Puttering in the Study

Launcher base complete

While I'm on the subject of NASA, the LUT launcher base is now complete.  The hold-down arms are done, and stairs down into the launcher have been added.  The whole thing is airbrushed Ocean Gray and detailed with Light Gray, and is ready for me to start adding the tower.  Doesn't look "quite" as good as the original, shown in this photo, but it is getting there.

Now obviously the three tail masts that sit alongside the hold-down arms are not in place, nor are some of the deck structures, and eventually the sides with be covered with piping - but those will come much later.  The basic launcher is now done, and it's time to start figuring out the platforms.

Flight: My Life in Mission Control - Christopher Kraft

Nope - not done with NASA just yet.  Someone recently recommended this as a good book on NASA, and boy, were they right.  Kraft was in the middle of everything from the unmanned Mercury flights through Apollo, and this book tells the story.  He pulls no punches, unloading on Scott Carpenter as the single bad astronaut in his experience, and tells the behind the scenes stories of many of the more notable episodes.

As a bonus, when I got this used copy in, I opened the cover, and it was autographed by Kraft himself.  Admittedly, my name isn't "Bob", but I will still take it.

Moonshot: The Inside Story of Mankind's Greatest Adventure - Dan Parry

This is an audiobook I got a few years back, and listened to again recently while on my current NASA kick.  It's narrowly focused on Apollo 11, but does a good job of jumping back to the important events that led up to the mission, so that there is context for the various sequences in the flight itself.  

Overall a good book on its subject.

Rocket Ranch: The Nuts and Bolts of the Apollo Moon Program at Kennedy Space Center - Jonathan H. Ward

Ward's second book focuses on the equipment at KSC that launched the Apollo spacecraft to the moon.  Again, his focus is on the Apollo 11 mission, which was when the program hit its stride, launching four Saturn Vs in 1969.  He tells the story of the building of the mammoth buildings and pads that were necessary put a Saturn V into space, including a Vehicle Assembly Building that could build and launch four Saturn Vs at the same time (the fourth bay and control room ended not not being needed), a pad complex that could launch three at a time (the third pad was never built) and three launchers (the LUT structures) so that three Saturn Vs could be stacked, carried out to the pad and launched at the same time.

It was this simultaneous operation that was the big surprise to me.  When Apollo 11 began to be stacked in the VAB, Apollo 8 had just launched and Apollo 9 and 10 were in progress.  By the time it was ready to head to the pad, Apollo 12 and 13 were under construction alongside it in the VAB.  NASA was gearing up for three shots at landing on the moon before the end of the year, with 12 and 13 read to go before the end of the year if Apollo 11 had to abort. 

I found the information on KSC fascinating, including learning how workers crawled into the Saturn V throughout the process, right up through its time on the pad.  The rocket, on its launcher, was moved out to the pad on its crawler, then encased in a second tower for the process of final checking out and fueling, during which time workers swarmed around the various stages and spacecraft.  The lunar module Eagle for example, had the gold aluminum foil on its landing pads changed to a different configuration as it sat folded inside its shroud on top of the third stage only days before launch.  I had no idea.

The book also explained the nuts and bolts of the various structures and assemblies in a way that was very helpful to me.  If I hadn't already pretty much completed the launcher portion of my LUT, I'm pretty sure I would have built it as the three-deck structure it is, rather than as a simple box.  But at least now I know what all was inside it, and why.

fascinating book, if you're interested in the "nuts and bolts" of the rocket and the spacecraft it carried.

Countdown to a Moon Launch: Preparing Apollo for Its Historic Journey - Jonathan H. Ward

This book is one of two that came out of the author's extensive interviews with the former personnel of Kennedy Space Center during the Apollo program.  It focuses on the people side of what was done at KSC to prepare the Saturn V/Apollo vehicles for launch.

Within just a few pages I was astonished at the sheer work that was required to prepare the vehicle for launch even after the various stages and spacecraft came to the Cape from their manufacturers.  Each had to have every component tested and retested as they were mated together, and the book tells the story of the thousands of people that worked to prepare the various missions for launch.  This was the first place that I saw that during the 1968-69 time period KSC was really actively preparing three missions at a time, from the rocket that was on the pad being tested for launch to two more that were in the Vehicle Assembly and Manned Spacecraft Operations buildings being tested and stacked.

The hardware was impressive, as was the engineering - but the sheer effort that went into testing everything to ensure that every component, switch, valve, pipe, wire and everything else worked flawlessly was is nothing short of amazing.  When I realized that this book just told the people story, and Ward's next told the story of the equipment, I thought I'd be bored.  I was anything but.