Bibliographical Note

Six years before Apollo reached its goal in 1969, a cartoon depicted two Smen standing atop two extremely tall stacks of paper. One man, as he stepped out onto the lunar surface, said to the other: "I told you we would get to the moon." The cartoonist may not have been too far off the mark when one considers the documentation generated by Apollo. Some 200 linear meters of that paper, more than half of it covering the period through the first lunar landing, came to rest in the History Archives of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. And this small percentage of the whole represents what was left after numerous screenings and cullings by historians, archivists, and editors. These materials were collected in a variety of ways over a period of years.

While the research for this Apollo history was being done, government engineers connected with manned space flight evolved into three-program veterans-Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Of these participants, many became pack rats, collecting documents and creating what might be called "desk archives." Much of this material contains engineering marginalia that leads the researcher on to more and more documents, with a snow-balling effect. As the engineers moved to new positions and were forced to clean out their desks, many were happy to find a historical archives function that might preserve some of their more treasured papers. Along with material collected during research and documentary forays by historians, archivists, and editors to NASA Headquarters in Washington and to its other centers scattered over the nation and during visits to institutions and industrial concerns connected with Apollo, these holdings-covering the years 1957 through 1972 and including letters, memoranda, studies, reports, etc.became extensive (25 five-drawer filing cabinets) .

Another, somewhat similar, collection exists, because NASA like all federal agencies is required to retire its documents to regional Federal Records Centers on a regular schedule. Government paperwork falls into two categories: record, or official, copies that must be retired, and duplicate copies and unofficial working papers that may be retained in reading files as long as they are needed. But even here NASA had to exercise control, sponsoring a spring-housecleaning "Records Roundup" annually to screen and dispose of some of these reading files. The Records Management Officer has encouraged organizational elements to send their reading files to the historian, to gain credit for "destroyed records." Several major accessions resulted from this procedure.

Among the major additions to the JSC History Archives were the complete Houston Apollo Spacecraft Program Office reading files, covering 1960 through 1972 (17 five-drawer filing cabinets). This collection contains a cross-section of materials on almost every phase, event, or subject of the Apollo program. It includes matter from every organizational element in the spacecraft program office, as well as correspondence from other divisions of the Houston center, from other NASA centers, from NASA Headquarters, and from industry and institutions that worked on Apollo. Research in these files turned up information on technical problems in the program, from the time problems were discovered until they were finally resolved, and on program decisions, failures, and successes. A number of summary documents evaluated Apollo at specific times, to measure performance and progress against costs and schedules.

Research in this extensive collection, by three historians with the help of an editor and an archivist, was a physical, as well as mental, task. Even with the mass of documentation, however, there was no mystery about what subjects would be important in the development of the Apollo spacecraft. For example, it was obvious from the start that the mode issue-how NASA intended to fly men to the moon and back-was a major influence on spacecraft, launch vehicle, and launch preparation, and facility designs. Subjects such as this had generated so much paperwork at so many locations that there is probably enough material to write lengthy monographs on each. Most of the source notes to this volume, therefore, form small bibliographies for the narrative discussions. Again, the historians had to make arbitrary selections of which documents to cite because of the physical limitations on the number of citations possible in one book.

Another source, unique to the writing of contemporary (or near-contemporary) history, added to the archives collection: tape-recorded oral history interviews (two-thirds of them transcribed) of many key program participants. This research began before Apollo reached its goal, continued after the program ended, and gave the historians an opportunity to see the hardware at the factory, test, and launch sites. Thus, when the book was written, authors had some personal knowledge of the persons, hardware, and operations. Quite often, these contacts later helped the authors explain the solutions to technical problems in a language that both the writer and the reader could understand. How the engineers settled on the number, arrangement, and folding of the lunar module’s legs required several telephone calls to clarify the solution. The answers to who decided which American would be the first to step out onto the lunar surface and why the decision was made required more calls. Such conversations often uncovered more formal documentation on the subject, and the archives continued to grow.

As may be easily discerned, this history of the Apollo spacecraft, and subjects directly related to the spacecraft, represents what might be called the internalist approach. One member of the academic community who reviewed this work commented that he no longer worried that the text would be "court history," presenting events too much from the program participants’ point of view. He did, however, complain that the historians had become too intrigued with the mass of available information to "raise their heads out of the files." Other reviewers contended that the historians paid too much attention to outside influences on the program and not enough to the technical descriptions and development of the machines. These diverse comments were appreciated and responded to, in some degree-although not, perhaps, to the satisfaction of either side. We hope we have presented enough of the story of the program, as well as its techniCal problems and solutions, to capture the interest of the reader whose opinions fall somewhere between the two extremes. At any rate, this history is largely based on a portion of the documents that the Apollo program generated. A listing follows of persons talked with, selected samples of the documentation, and other sources used.