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HONR 269I
To The Moon and Back: The Apollo Program
Spring 2019
Course Description
Catalog Description
In May 1961, President Kennedy reached into the 21st century and
pulled a decade back into the 1960s. Just over eight years later,
Neil Armstrong became the first of twelve people to walk on the Moon.
This was one of the greatest engineering accomplishments of all time,
and a transcendent human experience. This course will draw on both
primary and secondary sources to explore the social, political,
financial, scientific, engineering, operational and human aspects of
the Apollo program that came together to make the Moon landings
possible and it will invite students to reflect on the limitations of
the Apollo approach that leave us still grasping for solutions to many
other complex societal problems.
Goals
- Understand the interplay between political, economic, social,
scientific, technical, and practical factors that made the Apollo
program both possible and challenging.
- Develop an appreciation for the degree of complexity involved in
an undertaking of this scale, the processes that were used to
manage that complexity, and how well those processes worked.
- Apply what you have learned to help you think about what's
similar and what's different in the approaches that could be
taken to address other exceptionally challenging problems.
Approach
The class will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:00 to 6:15 PM in
ESJ 1309. Each session will begin with a presentation by the
instructor (or, perhaps occassionally, a guest speaker), followed by
discussion in small groups. In the final few minutes of class we will
typically discuss the current student activity (see below).
At the start of the semester, students will be assigned to groups of 6
that will meet for a half hour during each class session to discuss
that session’s topic. Each student in the group will be assigned one
document to read (or one media file to view or listen to) as background
for that session. Two the students in each group will read the main
assigned reading for that session; the other three will each be
assigned a different enriching reading, video, or audio recording
(shown above as “Alternate” 1, 2 or 3. Some readings are longer than
others, but you are encouraged to read selectively and limit your
preparation time to one hour per session so as to have adequate time
for the other activities described below. The goal of these diverse
assignments is to bring multiple perspectives into the class
discussion during each session. Each student in a group will serve on
a rotating basis as a discussion leader or as a scribe. The scribe
will be post a one-page set of bullet points summarizing the group’s
discussion to the course ELMS site by 10 AM the next morning, where
students from other groups may review them.
The scale of the Apollo program is daunting, so we will use five
activities outside of class over the course of the semester to bring
students in contact with different aspects of the Apollo Program
possible. For the two team experiences, team membership will be
rotated so that each student works with closely several other students
over the course of the semester.
Students are also encouraged to follow the Twitter hashtag #ApolloAt50, where tweets
about events in the Apollo Program will be posted during the course,
50 years to the day after they actually happened.
Students are expected to devote a minimum of 8 hours per week to this
course, including 3 hours in class, 2 hours preparing for class, and 3
hours devoted to the current individual or team experience.
Individual Experience: Museum Field Trip
(Weeks 1-2)
Maryland students are uniquely fortunate to be a metro ride away from
on of the finest sets of museum exhibits on the Apollo Program
anywhere in the world at the National Air and Space Museum on the
National Mall. We'll therefore start the course with a tour of that
museum. Students may join a one-hour guided tour with the instructor
during the first or second weekend of the course, or they can conduct
a self-paced tour on their own. Students will be asked to submit a
selfie photo with some Apollo artifact to verify completion of this
assignment.
Individual Experience: Case Study (Weeks 3-5)
Each student will nominate some historical figures
who they would be interested in studying in greater depth, and a
single person will then be assigned to each student, with each student
studying a different person. The student will be expected to bring
their assigned historical figure’s perspective to class discussions,
when appropriate, and they will write a short paper on a critical
incident of their choice in that person’s life. In every case an
initial source is be provided, and students will be expected to
augment that source with additional primary and secondary sources, and
to list those additional sources on their submitted paper.
Team Experience: Exploring the Archives (Weeks 6-8)
Maryland students are also uniquely fortunate to share a campus with
the principal repository of the National Archives and Records
Administration (Archives 2). The National Archives catalog lists
fifteen sets of Apollo Records that still have not been processed, but
that have no known access restrictions. I have confirmed that a
random sample of four of these are indeed available to researchers. A
very extensive collection of processed records is also available to
researchers at Archives 2 from the Review Board formed after the
Apollo 1 launchpad fire. Together, these records offer an
unparalleled opportunity for students to study the actual operation of
a complex enterprise. Students will work in teams of two, with each
team assigned part or all of a collection to examine. Each student
will be expected to spend 12 hours at the National Archives over a
period of four weeks. Each team will be asked to write a report that
provides an overview of the content and organization of the collection
that the examined and to tell two stories (one per student) about
specific activities by specific people (of their own choosing) using
materials from their collection.
Team Experience: Managing the Apollo 11 Mission (Weeks 9-11)
The year 2019 includes the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing
on the Apollo 11 mission. In a recent project we worked with
colleagues to digitize dozens of channels of voice interaction in the
NASA Mission Control Center during the entire 8-day Apollo 11 mission,
a total of more than 8,000 hours of audio. Speech recognition has
been run on the entire collection to support rapid searching.
Students will work in groups if two, with each group being assigned a
different mission phase to study. Each team will selectively listen
to the recordings from their chosen mission phase and together the
teams will create a public Web exhibit in which will present what they
have learned both about mission operations and about the human
experience of serving in Mission Control during the Apollo Program.
This Web exhibit will be made public at the end of the semester, two
months prior to the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.
Term Paper: Doing Big Things (Weeks 12-14)
Early in the semester, students will be invited to select some other
audacious goal that either was, was not, or has yet to be achieved.
Over the course of the semester, students will then be invited to draw
parallels between their chosen goal and the Apollo Program. At the
end of the semester, students will then be asked to write a 8- to
10-page (single-spaced, standard margins) term paper in which they
draw om what they have learned in this class to focus on the factors
that did, didn’t, will or won’t make it possible to achieve their
chosen goal.
Contact Information
Professor Oard's office hours are from 4:00-4:40 PM on Tuesdays and
Thursdays in PTX 1109C. No prior arrangement is needed to come by at
those times to discuss material from the class sessions, readings,
individual or team experiences, etc. I am also happy to talk by
phone, Skype, or in person then or at other mutually convenient time;
email is the best way to reach me to set up an appointment, and it is
also a good way to get a quick answer to a simple question. Just
dropping by my office at other times without an appointment is a
low-payoff strategy for reaching me because I have offices in
different buildings, and I spend more time in my lab (AVW 3126) than
in either office. But if you do find me and I'm not already in a
meeting, I would be happy to chat any time.
Elaina's office hours are in HBK 0302C from 1:30 to 2:30 PM on
Wednesdays, starting on February 6.
A schedule that summarizes what we will
cover in each session can be found on the course
Web site.
Course Materials
The course Web site at http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~oard/teaching/154/spring19/
contains the most recent version of all material produced for this
course. Among other things, this course description, and links to the
materials for each session. We will use ELMS only for things that can
not be done on the open Web. Examples include submitting homework
assignments and summaries of assigned readings and reading materials
prepared by other students. Details of how we will use ELMS can be
found on ELMS.
Reading assignments for each week can be found on the schedule. The principal texts for this course
are:
- Andrew Chaikin, A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo
Astronauts, Penguin Books, 2007. ($21 in paperback from Amazon).
This is the classic text on the human adventure of Apollo.
- Catherine Bly Cox and Charles Murray, Apollo, 1989. ($8 on
Kindle from Amazon). This is the classic text on the engineers of
Apollo.
The course has a mailing list that will be used by the instructor to
make announcements. Students will be initially added to the mailing list
based on email addresses on file with the university. If you have not
received a welcome message from the mailing list by January 25, please
contact the instructor to make sure that your correct address is
included.
Grading
Student grades will be computed from:
30% Discussion group preparation and participation
15% Individual experience case study
15% Archives team experience
15% Apollo 11 team experience
25% Term paper
Participation in discussion groups is an important part of the
learning experience, so class attendance is required. The discussion
group grade will be computed separately for each student. It will be
informed by peer evaluations, but all grades will be assigned by the
instructor and teaching assistant(s), working together. Discussion
group grades will be reduced for all absences after the first, except
as required by university policy or law (e.g., for religious
observances affecting more than one class period, extended illness
affecting more than one class period, or military service affecting
more than one class period). For the two team experiences, all team
members will receive the same grade. The term paper will be sole
authored, but you may (and should!) get comments on drafts from
others.
Students are encouraged to work together to learn the materials and to
learn the how to do the assignments. However, all of the material
that is turned in for grading must be produced by the individual or
team that is submitting the material.
Accommodations
Some of the assigned reading and media materials may not be available
in formats that are accessible to students with vision or hearing
impairments. Students for whom such materials would pose problems
will be asked to inform the instructor during the first week of
classes so that alternative sources that with suitable provisions for
accessibility can be assigned. Lectures, but not class discussions,
will be recorded using Panopto and made available to all students
through ELMS; experience has shown that such recordings can be
particularly helpful for students with limited proficiency in spoken
English. Students requesting other types of accommodations should
contact the Accessibility and Disability Service for evaluation during
the first two weeks of classes, and (except in cases of emergent
difficulties during the semester) must discuss their request with the
instructor prior to the end of the third week of the semester.
Doug Oard
Last modified: Tue May 14 15:47:58 2019