Apollo: The Race to the Moon (76 page)

The times of the critical events are taken from the chronology in Lovell, “Houston, We’ve Had a Problem,” in Apollo Expeditions, pp. 250–51.

28. “You don’t have time to worry”

Chapter title: Authors’ interview with Glynn Lunney.

“It’s up to you now”: Quoted in Life in Space, edited by Robert Grant Mason (New York: Time-Life Books, 1983), p. 182.

The scene at Grumman: Pellegrino and Stoff, Lunar Module, pp. 189–90.

National and worldwide reaction: Baker, History of Manned Space Flight, pp. 378, 382; “Apollo’s Return: Triumph Over Failure,” Time, 27 April 1970, pp. 12–14; and “Apollo 13: Three Who Came Back,” Newsweek, 27 April 1960, pp. 21–27.

Deiterich’s first meeting in Room 210: Henry S. F. Cooper, Flight That Failed, pp. 68–70; plus authors’ interviews.

Analogy between burn and coming about in a sailing ship: Cooper, Flight That Failed, p. 71.

29. “I hope the guys who thought this up knew what they were doing”

Chapter title: Jim Lovell on the air-to-ground loop during Apollo 13, quoted in Cooper, Flight That Failed, p. 130.

“Nothing had been built yet”: Tom Kelly, quoted in Pellegrino and Stoff, Lunar Module, p. 190.

“They can throw anything at us”: Dave Reed, quoted in Cooper, Flight That Failed, p. 88

Data on consumables: Pellegrino and Stoff, Lunar Module, p. 194; Baker, History of Manned Space Flight, pp. 378–79.

Account of the Abort Sensor Assembly: Pellegrino and Stoff, Lunar Module, pp. 194–95.

John Strakosch’s memory of the crisis: Pellegrino and Stoff, Lunar Module, p. 196.

Account of the meeting in the viewing room: Our account draws from Cooper, Flight That Failed, pp. 82–85, but we differ with him on one important point. Cooper ascribes the decision to Gilruth, writing, “He was the senior man present, and when NASA people met to make a decision there was no voting; rather, after discussion the top man made the decision” (p.84). In an interview with the authors, Kranz described the decision as having been made earlier, at the meeting of the flight directors with Kraft. Lunney, who attended the viewing room meeting, saw it as a process in which, as customary with operational decisions, senior management made sure that the flight controllers had thought through their decision, then ratified it. In any case, the senior man in the chain of command attending the meeting that morning was not M.S.C. director Gilruth, but Rocco Petrone, head of the Apollo program (and, if it came to it, Thomas Paine, administrator of NASA). The account of the meeting also draws from authors’ interviews with David Reed and Charles Deiterich.

“the biggest heart-stopper”: This and other quotations from Lovell regarding the alignment are from James A. Lovell, “Houston, We’ve Had a Problem,” in Apollo Expeditions, pp. 247–65.

Writing the instructions for constructing the lithium hydroxide box: Cooper, Flight That Failed, pp. 127–28; plus authors’ interviews.

“by Saturday or Sunday”: Cooper, Flight That Failed, p. 143.

“I hope the guys”: Lovell, quoted in Cooper, Flight That Failed, p. 130.

“I think everybody in the room”: Deiterich, quoted in Cooper, Flight That Failed, p. 166.

TELMU’s wish to bring Aquarius home: Cooper, Flight That Failed, p. 185.

Grumman engineer’s memory of saving a swimmer: Pellegrino and Stoff, Lunar Module, p. 209.

“I don’t believe you, FIDO!” Deiterich, quoted in Cooper, Flight That Failed, p. 188.

30. “We drank the wine at the pace they handed it to us”

Chapter title: Authors’ interview with John Aaron.

Epilogue: Twenty Years after the First Landing

Arthur Rudolph’s departure: “German-Born Nazi Expert Quits U.S. to Avoid a War Crimes Suit,” New York Times, 18 October 1984, p 1. Rudolph left the United States in November 1983 under an agreement with the Department of Justice and renounced his citizenship on 25 May 1984, though the news did not become public until October 1984. Apparently Rudolph was not accused of committing atrocities, but of being aware of them and failing to acknowledge that in his application for U.S. citizenship. Rudolph maintained his innocence, but said that because of his age and financial situation he would not undertake the prolonged litigation that the government suit would have entailed.

Glossary

ACE Automatic Checkout Equipment, pronounced “ace.”

AGS Abort Guidance System, pronounced “ags.”

ALSEP Apollo Lunar Science Experiment Package, pronounced “alsep.”

A.O.T. Alignment Optical Telescope.

A.S.-501 First flight of a Saturn V, also known simply as “501.”

A.S.A. Abort Sensor Assembly.

ASPO Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, pronounced “aspo.”

Atlas Launch vehicle used for the orbital Mercury flights.

AVRO A.V. Roe Aircraft Corporation, pronounced “avro.”

Block I First generation of Apollo spacecraft, not capable of docking with a lunar module.

Block II Second generation of Apollo spacecraft, used for all of the manned missions.

Booster Launch Vehicle Officer (also a generic term for launch vehicle).

Building 2 Headquarters building at M.S.C.

Building 30 Location of the Control Center at M.S.C.

Building 45 Location of the MER at M.S.C.

C’ The code name for Apollo 8, pronounced “see prime.”

CapCom Capsule Communications Officer.

CARR Contractor Acceptance Readiness Review, pronounced “car.”

C.D.D.T. Countdown Demonstration Test.

CMP Command Module Pilot, pronounced “simp.”

C.R.T. Cathode Ray Tube.

C.S.M. Command and Service Module.

Delta V Change in spacecraft velocity.

DPS Descent Propulsion System, pronounced “dips.”

E.C.S. Environmental Control System.

E.C.U. Environmental Control Unit.

EECOM Electrical, Environmental, and Communications Officer, pronounced “ee-com.”

E.O.R. Earth-Orbit Rendezvous.

E.P.S. Electrical Power Systems.

E.V.A. Extra-Vehicular Activity.

F-l The engine in the first stage of the Saturn V.

FIDO, also FDO Flight Dynamics Officer, pronounced “fido.”

Flight Flight Director.

F.O.D. Flight Operations Directorate.

f.p.s. feet per second.

G.N.C. Guidance, Navigation, and Control officer.

Guido Guidance officer.

Hangar S The first manned space flight facility at Cape Canaveral.

I.M.U. Inertial Measurement Unit.

INCO Instrumentation and Communications Systems Officer, pronounced “ink-o.”

I.U. Instrument Unit.

J Missions Apollo 15, 16, and 17, using an extended-stay LEM and the Lunar Rover.

K.S.C. Kennedy Space Center (Merritt Island, Florida).

LEM Lunar Excursion Module, later renamed Lunar Module, pronounced “lem.”

LM Lunar Module, also pronounced “lem.”

LMP Lunar Module Pilot, pronounced “limp.”

L.O.I. Lunar-Orbit Insertion.

L.O.R. Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous.

LOX Liquid Oxygen, pronounced “lox.”

M.A.-l Mercury-Atlas 1, the first flight of a Mercury capsule on an Atlas.

MER Mission Evaluation room, pronounced “mer.”

MOCR Mission Operations Control Room, rhymes with “poker,” also known as Mission Control or the front room.

MPAD Mission Planning and Analysis Division, pronounced “em-pad.”

M.R.-l Mercury-Redstone 1, the first flight of a Mercury capsule on a Redstone.

M.S.C. Manned Spacecraft Center(Houston, Texas).

M.S.F.C. Marshall Space Flight Center (Huntsville, Alabama).

MSFN Manned Space Flight Network, pronounced “misfin.”

N.A.C.A. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

Nova Planned (never built) launch vehicle for conducting a direct-ascent lunar mission.

O&C Operations and Checkout.

O&P Operations and Procedures Officer.

O.M.S.F. Office of Manned Space Flight (Washington, D.C.).

P.A.O. Public Affairs Officer.

P.A.R.D. Pilotless Aircraft Research Division.

PAD Pre-advisory Data, pronounced “pad.”

P.C.+2 Two hours past pericynthion (spacecraft’s closest approach to the back of the moon).

P.D.I. Powered Descent Initiation.

PGNS Primary Guidance and Navigation System, pronounced “pings.”

p.s.i. pounds per square inch.

PSAC President’s Science Advisory Commission, pronounced “p-sak.”

P.T.C. Passive Thermal Control, also known as the “barbecue” mode.

P52 Onboard computer program for use in aligning the guidance platform.

R.C.S. Reaction and Control System.

Redstone Launch vehicle used for the suborbital manned Mercury flights.

Retro Retrofire Officer.

S-IC The first stage of the Saturn V, pronounced “ess-one-see.”

S-II Second stage of the Saturn V, pronounced “ess-two.”

S-IVB Third stage of the Saturn V, pronounced “ess-four-bee.”

Saturn V The launch vehicle used for the manned lunar flights, pronounced “Saturn five.”

S.C.A. Simulation Control Area.

S.C.E. Signal Conditioning Equipment

SIM Scientific Instrument Module, pronounced “sim.”

sim Simulation, pronounced “sim.”

SimSup Simulation Supervisor, pronounced “sim-soup.”

SLA Spacecraft Lunar Adapter, pronounced “slaw.”

S.P.S. Service Propulsion System.

SPAN Spacecraft Analysis Room, pronounced “span.”

S.S.R. Staff Support Room, also known as the back room.

T– “T minus (some number),” the seconds or minutes before launch.

T.E.I. Trans-Earth Injection.

TELMU Telecommunications, Environmental, Electrical, and Maneuvering Unit officer for the lunar module, pronounced “tel-mew.”

Titan Launch vehicle used for the manned Gemini flights.

T.L.I. Translunar Injection.

T.P.S. Test Preparation Sheet.

Trench The bottom row in the MOCR, containing the Flight Dynamics positions.

V.A.B. Vehicle Assembly Building.

About the Ebook Edition

The only significant difference between the original text of Apollo and the text of this ebook edition involves footnotes. Our original footnotes were intended to offer interesting additional tidbits without forcing them on the reader. This is easy in a traditional book, where the footnote is at the bottom of the page, easy to find if you wish and easy to skip if you don’t. For the ebook, we put the note within brackets and in a smaller font immediately after the paragraph with its call-out. As we previewed the way the ebook would look to readers, we discovered that the footnotes were much more visually obtrusive than in a traditional book and that they disrupted the reading experience. We minimized the disruption by deleting a few footnotes that we decided weren’t worth the distraction and integrating many of the substantive ones into the main text. Aside from that, the text remains the same as the 2004 edition except for a few corrections of errata and trivial cosmetic changes.

The large change in this ebook edition involves photographs. We mounted a website at the time of the release of the 2004 republication of Apollo that included many more photographs than we could put in the original hardback. The photograph section for this ebook incorporates many shots from larger set, which overlaps with but is not identical to the set of photographs and captions contained in the 1989 and 2004 editions. We have included photographs that do not show up well on some ebook reading devices as of 2010, assuming that the technology will soon improve.

About the Authors

Catherine Bly Cox and Charles Murray were born and raised in Newton, Iowa, six years and three blocks apart. She was educated at William and Mary, Oxford, and Yale, and was a professor of English literature when she and Murray re-met in their thirties and married. He was educated at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has made his career as a writer about public policy. Since 1990, he has been a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Among his other books are Losing Ground, The Bell Curve (with Richard J. Herrnstein), and Human Accomplishment.

Cox and Murray already shared a long-standing fascination with the exploration of space when they took Jack Trombka’s astrophysics course in 1983 and decided to write a book about the people on the ground. They moved to Burkittsville, Maryland, shortly after Apollo was first published in 1989, and have lived there happily ever after.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the 2004 Edition

Acknowledgments

Apollo Abbreviations

Prologue. May 25, 1961

BOOK I. GATHERING

Chapter 1. “That famous Space Task Group is akin to the Mayflower”

Chapter 2. “I could picture the astronauts looking down at it with binoculars”

Chapter 3. “Those days were out of the Dark Ages”

Chapter 4. “He would rather not have done it”

Chapter 5. “We’re going to the moon”

BOOK II. BUILDING

Chapter 6. “The flight article has got to dominate”

Chapter 7. “We had more harebrained schemes than you could shake a stick at”

Chapter 8. “Somewhat as a voice in the wilderness…”

Chapter 9. “What sonofabitch thinks it isn’t the right thing to do?”

Chapter 10. “It aged me, I’m sure”

Chapter 11. “It sounded reckless”

Chapter 12. “Hey, it isn’t that complicated”

Chapter 13. “We want you to go fix it”

Chapter 14. “Did he say ‘fire’?”

Chapter 15. The Crucible

Chapter 16. “You’ve got to start biting somewhere”

Chapter 17. “And then on launch day it worked”

BOOK III. FLYING

Chapter 18. “We’re going to put a guy in that thing and light it”

Chapter 19. “There will always be people who want to work in that room”

Chapter 20. “The flight director may take any necessary action”

Chapter 21. “There was no mercy in those days”

Chapter 22. “You’ve lost the engines?”

Chapter 23. “It was darn scary”

Chapter 24. “We … we’re go on that, Flight”

Chapter 25. “Well, let’s light this sumbitch and it better work”

Chapter 26. “I think we need to do a little more all-weather testing”