Berkin Making America Complete Fifth Edition Plus Us History Atlassecond Edition Plus Eduspace Book

Despite the bombastic title, this is meticulous and authoritative history of Project Apollo. It is available as a free PDF from NASA, part of their official history series. Factual and somewhat dry, it nonetheless contains a number of revelations, one being the degree to which the prime contractors (North American Aviation and Grumman) shaped the Apollo program. They not only designed and built the command, service, and lunar modules, they chose subcontractors and even had a role in mission design.

When the nation committed in 1961 to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, nobody really knew how to go about doing it. Or if it was even possible. It had proved difficult enough to shoot one man into Earth orbit in a tiny Mercury capsule and drop him back in the sea. How to get someone to the Moon, land there, take off again, and get him back to Earth? The initial plan actually imagined a kind of Buck Rogers spaceship that would have to be refueled in orbit and would land and take off from the Moon in one piece- the “direct return” mode. It would involve gargantuan booster rockets, and seems now to be more the stuff of ‘50s comic books than an engineering plan. A reminder of how long ago Project Apollo was. Apollo was designed and built in the days of vacuum tube black & white television sets and propeller driven airliners.