INST 154
Apollo at 50
Fall 2019
E2: Case Study

Here is an example of a well written case study.

The goal of this Case Study individual experience is to bring the Apollo program down to a personal level by learning about the role and activities of a single person.

Selection

Your first step in this process will be to select at least five people, each of whom must be from a different category in the following list (if you submit a more than five people, you may list more than one person from a category, but your list must include people from at least five different categories). You can rank your list in preferred-first order (if you do, please say so!). We need your list uploaded to ELMS before class on the date indicated in the schedule so that we can assign you a person to study. We will not assign the same person to more than one student, so spread your selections out a bit to make it possible for everyone to get their choice (i.e., don't all try to select Neil Armstrong!).

Background Research and the Reading List Assignment

You will have then have a couple of weeks to learn about the person your have been assigned. For each person, we have provided an initial source to get you started, but you should read about your person considerably more broadly than just that one source. Of course, some people have more written about them than others. In general you should plan to consult at least five sources (except for the few cases in which fewer than five sources exist), and at least one of those sources should be a book (which may not address that person directly, but whcih at least explains the part of the program that they were working on). You'll want to learn about their background that eventually led them to Apollo, what their role (or roles) were during the Apollo program and what life was like for them during that time, and you will want to learn about some details of the Apollo Program through their eyes. Throughout the semester, you will then be able to apply what you learn by enriching our class discussions based on what you have learned from your person's perspective on Apollo.

A week before your paper is due, you will turn in your reading list on ELMS. A common problem with assignments that involve citing sources is putting the writing off to the last minute, and then finding that you don't have all the information avaolable that you need once you are ready to write. So we ask for your reading list a week early as a way of helping you to avoid that problem. We dopn't grade the reading list separately, but we will include whether it was done well in your overall grade for the assignment. You can, of course, add more readings that you discover after turing in your reading list in your final paper, and you don't need to have read everything on your reading list when you turn that list in. But you do need to have at least five things on that list (including at least one book) and you do need to read (at least parts of) everything on your reading list.

The Assignment

As a summative process, you will write a short (2-3 pages, single-spaced, standard margins, 12-point font, not including references) paper about your assigned person. In that paper you should summarize their background in one paragraph, summarize their role(s) in Apollo in your second paragraph, and then spend most of the rest of your paper describing (in detail) a single incident during the Apollo program in which your person was involved. You should choose an incident in which they needed made some decision or took some action that contributed in some way to the program. Finally, you should end your paper with a paragraph describing what your person did after the end of the Apollo program. Then include the list of sources that you read (if you read more than five, you can list only the most useful five). Submit your paper using ELMS before class on the date indicated in the schedule. We'll use this paper in two ways.

One is to get our first impression of how you write (so write well!). The other is to get a sense for how well you have drilled down beyond the initial pointers we have provided. You can -- and should -- ask others to read and comment on your writing. But everything you turn in -- every single character -- must have been written yourself. You also need to avoid even a whiff of plagiarism (in this and in all your writing). When you quote the words of others, you need to use quotation marks and cite your source. And when you state the ideas of others, whether by direct quotation or by paraphrase, you must give credit by citing your source. You can use any standard style for your citations, and for the references those citations refer to. You don't need to indicate page numbers in your citations, though.

Grading Rubric

People to Select From

Okay, here's the list of people. When choosing people, please list both their name and their number. If for some reason you want to suggest someone who is not on this list, please submit that as an extra name beyond the five we have asked for.

Senior NASA Managers

  1. Kurt Debus, KSC Director
  2. Bob Gilruth, Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) Director
  3. George Low, NASA HQ and MSC (Apollo Systems Program Office) (additional interview focusing on early Apollo Planning)
  4. Chuck Matthews, MSC (Director, Gemini Program Office)
  5. George Mueller, NASA HQ (Director, Office of Manned Space Flight)
  6. Joe Shea, MSC (Apollo Systems Program Office)
  7. Werner Von Braun, Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Director
  8. Jim Webb, NASA HQ (NASA Administrator)

Contractor Managers

  1. Dick Battin, MIT
  2. George Jeffs, North American
  3. Tom Kelly, Grumman
  4. Dale Myers, North American
  5. Roberta Pilkenton, ILC Dover
  6. Harrison (Stormy) Storms, North American

Astronauts

  1. Joe Allen (CAPCOM, group 6)
  2. Al Bean (LMP, group 3)
  3. Mike Collins (CMP, group 3)
  4. Charlie Duke (LMP, group 5)
  5. Gordon Fullerton (CAPCOM, group 7)
  6. Robert Lawrence (Air Force MOL Program) (NOVA Astrospies program)
  7. Jim Lovell (CDR, group 2)
  8. Jim McDivitt (CDR, Group 2)
  9. Jack Schmitt (LMP, Geologist, group 4)
  10. Alan Shepard (CDR, group 1)
  11. Deke Slayton (Chief Astronaut, group 1)
  12. Al Worden (CMP, group 5)

Engineers

  1. Don Arabian, MSC Mission Planning and Analysis
  2. Don Eyles, MIT Programmer (see ELMS for book excerpt)
  3. Max Faget, MSC Spacecraft Designer
  4. Margaret Hamilton, MIT Computer Programmer (Video, Video)
  5. Shirley Hinson, MSC Mathematician
  6. Andrew Hobokan, Grumman RASPO
  7. Caldwell Johnson, MSC Spacecraft Designer
  8. Richard Johnson, MSC Crew Systems Division
  9. Katherine Johnson, Langley Mathematician
  10. Owen Maynard, MSC Lunar Module
  11. James McBaron, MSC Spacesuits
  12. Richard Nafzger, GSFC Television
  13. Cathy Osgood, MSC Mathematician
  14. Bill Tindall, MSC Mission Planning

Operations

  1. Steve Bales, MSC LM Guidance Flight Controller
  2. Stanley Faber, MSC Simulation
  3. Chuck Deiterich, Retro Flight Controller
  4. Hector Garcia, MSC Real Time Computer Center
  5. Jose Garcia, KSC Instrumentation
  6. Walt Kapryan, KSC Launch Director
  7. Chris Kraft, MSC Director of Flight Operations
  8. Gene Kranz, MSC Flight Director
  9. Sy Liebergot, MSC CSM Electrical Systems Flight Controller
  10. Ann Montgomery, KSC Crew Systems
  11. JoAnn Morgan, KSC Launch Instrumentation Controller (There is also an interview available on ELMS)
  12. Frances Northcutt, MSC Flight Dynamics Support Room (see also Makers: Women in Space)
  13. John O'Neill, MSC Flight Planning
  14. Rocco Petrone, KSC Director of Launch Operations (also NASA HQ Apollo Program Director) (a biography in Italian is also available)
  15. Ernie Reyes, KSC Preflight Operations
  16. Tom Sanzone, Hamilton Standard PLSS
  17. John Saxon, Honeysuckle Creek
  18. Bob Sieck, KSC Spacecraft Test Team
  19. Phil Shaffer, MSC Flight Dynamics Flight Controller

Support

  1. Maureen Bowen, MSC Flight Operations Secretary
  2. John Holland, MSC Photographic Division
  3. Paul LaChance, MSC Flight Food and Nutrition
  4. Harvey Hartman, MSC Personnel Management
  5. Kenneth Haynes, White Sands Procurement
  6. Dee O'Hara, MSC Nurse
  7. Alan Rochford, MSC Spacesuit Technician
  8. Josie Soper, NASA HQ Secretary

Scientists

  1. Carroll Alley, UMD Physics
  2. George Carruthers, Naval Research Laboratory
  3. Farouk El-Baz, Bellcom Lunar Orbit Science Planning
  4. Jim Head, Bellcom Luner Surface Science Planning
  5. Wilmot Hess, MSC Director of Science and Applications
  6. Bill Muehlberger, UT Austin Geology
  7. Gene Shoemaker, US Geological Survey
  8. Lee Silver, Cal Tech
  9. Jerry Weisner, President’s Science Advisor (Oral history on early career)

Politicians

  1. Clinton Anderson, Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences
  2. Don Fuqua, House Committee on Science and Astronautics
  3. Lyndon Johnson, President (part 2)
  4. Olin Teague, House Committee on Science and Astronautics

Media

  1. Jay Barbree, NBC
  2. Sue Butler, Associated Press
  3. Walter Cronkite, CBS
  4. Paul Haney, MSC Public Affairs
  5. Jack King, KSC Public Affairs
  6. Robert McCall, Artist
  7. Jack Riley, MSC Public Affairs
  8. Julian Scheer, NASA HQ Public Affairs
  9. John Noble Wilford, New York Times (an oral history of his personal life is also available as audio)

Soviet Union

  1. Boris Chertok, Engineer
  2. Yuri Gagarin, Cosmonaut
  3. Sergei Korolev, Chief Designer
  4. Alexi Leonov, Cosmonaut
  5. Valentina Tereshkova, Cosmonaut

Other Public Figures

  1. Jerrie Cobb, Pilot (member of the “Mercury 13”)
Doug Oard
Last modified: Thu Feb 20 15:14:13 2020