LOCAL ENGINEERING IN THE EARLY AMERICAN AND JAPANESE SPACE PROGRAMS: HUMAN QUALITIES IN GRAND SYSTEM BUILDING Yasushi Sato A DISSERTATION in History and Sociology of Science Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2005 ______________________________ Supervisor of Dissertation ______________________________ Graduate Group Chairperson ii COPYRIGHT Yasushi Sato 2005 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted, first and foremost, to my three academic advisors in the History and Sociology of Science Department, University of Pennsylvania, for the completion of this dissertation. Prof. Robert E. Kohler, my dissertation supervisor, constantly provided me with inspiration and encouragement while I did research and writing. His seminar on scientific practice spawned initial ideas for my inquiry, and his confidence in my research agenda let me proceed. Prof. Nathan Sivin principally guided me through the first three years of my graduate study into the dissertation period. His kind support for, and careful critique of, my work sustained my motivation all the time. Prof. Ruth Schwartz Cowan offered me insightful comments on chapters after she joined the department. She also gave me helpful advices on sources, writing, and journal publication. Graduate work in the United States was truly a long journey for me. When I first joined the department, I had never lived outside of Japan, and I did not even know what such words as “footnotes” and “primary sources” meant. As I gradually learned things, I received much help from people in the department. Prof. Emily Thompson taught me the basics of the history of technology, and let me have an idea of what historical research is. Prof. Nathan Sivin, Prof. Mark B. Adams, Dr. Pap Ndiaye, and Dr. Arne Hessenbruch made it easy for me to adjust to the new environment in the beginning. Prof. M. Susan Lindee supervised one of my orals examination fields. Fellow graduate students, Jeffrey D. Tang, Eve E. Buckley, Jeremy A. Vetter, Philip Cho, Alex Checkovich, among others, iv had stimulating discussions with me and helped me in many other indispensable ways. Joyce F. Roselle, Patricia A. Johnson, and Ernestine Williams provided always friendly and reliable administrative support. As I began research on the history of American space programs, I met a number of scholars in the field. I benefited from suggestions from Prof. Howard E. McCurdy of American University, Prof. John M. Logsdon of the George Washington University, Prof. Stephen B. Johnson of the University of North Dakota, Prof. Andrew J. Dunar and Prof. Stephen B. Waring of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Prof. James H. Capshew of Indiana University, and Dr. Roger D. Launius and Dr. Sylvia K. Kraemer of NASA headquarters. At the archives that I visited, I received help from Ms. Jane H. Odom, Mr. Stephen J. Garber, Ms. Nadine J. Andreassen, Mr. Colin Fries, and Mr. John Hargenrader of the NASA History Office, Mr. Robert Jaques of the Marshall Space Flight Center, Ms. Anne Coleman of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, Mr. Glen E. Swanson of the Johnson Space Center, Ms. Shelly Henley Kelly of the University of Houston at Clear Lake, Mr. Russell Custonguay of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Archives, Ms. Elizabeth A. Booker of the Goddard Space Flight Center, and Mr. Michael Waesche of the National Archive’s Washington National Record Center. On the Japanese side, Prof. Takehiko Hashimoto of the University of Tokyo let me belong to his research office while I conducted research in Tokyo in summer 2003. Prof. Shigeru Nakayama of Kanagawa University provided me with useful advices on my research. Mr. Sakae Shiota of the National Space Development Agency of Japan and Mr. Houichi Minezaki and Mr. Katsumi Watanabe of the Japan Space Forum introduced me v to written sources. Mr. Teru Aruga, Mr. Akira Kubozono, and Dr. Yasuhiro Kuroda of the National Space Development Agency of Japan as well as Dr. Yasuhiro Morita of the Institute of Space and Astronomical Science, in particular, helped me organize interviews for my research. All the interviewees were extremely friendly and cooperative, and gave me their recollections to the full extent. I received various institutional and financial support during my stay in the United States. The Science and Technology Agency of Japan supported the first two years of my study here. In the following years, I received grants and fellowships from the Toyota Foundation, the Matsushita International Foundation, the Honjo International Scholarship Foundation, and the American Historical Association. Such support made it possible for me to continue research and make many trips to archives. I was able to complete my graduate work away from my native country due to the support of those who were around me. Besides the hospitality of the department that I belonged to, I received support and encouragement from my family and many Japanese friends in Philadelphia and in Japan. I am especially fortunate that my fiancé, Ms. Yuko Machida, whom I met late in my journey, and I can return to Japan together and continue research in the fields of our choice. vi ABSTRACT LOCAL ENGINEERING IN THE EARLY AMERICAN AND JAPANESE SPACE PROGRAMS: HUMAN QUALITIES IN GRAND SYSTEM BUILDING Yasushi Sato Robert E. Kohler After the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created in 1958, its field centers, located across the United States, started to carry out the nation’s civilian space programs. This dissertation examines four of those NASA centers and two Japanese space development institutions as local engineering communities and analyzes their engineering styles. These local communities had diverse institutional origins, and featured unique engineering styles suited to their social structures. Their engineering processes were generally loose and opaque, characterized by orientation for empirical judgments, emphasis on human discretion, and weakness in formal command lines. As they carried out large-scale national projects, however, they faced pressures to adopt a new mode of engineering that embraced formalized, standardized, document-intensive methods, with systems engineering at its core. They reluctantly came to practice the new methods, but did not easily accept the values associated with them, such as centralized vii control, clarity, rigorous optimization, universality, predictability, and accountability. Such rationalistic, depersonalizing values were threatening to the social structure of the local communities where many human particularities existed. The central issue in this dissertation is the cultural conflict between various local engineering styles and the centralized, universal mode of engineering. While historians of technology have studied such conflicts for the periods before World War II, very few of them have dealt with this issue in the large system building in the Cold War period. This dissertation demonstrates that the local engineering communities which developed large-scale, highly complex technological systems for space exploration depended on human-oriented engineering practices and assumptions, and that they found the rational, depersonalized style of new engineering incompatible with their styles. In order to show that engineers who practiced those different styles of engineering also lived in distinct social worlds, this dissertation looks into the social components of their engineering communities such as reward structures, interpersonal relationships, career expectations, and institutional identities and allegiances. While the lives of systems engineers were shaped by constant mobility and aspiration for upward advancement, those of local engineers were woven in stable communities. Behind their distinct engineering styles were their different social values and assumptions. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iii Abstract vi List of Illustrations xi Introduction Changing Engineering Styles of Local Engineering Communities in Postwar America and Japan 1 Local Engineering Communities and the State 5 Systems Engineering and Technocracy 11 Japanese Engineering and Human Orientation 23 Local Engineering Styles and Their Changes 29 Chapter 1 Wernher von Braun and Engineering Practices at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), 1960-1965 37 In-House Engineering Capability at ABMA, 1956-1960 44 Defending the In-House Capability, 1960-1964 54 Defending against Systems Engineering, 1962-1965 66 Conservatism and Reliability, 1960-1965 83 The Unity and Integrity of the In-House Capability 97 ix Chapter 2 Systems and Humans in the Development of the Apollo Spacecraft at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), 1960-1969 103 The Formation of MSC, 1960-1963 108 Managing the Spacecraft Development, 1963-1966 121 Manning the Apollo System, 1963-1966 134 The Fire and the Recovery, 1967-1969 150 Systems Engineers and Local Engineers 159 Chapter 3 The Reform of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the Cold War, 1960-1967 167 JPL a University Laboratory, 1960-1962 174 Pressure from NASA Headquarters, 1962 185 More Pressure from NASA and Congress, 1962-1964 196 JPL as a Reformed Laboratory, 1964-1967 213 Academic Values and State Control 222 Chapter 4 Values of Science and Engineering at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), 1958-1970 229 Scientific and Engineering Origins of GSFC, 1958-1961 234 Goett’s Lone Battle for the Center, 1961-1965 250 Persistent Values of Scientists, 1965-1970 261 GSFC as a National Center