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Phillips Report


The "Phillips report" was a document summarizing a review conducted in November–December 1965 by a NASA team headed by Lt Gen Samuel C. Phillips, director of the Apollo manned Moon landing program, to investigate schedule slippage and cost overruns incurred by North American Aviation, manufacturer of the Command/Service Module spacecraft and the second stage of the Saturn V launch vehicle. Phillips sent a summary of his findings with a strongly worded letter to NAA president Lee Atwood demanding corrective action be taken. North American revised its management of its Apollo contract items, and NASA management considered the matter a normal part of confidential agency-contractor relations.

But after a fire killed the entire crew of the first manned Apollo mission Apollo 1 on January 27, 1967, a United States Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences hearing overseeing NASA's investigation of the accident, led to the public disclosure of the "Phillips Report" by then junior Senator Walter Mondale, who was told of its existence by ABC news reporter Jules Bergman, who had seen a copy at NASA's Washington, DC Office of Manned Space Flight headquarters.

From November 22 to December 6, 1965, Phillips headed a "tiger team" investigating the causes of inadequate quality, schedule delays, and cost overruns in both the Apollo CSM and the Saturn V second stage, for which North American was prime contractor. He gave an oral presentation (with transparencies) of his team's findings to his boss, NASA Office of Manned Space Flight Administrator George E. Mueller, and Mueller's boss, NASA Deputy Director Robert Seamans, and also presented them in a letter to North American president Lee Atwood, to which Mueller appended his own strongly worded letter to Atwood.


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