At its peak in the mid 1960s, how many people were working on the Apollo Moon programme, including staff at contractors and universities?
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Answer
About 400,000 people
The average age of the flight controllers in mission control during the first Moon landing was only about 28.
How to estimate it
Convert money into jobs. Apollo cost about 25 billion dollars, and spending peaked at about 5 billion in a single year. In the mid 1960s an engineer or technician cost an employer about 12,500 dollars a year including overheads. 5,000,000,000 / 12,500 = 400,000 jobs. NASA's own histories give the same figure: about 400,000 people at the peak.
Source: NASA
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