Book Review: Apollo

"When they said, "Let's go to the moon" - hell, everybody didn't stand around saying, "What am I supposed to do" or "Send me a directive," or "What's the procedure for going to the moon?"

I'd highly recommend Apollo by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Fox.  It was humorous, informative, and surprisingly suspenseful.  Like with my review of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, I'll record what impressed me about the book:

The Influence of the Cold War
Prior to reading the book, I thought Eisenhower didn't like the space program, but JFK was excited about it.  It turns out JFK was not excited at all in the beginning of his term. Wiesner, President’s Science Advisory Committee in Washington, hated the idea of manned space exploration, pointing out that it was orders of magnitude more expensive than unmanned exploration.  The science benefit couldn't justify the cost.

What changed everything was the Russians putting a man into space first. Even after reading the book, it is hard to imagine the Cold War environment and how strong public pressures must have been on the White House to make JFK go from viewing manned spaceflight as unimportant to a number one priority. This dramatic change (which would cause the government to increase the budget of NASA 10x in the course of 4 years) happened less than 2 months after the Russians put a man into space.

I wonder -  would anything have the same effect on the US public?  What if China landed on the moon?  On Mars?

Incredible Speed
To land a man on the moon 8 years after JFK's speech, NASA had to move fast.  "In those days, you could do things with a half-page memo," one employee recalled. Look at the month by month timeline that kicked off after JFK gave his moon speech:

• July - specifications for spacecraft hardware were completed; RFPs sent out
• August - Spaceport site selected and land acquired
• September - Production facility for rockets selected; land for Houston (of "Houston we have a problem" fame) acquired
• October - Rocket test facility land acquired
• November - Command and service module contract awarded
• December - First stage of Saturn contract awarded

Mission control was created when Chris Kraft went up to someone and said, "There needs to be someone in charge of the flights while they're actually going on and I'd like to be that person."  On how soft or hard the lunar surface might be, Cadwell Johnson recalled that the scientific community just couldn't agree, "So Owen and I got together and we said, 'It's got to be like Arizona! The moon has just got to be like Arizona! Can't be nothin' else'"

Once in a lifetime...

The book is filled with examples of people that felt that the Apollo program was special.  For example, Bill Tindall "had the exuberance of a seven-year old on his way to the circus." "It's just incredible that we'd get paid to do what we're doing!" he'd exclaim.  The authors point out that "for the last half of the 1960s, NASA seemed to be getting the best of both worlds - superb management without bureaucratic paralysis."  And it's worth repeating that the people of the Apollo program accomplished their seemingly impossible goal that JFK had given them.

Overall it seems the feeling of a clear goal and national pride was enough to push the Apollo team to work harder and longer (many described the experience as a blur) without the financial incentives.  Perhaps it was this feeling of teamwork that led those in Mission Control who had the power to assign themselves to the most exciting and historic part of the job (the Apollo 11 lunar descent) instead assigned others, and a dozen other examples that led to success.

So my final takeaway from the book is that it was exciting and great to read in much more depth about something I'd always cared about.  But it was a bit depressing as well because the NASA of the Apollo program doesn't sound like the NASA of today.