I just discovered today that there is a book authored by Charles Murray called "Apollo", about (of course) the Apollo missions, especially the engineering, infrastructure, and how Apollo became a possibility. I ordered it for kindle.

Haven't yet read it so can't review it, but seems like it would have to be good if it's by Charles Murray.

I was recently pondering just a single step in the whole operation. Armstrong and Aldrin had to blast off from the moon and then re-attach their module to the main ship, with Cooper in it, as it continued to orbit the moon. That's seems like jaw-dropping technical feat. And of course if anything goes wrong, there's no hardware store nearby.

Marlowe Cassetti writes:

Let me add my 2 cents, as one who was with Apollo almost from the start. At NASA we had grand plans to extend and enhance the exploration of the moon. The near fatal Apollo 13 mission was a show stopper in the minds of NASA headquarters and the Washington elite. Why risk the lives on further missions? The orders came down from the top to wrap it up without further risks. NASA sent me out to UCLA for a short summer course. I made friends with an Air Force Captain and we shared stories. I recall he stated that manned spaceflight should have been assigned to the military instead of a civilian agency. He bragged that 100 test pilots were killed testing the F-100 fighter and NASA was conservatively testing Mercury spacecraft worried about one astronaut.

Having said all of that I need to load Murray's book on my kindle.





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