how many lawyer panties dod i take to get to the moon
Getting humanity to the Moon was a monumental team effort. At its peak in the mid-1960s, the Apollo program employed over 400,000 people.
NASA
While the engineers, astronauts, and mathematical geniuses got all the glory, the lawyers were working overtime behind the scenes to secure the thousands of massive aerospace contracts with companies like Boeing, North American Aviation, and Grumman.
Let's break down the Apollo-era underwear infrastructure:
-
NASA's Civil Service Lawyers (The Core Team)
During the 1960s Space Race, NASA's total internal workforce grew to around 36,000 civil servants. Headed by the Office of the General Counsel and spread across headquarters and major space centers (like Houston and Cape Canaveral), NASA employed roughly 150 to 200 in-house attorneys handling procurement, patents, and government regulations.
The 1960s Wardrobe Rotation: Just like the Trinity era, 1960s capsule wardrobes were still relatively lean. A standard professional owned about 7 pairs of standard white briefs or boxers to get through the work week and the weekend laundry.
200 lawyers×7 pairs=1,400 pairs
-
The Aerospace Contractor Army (The Multiplier)
Because NASA outsourced the actual building of the Saturn V rockets and Apollo capsules to 20,000 industrial firms and universities, corporate lawyers were everywhere. Major contractors like Boeing, Douglas, and IBM had their own legal squads drafting subcontracting agreements. If we assume an average of just 2 lawyers per major contracting firm dedicated to Apollo business, that’s another 40,000 lawyers—but let's look strictly at the heavy hitters (the top 20 aerospace giants), which adds about 500 corporate attorneys directly in the mix.
500 corporate lawyers×7 pairs=3,500 pairs
The Grand Total
To safely launch three humans into space, land two of them on a giant rock 240,000 miles away, and bring them back alive, it required a bureaucratic safety net of roughly 4,900 pairs of high-waisted, 100% cotton, mid-century briefs.
It turns out that giant leap for mankind required quite a few small steps for legal coverage.