Before This Decade Is Out: Personal Reflections on the Apollo Program (Dover Books on Astronomy) - Softcover

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9780486483832: Before This Decade Is Out: Personal Reflections on the Apollo Program (Dover Books on Astronomy)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0486483835 ISBN 13: 9780486483832

Publisher: Dover Publications, 2012

On July 24, 1969, the astronauts of Apollo XI splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, having triumphantly answered John F. Kennedy's 1961 challenge to land an American on the moon "before this decade is out." Behind their success lay the cooperative efforts of political leaders, engineers, scientists, administrators, and other astronauts. These fascinating oral histories recount the inside story of the lunar landing project, recapturing the excitement, daring, and idealism of the Apollo program.
Drawn from hundreds of interviews from the NASA archives, the Johnson Space Center, and the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, this volume features the recollections of fourteen program participants. Commenters include NASA administrators James Webb and Thomas O. Paine; Wernher von Braun, architect of the Saturn V rocket; spacecraft designer Maxime A. Faget; and astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Charles Duke. Introductory material provides background on the Apollo program, and nearly seventy black-and-white images illustrate the captivating first-person accounts of history in the making.

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Book Description:

Winner of the 1999 Pendleton Prize

This significant collection of oral histories of the Saturn/Apollo program recounts the unique adventure of the lunar landing program as witnessed by some of the political leaders, engineers, scientists, and astronauts who made it such a success. It includes recollections from James Webb, the NASA administrator whose political connections in Washington extended back to the New Deal of the 1930s; rocket pioneer and architect of the Saturn V rocket Wernher von Braun; the resolute Robert Gilruth, director of the Houston center; the engineering iconoclast Maxime Faget, whose designs of spacecraft made flights to the moon possible; and astronauts such as Harrison Schmitt and Charles Duke.

These reflections on this unique time, place, and accomplishment are a must read for any student of space history and Project Apollo. The foreword by Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., former director of NASA's Johnson Space Center, introduces this extraordinary first chapter in America's space history.

Glen E. Swanson is a historian at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

About the Author:

Glen E. Swanson is a historian at Johnson Space Center in Houston. He is also the editor of Countdown, a publication devoted to the space shuttle, and Quest, a periodical on the history of space flight.

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