Countdown to a Moon Launch

The era of the Apollo Saturn missions was perhaps the most exciting period in American space exploration history. This book delves deeply into the operations, personnel, and facilities at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) that assembled, tested, and launched the iconic Apollo/Saturn missions of the 1960s and 1970s. Combining technical coverage with a generalist's enthusiasm for space, the text gathers diagrams and photographs showing facilities that are not generally known to people who did not work at KSC-places such as the "blast room" inside the launch pad, the "ACE Rooms" in the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building, and the Central Instrumentation Facility. Rather than focusing on a specific mission, the book follows the general processing flow for the Apollo missions at the heyday of activity at KSC. The process for putting together and testing the modules of the spacecraft are detailed from the time the major sections arrived at KSC via airplane to the time that the assembled spacecraft is wheeled over to the Vehicle Assembly Building and mated to the Saturn V. The massive launch facilities are explored and the sequence of final tests is explicated, culminating in the Countdown Demonstration Test, a dry run for the actual launch. Throughout the book, the pre-launch process is illustrated with stories of incidents where things did not go according to plan, such as the explosion of security vehicles that drove through a cloud of liquid oxygen, the roots of the Apollo 13 accident in improper testing at the launch pad, and the rollback and disassembly of Apollo 16 because of an improperly tested fuel system. A number of engineers and managers from NASA and the Apollo/Saturn contractor teams contribute their expertise and firsthand experience to the account. For anyone who has ever wished they could explore the Launch Control Center and learn what it is like to be an engineer at one of the more than 400 consoles in the Firing Room as the 130-hour countdown gets underway and the world looking over your shoulder, this is the closest it is possible to get.