Second Stage Saturn rocket (S-2) built by North American Aviation for the Apollo Moon Mission. (Below right) Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, chairman of the Senate Space Committee, (here breaking ground at the Marshall Space Center) made sure that the awarding of the Apollo contracts to North American would benefit his home state.

North American Aviation Corporation California and Oklahoma

The Los Angeles-based North American Aviation had distinguished itself during World War II by designing highly regarded fighter planes like the B-25 medium bomber. Led by engineer-executive Harrison Storms, North American also contracted with the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) to build the X-15 supersonic jet and with the Air Force in the fifties for the F1 Rocket, a powerful derivative of Werner von Braun's V-2. Given this experience, Storms aggressively entered the bidding among the other major aerospace firms for NASA's Apollo project, announced in the wake of Kennedy's declaration of a manned moon mission in 1961. North American won the contracts for both the second stage booster (S-2) designed by von Braun's Marshall Space Center team, and for the Apollo Command module, the actual capsule that would carry the astronauts to the moon.

The awarding of the contracts can be attributed to North American's experience and superior bids, but it was also a result of skillful lobbying by its corporate lobbyist, Fred Black, who had access to the Office of Lyndon Johnson. North American Executive Lee Atwood was also a friend of Robert Kerr, the Oklahoma Senator who chaired the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences after Johnson. Atwood made it clear to Kerr that the Senator's home state would benefit if North American won the contracts: new assembly plants would be built in Tulsa and in McAlester, Oklahoma, home of Carl Albert, the House Majority Leader. California representatives were also anxious to support North American's bid, given the state's dominance in the aerospace industry; Representative George Miller (D-CA) assumed the chairmanship of the House Space Committee after Overton Brooks died in 1961, and was not remiss in his support of North American's Downey, California plant.

Although North American won two major contracts, there were many components of the Apollo mission to be constructed. The Boeing corporation, based in Seattle, built the first stage engines (Saturn F-1), while the Long Island-based Grumman Corporation assembled the lunar excursion model that actually carried the astronauts to the moon's surface. Overall systems integration fell to von Braun's Marshall Flight center. North American used dozens of subcontractors for specific sub-systems of the Apollo Command module, including Honeywell, Northrop, and Lockheed, and attracted literally thousands of engineers and scientists from aerospace corporations and universities to assist in the effort. In fact, scientist critics of the space program argued that it drained resources and manpower best utilized in other areas.

North American's engineering accomplishments, however, were considerable. The Apollo space craft was the most complex machine in human history, consisting of over 2 million parts, and built to withstand temperature differentials of over 600 degrees in space. The successful completion of the manned moon mission in July 1969 fulfilled Kennedy's pledge; it cost over 4 billion dollars to do so, and employed the coordinated resources of government, industry, and universities in an unprecedented open-ended commitment to a civilian program.