In a spring 1999 poll of opinion leaders sponsored by leading news organizations in the United States, the 100 most significant events of the 20th century were ranked. The Moon landing was a very close second to the splitting of the atom and its use during World War II. “It was agonizing,” CNN anchor and senior correspondent Judy Woodruff said of the selection process. Probably historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., best summarized the position of a large number of individuals polled. “The one thing for which this century will be remembered 500 years from now was: This was the century when we began the exploration of space.” He noted that Project Apollo gave many a sense of infinite potential. “People always say: If we could land on the Moon, we can do anything,” said Maria Elena Salinas, co-anchor at Miami-based Spanish-language cable network Univision, who also made it her first choice.
Perhaps because of his long life, Schlesinger has looked toward a positive future, and that prompted him to rank the lunar landing first. “I put DNA and penicillin and the computer and the microchip in the first 10 because they’ve transformed civilization. Wars vanish,” Schlesinger said, and many people today cannot even recall when the Civil War took place. “Pearl Harbor will be as remote as the War of the Roses,” he said, referring to the English civil war of the 15th century. And there’s no need to get hung up on the ranking, he said. “The order is essentially very artificial and fictitious,” he said. “It’s very hard to decide the atomic bomb is more important than getting on the Moon.”
While there have been many studies recounting the history of Apollo, this new book seeks to draw out the statistical information about each of the flights that have been long buried in numerous technical memoranda and historical studies. It seeks to recount the missions, measuring results against the expectations for them.
The purpose of this work is to provide a comprehensive reference for facts about Project Apollo, America’s effort to put humans on the Moon.
For a program of the magnitude of Apollo, numerous NASA centers and contractors created post-mission reports, a situation which created some differences in certain reported measurements. Additionally, as time passed, typographical errors crept into some Apollo-related publications. In order to resolve these issues, the author turned to original documents, some of which were previously unavailable to the public, but were made available through the Freedom of Information Act.
This book is separated into two parts. The first part contains narratives for the Apollo 1 fire and the 11 flown Apollo missions. Included after each narrative is a series of data tables, followed by a comprehensive timeline of events from just before liftoff to just after crew and spacecraft recovery. The second part contains more than 50 tables. These tables organize much of the data from the narratives in one place so they can be compared among all missions. The tables offer additional data as well. The reader can select a specific mission narrative or specific data table by consulting the Table of Contents.
515 pages. Contents hyperlinked for easy navigation.
