Chariots For Apollo; A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft NASA SP-4205
Washington DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Scientific and Technical Information Branch, 1979. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. xvii, [1], 538, [4] pages. Illustrations. Footnotes. Appendices. Source Notes. Bibliographical Notes. Index. Library binding. Ex-library with usual library markings. Courtney G. Brooks was a Research Associate in the History Department of the University of Houston from 1969 to 1974. In that capacity he coauthored the NASA sponsored history of the development of the Apollo spacecraft, now in final revision. Born in Savannah, Georgia (1939), he received his B.A. degree from Huntingdon College, Montgomery, Alabama (1964), and his M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1969) degrees in history from Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. James M. Grimwood has been NASA Manned Spacecraft Center Historian since 1962. He was born in Lincoln, Alabama (1922), taking his A.B. degree from Howard College, Birmingham, Alabama (1948), and his M.A. in History from the University of Alabama. He taught history in secondary schools (1950-1952), and at San Antonio College in Texas (1958-1960). Grimwood was an Air Force Historian in South Carolina and Texas (1953-1960). Prior to joining MSC, he was historian with the Army Missile Command, Huntsville, Alabama, preparing histories of Army missile systems. He is a joint author of This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury, and author of Project Mercury: A Chronology. Loyd S. Swenson, Jr. co-authored the history of the Mercury and Apollo space programs and was an authority on the work of Albert Einstein, beginning with his research and publications on aether drift, and was a major contributor in field of history of science and technology. From the Preface: Apollo was America's program to land men on the moon and get them safely back to the earth. In May 1961 President Kennedy gave the signal for planning and developing the machines to take men to that body. After NASA's creation in October 1958, its leaders set up a group to study what the agency should do in near-earth and deep-space exploration. Among the items listed by that group was a lunar landing, a proposal also discussed in circles outside NASA as a means for achieving and demonstrating technological supremacy in space. America had a program - Project Mercury - to put man in low-earth orbit and recover him safely. In July 1960 NASA announced plans to follow Mercury with a program, later named Apollo, to fly men around the moon. Because of its accelerated pace, high technology, and need for reliability, Apollo's costs were high, but the program lasted longer than either Mercury or Gemini. Requiring seven years of development and test before men could fly its machines, Apollo craft carried men into space from October 1968 through July 1975. The Apollo program itself recorded its final return from the moon on flight 17 in December 1972, after a dozen men had made six successful explorations on the lunar surface. Shortly thereafter Skylab, using the basic Saturn launch vehicle and Apollo spacecraft hardware, sailed into earth orbit, supporting crews on research missions up to 84 days in length during 1973 and 1974. Apollo passed from public view in July 1975, following the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project flight, flown by American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts to make the first international space rendezvous. Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft begins with the creation of NASA itself and with the definition of a manned space flight program to follow Mercury. It ends with Apollo 11, when America attained its goal of the 1960s, landing the first men on the moon and returning them to the earth. The focal points of this story are the spacecraft - the command and service modules and the lunar module. The 14 chapters cover three phases of spacecraft evolution: defining and designing the vehicles needed to do the job, developing and qualifying (or certifying) them for the task, and operating them to achieve the objective. Condition: Good / No dust jacket present.
Keywords: NASA, Astronautics, Astronauts, Manned Spacecraft, Project Apollo, Apollo Program, Command Module, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Landing, Mission Control, Saturn V, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Hugh Dryden, Docking, Extravehicular Activity, Maxine Faget, Ge
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