The Apollo Chronicles

In The Apollo Chronicles, we meet the engineers who toiled behind the spotlights from 1958 to 1972. The son of an Apollo engineer, author Brandon R. Brown devotes his writing chops to storytelling and a dramatic tension that will engage even the most technical unsavvy and engineering estranged of readers.

Auteur
Brandon R. Brown is a Professor of Physics at the University of San Francisco. His research includes work on superconductivity and sensory biophysics. He enjoys writing about science for general audiences, including articles and essays in New Scientist, SEED, and the Huffington Post, as well as a biography, Planck, that won the 2016 Housatonic Award for Nonfiction.

Texte du rabat

A uniquely earthbound story of space travel, The Apollo Chronicles immerses readers in the obsessive lives and work of NASA's engineers from the starting gun of the space race through the triumphant Moon landings. Filled with new interviews, scrubbed of technical jargon, and infused with the turbulent backdrop of the 1960's, the narrative follows a handful of main characters through their longest days, tightest deadlines, and most confounding challenges. Inthe end, the surviving engineers reflect: How exactly did we do it, and what did we learn?

Résumé
The moon landing of 1969 stands as an iconic moment for both the United States and humankind. The familiar story focuses on the journey of the brave astronauts, who brought home Moon rocks and startling photographs. But Apollo's full account includes the earthbound engineers, mounds of their crumpled paper, and smoldering metal shards of exploded engines. How exactly did the nation, step by difficult step, take men to the Moon and back? In The Apollo Chronicles, fifty years after the moon landing, author Brandon R. Brown, himself the son of an Apollo engineer, revisits the men and women who toiled behind the lights. He relays the defining twentieth-century project from its roots, bringing the engineers' work and personalities to bright life on the page. Set against the backdrop of a turbulent American decade, the narrative whisks audiences through tense deadlines and technical miracles, from President John F. Kennedy's 1961 challenge to NASA's 1969 lunar triumph, as engineers confronted wave after wave of previously unthinkable challenges. Brown immerses readers in key physical hurdles--from building the world's most powerful rockets to keeping humans alive in the hostile void of space--using language free of acronyms and technical jargon. The book also pulls back from the detailed tasks and asks larger questions. What did we learn about the Moon? And what can this uniquely innovative project teach us today?

Contenu

• Preface

• Acknowledgments

• Chapter One: 1945 - Origins

• Chapter Two: 1957 - Paths, Power and Panic

• Chapter Three: 1960 - Silent Movies and Old-World Evenings

• Chapter Four: 1961 - A Toddler's Marathon

• Chapter Five: The Moon

• Chapter Six: 1962 - Punch Cards and a Key to the Trunk

• Chapter Seven: 1964 - Of Doubts and Bugs

• Chapter Eight: 1965 - Saturn Breathes

• Chapter Nine: 1966 - Of Software and Star Balls

• Chapter Ten: 1967 - From Madness to Miracle

• Chapter Eleven: 1968 - Of Timeless Views and New Perspectives

• Chapter Twelve: 1969 - Alarms and Lightning

• Chapter Thirteen: 1972 - From Rovers to Regrets

• Chapter Fourteen: 1981 - Farther Along

• Chapter Fifteen: Today - Mementos and Returns

• Chapter Sixteen: How We Did It