posted 11-25-2015 04:54 AM               

I am doing a presentation to schools and universities and want to underline how much effort was put into the Apollo program on the ground — as inspiration for the next generation of engineers and scientists.

1. How many man-hours were expended in total by all contractors and NASA personnel on the Apollo Program to get a man onto the moon (not including post Apollo 17 missions).

2. How many hours were spend training for a single lunar missions (prime crew only).

3. Total hours that were spend on the lunar surface on EVA (I count 15 surface EVAs including Scott's SEVA).

posted 11-25-2015 10:00 AM            

First, the cost of $25 billion dollars at $10000 dollars per man-year. This gives 2.5 million man-years. Since not all expenses went to salaries, this is an upper bound. I would guess about 1/3 to 1/2 went to salaries. So this estimate yields (roughly) 1-1.5 million man-years.

Second, I looked at annual NASA plus contractor employment.

Adding up the years 1960-1969, I get about 2.2 million man-years. Pretty close to the gross estimate arrived at earlier. I would guess that about 70-80% of NASA employment of those years went towards Apollo. This gives a rough figure of about 1.5 million man-years.

posted 11-25-2015 10:44 AM               

This makes a total for both astronauts on the lunar surface of 154h 18m (+ or - a couple of minutes either way).

Perhaps it is worth mentioning the darker side of Apollo. As Apollo reached its climax and started to decline in the changing political climate of the Nixon years, so in Brevard County did the social and moral standards of the population.

Around Cape Canaveral there was an abnormally high incidence of drink related problems. Divorces increased to a point where they were double the national average and there was a ten percent illegitimacy rate. Adultery, prostitution and wife swapping became so commonplace that they barely got mentioned in the local gossip.

Much of this was put down to the 'millionth of an inch' complex where the pressure to work to accuracies hitherto unheard of caused many to fail under the strain.

Then there was the money. Even painters were taking home as much as £250 per week (again 1960 values). And what was there to spend it on when one had bought everything? Besides a fourteen hour day left precious little time for anything else.

posted 11-25-2015 12:34 PM               

Should the efforts of Project Gemini be included? After all, its objective were to develop operational procedures (like rendezvous and docking techniques) to support Apollo's mission to land astronauts on the Moon. The same question goes for the Ranger and Surveyor programs, which were folded into Apollo after Kennedy's May 1961 declaration.

posted 11-30-2015 12:26 PM               

Using the numbers above and as a very rough rule of thumb I get 10,000 hours expended to every hour on the lunar surface.

posted 12-02-2015 07:42 AM               

Its an impressive ratio. We could also divide that manhour total by the total KG of rocks brought back.

posted 12-07-2015 08:05 AM               

• 1,753,246 man-hours for every hour of Lunar EVA.
  
• 706,806 man-hours for every kg of moon rock.

posted 12-07-2015 11:29 AM            

And the total man hours for every astronaut moon EVA hour is ca. 17,5 million not 1,75 million. Big numbers, easy to get a digit wrong.

posted 12-11-2015 12:35 PM            

However, Wikipedia notes that Apollo accounted for 60% of NASA's 1966 budget, which is near the peak of the program. Perhaps the difference is that I neglected inflation of the 1960's.

On the other hand, I am also neglecting post-1969 Apollo efforts.