Apollo by Charles Murray, Catherine Bly Cox Summary and Reviews
|
Our Price: $145.00 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $68.38 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Apollo
Book Review: Absolutely Wonderful
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the best book I've read to date on the moon program.
The intent of that statement is not meant to denegrate the other books in my collection (Lost Moon, Failure Is Not An Option, Flight My Life in Mission Control, A Man On The Moon, and Moon Lander) as they were all great books in this reviewer's opinion.
It's just that "Apollo" is a level above those.
Book Review: Apollo From the Ground Up
Summary: 5 Stars
Anyone who has more than a passing interest in the space program, particularly manned spaceflight, will find this book invaluable. Here is the story of the people who made Apollo and the technological challenges they faced, both on the ground and in flight. Many books focus on the astronauts and their accomplishments, but this book focuses on those who designed the spacecraft, the rockets that propelled them into space, the launch facilities at Cape Canaveral and those who controlled the flight from the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.
For example, their are fascinating stories about the ultimate spacecraft
designer Max Faget, who designed every American spacecraft from Mercury to the Space Shuttle; the story of how an obscure engineer named John Houbolt managed to convince NASA to use the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous mode for landing on the moon against formidable opposition from already legendary figures like Faget and Wernher Von Braun; the nightmarish combustion instability problem that plagued the immense F-1 rocket engine (five of which powered the Saturn V moon rocket's first stage); the development
of the huge transporter/crawler (and its "golden slippers") that transported the already assembled rocket out to Launch Complex 39 and the building of the gigantic Vehicle Assembly Building where the assembly took place with the use of immense cranes that could set down a multi-ton
rocket state onto an egg without breaking it.
What is especially noteworthy in this book is the description of how
the legendary Christopher Kraft built the flight control system that ultimately became Mission Control at the Manned Spacecraft Center. The authors explain what the job of each of the controllers was, how they communicated between themselves and the Flight Director and what personal characteristics were needed for the people who manned these jobs. The book also says how the different Flight Directors like Gene Kranz, Glynn Lunney and Gerry Griffin, among others did their job and the crushing responsibility that was on their shoulders. Frankly, the autobiographies
of Kraft and Kranz do not describe these fascinating things like this book does. What is particularly engrossing are the descriptions of the crises that faced the controllers during the "1201 Alarm" episode Steve Bales confronted during the first lunar landing by Apollo 11's Eagle LM, the lightning strike that hit Apollo 12 during its ascent that John Aaron fixed, and, of course, the ultimate crisis of Apollo 13.
Reading this book left me in awe of the people that worked on Apollo facing the crushing pressure created by Kennedy's deadline of "by the end of the decade". It is truly an inspiring story, and unlike a similar
crash technological program called "The Manhattan Project", this one was made "in peace for all mankind".
I would also recommend for the reader who finds this book interesting, the book by Mike Gray called "Angle of Attack" which also deals with
North American Aviation's role in building Apollo, led by Harrison Storms.
There, other interesting examples of technological problem solving are illustrated regarding the building of the Command and Service Module in addition to the harrowing story of building the S-II Saturn V second state.
Book Review: Behind the scenes at history's most expensive joyride
Summary: 4 Stars
"The space program's grip on the public imagination had begun to fade even before the first moon landing," write Charles Murray and Catherine Cox in their can't-put-it-down history of the engineering side of the American manned space program.
They add, "Whether this was inevitable or an unlucky juxtaposition of Apollo with Vietnam and domestic upheaval will never be known." Or maybe the main reason was NASA's insistence on two phony images: one, squeaky clean (and boring) personalities for all hands; and, two, the no-sweat attitude to crises.
Had NASA told the stories Murray and Cox tell, the public would have been thrilled and appalled.
We have long known that the astronauts were not squeaky clean. Astro Walt Cunningham let that cat out of the bag in the mid-'70s in "The All-American Boys." In "Apollo" we learn that the engineers were humans, too. One is described as "Butch Cassidy born 100 years too late," which is probably overstating it, but you don't operate the most complicated mechanical system in history by being timid.
"Apollo" also reveals that the "no-sweat" attitude was false. There was plenty of sweating, although NASA's engineering culture required everyone to remain composed at all times.
The really terrible crises were known to the public, if poorly understood: the testing fire that killed three astronauts and the fuel system failure that nearly stranded Apollo 13 in orbit.
Other problems that were potentially just as serious were successfully covered up by NASA, a bad habit that cost it its reputation later on.
But the unraveling of the causes of these engineering dustups reads like a mystery novel, or, a closer comparison for those who have read it, the epidemiological reporting of Berton Rouche.
What, for example, would make a rocket lift two or three inches off the pad, then shut its engines off and settle back? The answer: A technician had filed a tiny bit off one prong of an electrical plug.
Anyway, the people who designed and built spaceships were emphatically not computer nerds -- once you understand what they were up to, scientists and engineers are always interesting. This is certainly the case with the launcher specialist Werner von Braun, a mass murderer.
Murray and Cox say, "no such charges were substantiated" against Hitler's rocket scientist. They are wrong.
Von Braun's V-weapons were built by 30,000 slaves at an underground factory camp called Dora. Thousands of these slaves were worked to death, starved or slaughtered. This factory was not run by Braun's team but it could not have functioned without the intimate advice of the rocket scientists. With complicity goes guilt.
Book Review: Best General Account on the Lunar Program
Summary: 5 Stars
In my opinion, "Apollo" ist the best available book on the lunar program. It uses documents and interviews of the people who participated in the Apollo project, and it provides some deeper insides about the people who brought the spacecraft to the moon, like Bob Gilruth, Max Faget, Chris Kraft, Glynn Lunney and many many more.
For further reading regarding the people who worked in Mission Control, I strongly recommend "Flight My Life in Mission Control" by Chris Kraft and "Failure is not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond" by Gene Kranz.
Book Review: Comprehensive!
Summary: 4 Stars
I found this 'history' very comprehensive. Like all others on Apollo certain areas receive deeper treatment than others. I found it heavy going in parts but it is good value for money. A pity it was out of print for so long.