Gateway to the Moon [Paperback]

CHARLES D. BENSON (Author), WILLIAM B. FAHERTY (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 12, 2001

Gateway to the Moon presents the definitive history of the origins, design, and construction of the lunar launch facilities at Kennedy Space Center. It includes archival illustrations and diagrams of locations, personnel, and equipment, from aerial views of sandy, undeveloped Cape Canaveral to some of the first photos of the mobile launchers and crawler-transporters.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Though volumes on the space program are legion, Benson and Faherty's 1978 title takes a different tack by tracing the building of the Kennedy Space Center launch complex itself. Originally part of a series by NASA, this includes interviews with many of the key players, as well as pix and design schemes. A nice addition to traditional space flight collections.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Florida; 1st edition (February 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813020913
• ISBN-13: 978-0813020914
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,072,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Catch the history you missed, December 26, 2004

By 

Neil Mavis (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gateway to the Moon (Paperback)

It seems that today, when a space shuttle is launched, or a rerun of an Apollo Saturn V is launched, the Kennedy Space Center launch complex construction achievement is taken for granted. The media today skips the history of developing the launch complex.

This book chronicles the history of KSC, and includes histories of cost overruns, labor problems, design problems, and even political battles.

Many people who grew up during the Apollo era can recall the newspaper stories, however, if you were too young to have read these stories in the 1960's, this book is a great summary.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Reprint of a Classic Study in the History of Spaceflight, January 13, 2004

By 

Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gateway to the Moon (Paperback)

In 1978 Charles D. Benson and William Barnaby Faherty published "Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations" as NASA Special Publication-4204. It was an outstanding history of the design and construction of the lunar launch facilities at Kennedy Space Center. Of "Moonport," a reviewer in the "Journal of American History" said in 1979, "The authors had access to official documents, letters, and memoranda, and they have apparently consulted all the relevant historical, technological, and scientific secondary materials...all the involved historians obviously spent con-siderable time studying and intellectually digesting technical reports and manuals in order to give their lay readers such lucid accounts of highly complex procedures and operations...it is important to public knowledge to have professionally trained his-torians employ historical methods to ex-plain significant events and place them in a meaningful historical context. Here is a broad lesson...that contemporary society can ill afford to ignore."

"Moonport" has been out of print for many years, and comanding a high price on the second-hand book market, but now it has been reprinted in a convenient paperback version. "Gateway to the Moon" contains the first half of the text of "Moonport," chapters 1-14 of the earlier work. For anyone interested in the race to the Moon, this book is a must read!

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitive accounct, October 30, 2010

By 

Patrick Gleeson (Limerick Ireland) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gateway to the Moon (Paperback)

This book - along with it's companion Moon Launch! are the definite account of the mammoth undertaking that was the establishment of Kennedy Space Centre in the 1960's. Everything about KSC and it's environs is on an epic scale, and these scholarly but very readable works bring to life the day to day management decisions, tensions, inter-center conflicts and eventual unanimity that was a hallmark of NASA in it's greatest era of expansion.

Highly recommended.