Engineering Apollo: The Moon Mission as a Complex System
Take a comprehensive look at the Apollo program as a large-scale engineering project. Explore the Moon Mission’s motivations and Cold War context, the development and operation of spacecraft technology, and the project management that made it possible. Discover what was learned about lunar geology and the program’s lasting impact on human spaceflight.
Course Information
Certificate Track
Learn for Free
About this Course
The Apollo program, which for the first time allowed humans to physically explore the surface of another planetary body, was among the most important engineering projects of the twentieth century. This online course from MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics approaches Apollo as a large-scale engineering system, with lessons for engineers, managers, and anyone seeking to accomplish big things.
The course features lectures by numerous people who worked on Apollo, including engineers, scientists, and astronauts.
Topics covered in the course are:
- How and why the decision was made to send astronauts to the Moon
- The early development of the discipline of systems engineering
- The development of digital computers and their critical role in Apollo
- How humans learned to share control with automated systems
- Apollo’s competition with the Soviet Union and why the USSR lost the “Space Race”
- How the lunar module was developed
- Life support systems for the Apollo astronauts and the development of space suits
- Why Apollo used rendezvous in lunar orbit
- How astronauts learned how to do geological exploration on the Moon and what we learned about lunar geology
- How the lunar rover was developed and the problems it had to overcome
- How the press covered the Apollo program
- How historical artifacts from Apollo are preserved and displayed at the Smithsonian
- The heritage of Apollo – the Skylab and Apollo/Soyuz missions, and how the Apollo program eventually led to the Space Shuttle
- The larger cultural and technological legacies of Apollo
What you'll learn
- Explore systems engineering and how the discipline developed over time
- Gain insight into how early digital computers were used in Apollo
- Learn how to develop and execute a large-scale project, including the politics, public presentation, management, and operations involved
Prerequisites
None
Meet your instructors
David Mindell
Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing
David A. Mindell, PhD, an engineer and historian, has spent more than three decades researching the myriad relationships between people and machines and innovating to improve them. He served as an MIT department head for five years, has led or contributed to more than 25 oceanographic expeditions, and is an inventor on 34 patents for autonomous aircraft, precision navigation, and human-robotic collaboration. He is the author of seven books, including Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight (2008), The New Lunar Society: An Enlightenment Guide to the Next Industrial Revolution (2025), Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy (2015), Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing Before Cybernetics(2000), and The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an age of Intelligent Machines (2022, with E. Reynolds and D. Autor). David is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a Senior Member of the IEEE. He is Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Humatics Corporation and partner of Unless, which is revitalizing US industry.
Areas of Expertise: robotics, autonomy, precision navigation, history of science and technology, reindustrialization.
Major works: https://web.mit.edu/digitalapollo/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049528/the-new-lunar-society/
