For All Mankind (TV Series)

Home Again (2019)

Wrenn Schmidt: Margo Madison

Photos 

Quotes 

• Wernher von Braun : The board believes the explosion was caused by the second-stage LH2 valve.

  Margo Madison : Do you think it was something else?

  Wernher von Braun : No. The valve is the culprit. That much is obvious. The question is why did it fail?

  Margo Madison : Defects in the manufacturing process.

  Wernher von Braun : Yes, but again, why? Do you know why the thousands of contractors and subcontractors who supply the Saturn V are spread across the continental United States? Do you think it's an accident that so many are located in key congressional districts? NASA gave the contract for the valve to the wrong company for political reasons? When I was reviewing the supply chain for the Saturn as part of my analysis, I was puzzled to find that the LH2 valve was manufactured by Kirkland Aerospace, a company located in Rockford, Illinois. I was puzzled because I remembered that contract. I had given it to a company from Colorado Springs in the mid-'60s. Then, in early 1973, NASA changed contractors. So why the change? You don't need to read the report. Think. Why give a contract to a company in Illinois? What was politically important about that state to the administration that had just taken office in 1973?

  Margo Madison : The Equal Rights Amendment.

  Wernher von Braun : Ah.

  Margo Madison : Everyone was surprised that a Republican governor suddenly threw his weight behind the ERA. You're saying it was because NASA moved a contract to Illinois?

  Wernher von Braun , Margo Madison : A huge contract. And in a district where he needed support for his own re-election campaign. It's all in the report.

  Margo Madison : My God. Gene died for a political vote?

• Margo Madison : You know what mattered to my father? His stamp collection. He'd come home at 5:30 every night on the dot, have two martinis. Not one, not three, but two. And he'd then spend the rest of the evening in his study with his records and his stamp collection. That was it. That was his life, nothing else. Not my mother, not me. Nothing. When I graduated college, the first woman in my family on either side, by the way, you know what he did? He gave me a desk calendar. That's how important I was to him.

• Wernher von Braun : .. Nonetheless, now you have seniority, experience, impeccable credentials. So why were you passed over for flight director? Why?

  Margo Madison : I don't know.

  Wernher von Braun : Yes you do. It is because you do not play the game. You resist forming the social bonds necessary to be seen as a team member. Because you see them as trivial and unimportant, insisting that merit and merit alone is the only important metric for advancement. Therefore you are not and will never be seen as a team leader.

  Margo Madison : Thanks for the pep-talk. I'll manage somehow.