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Hearts & Goofs. When it came to space work, McDonnell showed as much foresight as he did with jets. Correctly anticipating what was to come, Mr. Mac put 45 engineers to work on capsules months before the U.S.S.R.'s Sputnik started Washington on its race for the moon. With that much preparation, McDonnell easily won the competition to build the Mercury capsule. Then well-publicized goofs marred the early phases of the program; it was almost more than Perfectionist Mac could bear when NASA cameras detected a loose nut and a crumpled cigarette package during a zero-gravity test...
...designs. So flawless was Gemini's performance that it completed nine of the ten manned missions precisely as planned and McDonnell collected a $25 million bonus. "McDonnell's engineers always seemed to be on top of the problem," says NASA Flight Director Chris Kraft. As often as not, Mr. Mac himself would turn up at Cape Kennedy for a 3 a.m. breakfast with departing astronaut crews. To help him recall who was who, he invariably carried a small black notebook crammed with the names of wives, children?and even their dogs. "Mr. Mac is an anachronism," says NASA's Paul...
Before a company dinner for an important visitor, Mr. Mac will often take three or four hours with a pair of vice presidents deciding whether to serve steak at $5.25 a person or rib roast at $4.75. Then there is the matter of vegetables. Will asparagus be cheaper than brussels sprouts, or will carrots be cheaper still? When it comes to making such decisions, McDonnell's favorite tool is his slide rule. For a Christmas party, he once figured out that twelve ounces of eggnog per person was precisely the right amount to assure conviviality without too much hilarity?...
Despite such strains, loyalty runs strong. McDonnell's top 17 executives have worked there for an average of 23˝ years. "It's a hell of a crucible," says one ex-McDonnell officer. "But it works. Mr. Mac operates on the theory that if you take care of the little things, the big things will take care of themselves. A man tends to think, 'My God, if we spend all that time on the budget for a lousy little dinner, what's he going to do to me when I come up here with the presentation for some...
...common consent, no one toils harder for the McDonnell team than Mr. Mac himself. Aside from an occasional round of golf (he is lucky to break 100), his relaxation consists of a nap after lunch and two drinks before a late dinner with his second wife, the former Mrs. Priscilla Brush Forney. After the Jell-O and Sanka, Mr. Mac retreats to his den to dip into his briefcase until midnight. McDonnell's sons, J. S. Ill, 31, and John Finney, 29, both hold mid-bracket executive jobs in McDonnell's space center. They are the children of his first...