Customer Reviews

Moon Launch! (The NASA History Series)

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First published as part of the NASA History Series under the title "Moonport", the University of Florida Press very wisely decided to split the book into two easier to read volumes. The first volume primarily tells the story of how Florida swamp land was turned into the world's most sophisicated launch centre. The second volume which will suit the more casual reader goes into detail about the Missions themselves with an extensive chapter on the Apollo 1 fire, a subject which NASA is still touchy about. All the Apollo missions are described and looking back in perspective, I am dismayed that it is nearly thirty years since men last walked on the Moon.

For anyone interested in space, this is an essential book to have and read again and again

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. "Moon Launch!" contains the second half of the text of "Moonport," chapters 15-24, and the appendices, of the earlier work. For anyone interested in the race to the Moon, this book is a must read!

This book - along with it's companion 'Gateway To The Moon' 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.

Moon Launch! Is a sister book to "Gateway to the Moon" (GTTM) GTTM is an excellent history of the development of the space center launch complex, while "Moon Launch" is a great history of the development of the Saturn V rocket.

The book details the development of the crawler, the launch complexes, and the Saturn V. Details of each Saturn flight are explained, including manned and unmanned flights. I found the countdown charts particularly interesting because they highlight the complexity of assembling, preparing, and launching the Saturn V rocket.

Today, we take for granted man went to the moon. This book explains the incredible details that had to be accurately addressed just to assemble and launch the rocket.

Another must-have book for the library of an armchair astronaut.