson #7: “Code 1202” Events. It was the Apollo version of a “black swan.” On final lunar descent, an unusual program alarm (code 1202) flashed, indicating a problem with the guidance computer. With the landing in balance, a young control officer in Houston, familiar with the code from earlier simulations, provided the critical “go on that alarm” assurance. No company is immune to a Code 1202 event. The unforeseeable will occur. But leadership can set expectations concerning risk evaluation that will help the company respond in crisis situations.

Lesson #8: It Takes A Village. A very big village, in fact. The Apollo project team was estimated at over 300,000 people. It was an amazing partnership between the government, private industry and the astronauts—and, ultimately the American public. And on their final flight transmission, the Apollo astronauts paid a humble video tribute to that partnership. Effective leadership recognizes that success often requires a combination of management vision and workforce commitment. Rarely is it one or the other, and almost never “just about me.”

Lesson #9: Learn from Mistakes. The great success of Apollo 11 was made possible in large part by the tragic failure of Apollo 1. That catastrophe forced NASA to confront its culture of complacency for risk and safety, and to restructure its entire operations. Indeed, great lessons can be learned from failure as well as success; from accepting responsibility for non-performance and moving forward from there. Even on the largest possible scale, leaders never stop learning-even from their own (or their organization’s) mistakes.

Lesson #10: Otherworldly Commitment. Armstrong attributed Apollo’s success to its nature as “a project in which everybody involved was...interested...involved...and fascinated by the job they were doing.” (“Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon” by Craig Nelson (Penguin, 2009) In today’s business environment, when leaders are increasingly focused on workforce culture and satisfaction, major initiatives are more likely to succeed when employees, like the Apollo team, are motivated “to [do] their job a little better than they have to.”

Apollo 11’s Extraordinary Achievements and Significance

A Moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both crewed and robotic missions. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2, on 13 September 1959. The United States' Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969.

Fuelled by the national euphoria and worldwide admiration following the first manned landing on the moon by Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969, NASA’s Space Task Group reported two months later that the United States should reprise its triumph by sending men to Mars. Mired in Vietnam, stagflation, oil embargoes, environmental worries, and civil unrest, neither President Richard Nixon nor Congress displayed any enthusiasm for such a budget-busting commitment. In the end, Nixon settled on “the next logical step” NASA would build a space shuttle to fly to a space station, which would serve as the launching platform for a manned Mars mission in some distant but foreseeable future.

The space shuttle has come and gone without bringing us any closer to Mars. NASA promised that it would reduce the cost of access to Earth orbit by 90 percent or 95 percent. In reality, at more than $1 billion per flight, it cost more than the Saturn launch vehicle it replaced. The Soviets built a knock-off space shuttle, the Buran, but never found a good reason to move beyond a single test flight.

The International Space Station scheduled for retirement sometime in the 2020s also failed to be a next logical step to Mars or to perform any function commensurate with its $100 billion-plus construction cost or $3 billion annual operating costs.

Meanwhile, unmanned spacecraft have flown around our solar system and beyond. And they have landed on Mars. They have proved to be better explorers and investigators than humans because they can go farther, stay longer, work until they die, and risk even sacrifice themselves in suicidal experiments. Furthermore, they see, feel, and hear with more range and accuracy than humans. And they do not require the life-support and safe return that humans do.

Telescopes in Earth’s orbit have sensed data from the depths of the universe across wide swaths of the electromagnetic spectrum. Satellites of Earth conduct scientific studies of the planet, speed our communications around the globe, track our weather patterns, support our national security establishment, and provide the GPS signals that direct our travel on land, at sea, and in the air. And all of them operate at a small fraction of the cost entailed in sending humans to do their jobs.

Philosophy / Approach Toward Teamwork:

Apollo crews all men, virtually all with engineering degrees and military backgrounds who only had to work together (on the mission at least) for a few days, although of course they trained together much longer in preparation for their flights. If we could find differences and distinct approaches in working together within those crews, imagine what it could tell us about teams in other settings, since we essentially controlled out many of the ways crews and teams often differ in “normal” workplaces.

One of the particular aspects we were interested in was how differences between the crew members mattered during the missions, how their conversations and working relationships addressed any differences, and how they learned on the fly. Since they were similar in so many ways, there are differences that are not so obvious. Attributes like men and women and people from different nations are clearly important, as a lot of teams research has shown, and have been the topic of many studies on how people in groups handle their differences. But, again, what made the Apollo crews so cool for us was, a bit counterintuitively, their surface sameness.

One of the distinctions we realized did exist between the Apollo astronauts was where they were from, and relatedly, what college they attended. Yes, the astronauts were all American but they hailed from different parts of the United States. Their places of higher education were also all over the country the military academies, MIT, Purdue, Michigan, Georgia Tech.

For example, if one person from the South was teamed with two others from the Northeast. Based on social identity theory, this fault line approach has revealed quite a lot about how teams resolve conflict, approach tasks, and basically get comfortable (or don’t) with each other in groups. In addition to the effect of solo-split regional cultural fault lines, the qualitative analysis also identified passages that told us about the crew members' collective affect, as in whether it was positive or negative, and, since we had several days of data for each mission, temporal dynamics on team learning. We measured team learning from conversations in the transcripts that indicate how crews acquire, share, combine, and apply knowledge.

Positive collective affect hindered team learning, while negative collective affect enhanced learning. This is consistent with past research on how negative affect is related to more systematic approaches to learning, and positive affect is the belief that everything is ok, inhibiting scrutiny and thus learning. Negative collective affect had a weaker influence on team learning for the crews with distinct regional fault lines. Team learning also appeared to decrease as the missions progressed, and crews with stronger fault lines experienced a greater decrease in learning over time.

Even groups that appear pretty homogenous can see their learning and approaches to work shaped a bit by differences in culture. Even more interesting is that these are team members that know each other quite well, have spent countless hours in simulated flight scenarios, and are still learning how to interact. So, just when you might think there is nothing more to gain from the legendary Apollo flights, there are more surprises.