This history tells the story of the Apollo launch facilities and launch operations from the beginning of design through the final launch. You will meet many of the cast of thousands who took part in the great adventure. You will read of the management techniques used to control so vast an undertaking, of innovation in automation, of elaborate, repetitive, exhaustive testing on the ground to avoid failures in space. You will also learn something of the impact of the Apollo program on the citrus groves and quiet beaches of Florida's east coast.
On 28 July 1960, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced a new manned spaceflight program. Called Apollo, its aim was to put three astronauts into sustained earth orbit, or into a flight around the moon. The grandeur of the achievement of landing men on the moon and returning them to earth came within a decade. The most imposing artifact of that singular achievement is the Apollo launch facilities at Kennedy Space Center.
When the national objective of landing men on the moon was dramatically announced in May 1961, it quickly became apparent within NASA that the remainder of the decade was little enough time to design, build, and equip the extensive and unprecedented facilities required to launch such missions. Indeed, time was so pressing that for many months the planning, designing, even initial construction of launch facilities had to go forward without answers to some essential questions, such as: How big would the launch vehicle(s) be? How many launches would there be, and how often?
Intense effort by a rapidly growing team of people in government, industry, and the universities gradually filled in the grand design and answered those questions. Land was acquired, ground was broken, pipe was laid, concrete was poured, buildings rose. When the launch vehicles and spacecraft arrived, the facilities were ready and operations could begin. Seldom was the pressure off or the path smooth, but the end of the decade saw the deadline met, the task accomplished.
The central feature of this book is launch complex 39 (LC-39), where American astronauts were launched toward the moon. Its story begins in early 1961 with the earliest plans for a mobile launch complex and proceeds through design and construction to the launching of Apollo 11 and subsequent lunar missions. The construction story is a big one - the building of the Apollo Launch facilities was the largest project of its time. In many ways, however, the operations at LC-39 were an even greater challenge. As an Apollo program manager has noted, the Kennedy Space Center was at the "tail end of the whip." There all the parts of the Apollo program came together for the first time. The launch team ensured that the space vehicle would work.
574 pages. Hundreds of photos, diagrams and maps.