Akens, David S. Saturn Illustrated Chronology. Huntsville, AL: Historical Office, George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, 1971. Covering the period April 1957-April 1968, this fifth edition of the chronology contains numerous photos and a more or less blow-by-blow account of the design and development of the Saturn launch vehicle family. It includes a useful glossary, a 528-item bibliography of specialized sources, and an index. The Marshall History Office also began in 1960 preparing annual histories and later, chronologies, of the center, which also contain much information on the design and development of Saturn.
“Apollo 11 Television Cameras.” Optical Spectra. 3 (September/October 1969): 65-69. One of several articles in this issue dealing with the Apollo program, this particular account focuses on the television cameras used in the command module and on the Moon’s surface. It discusses their technical features and possible future applications.
Arabian, D.D. “Action on Mission Evaluation and Flight Anomalies.” Astronautics and Aeronautics. 8 (March 1970): 72-75. Arabian, chief of the Apollo program’s test division, explains how specialists at the Manned Spacecraft Center resolved anomalies that they identified in Apollo equipment.
Baker, David. “Apollo Hardware: Inventory and Disposition.” Spaceflight, 16 (April 1974): 137-39. A listing of spacecraft, launchers, and other Apollo hardware with information about location of some of the items.
______. “The Apollo Service Propulsion System.” Spaceflight. 11 (August 1969): 287-90. A technical discussion of the propulsion system for the command and service module.
______. “The Apollo Spacecraft: Guidance and Navigation.” Spaceflight. 11 (November 1969): 386-89. An extremely technical discussion of the complex guidance and navigation systems for Apollo spacecraft through Apollo 11.
______. “Lunar Roving Vehicle: Design Report.” Spaceflight. 13 (July 1971): 234-40. A detailed but comprehensible account of the design and development of the lunar rover, written before its initial deployment on Apollo 15.
Bilstein, Roger E. Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration SP-4206, 1980. This thorough and well-written book gives a detailed but highly readable account of the enormously complex process whereby the Marshall Space Flight Center under the direction of Wernher von Braun developed the launch vehicles used in the Apollo program ultimately to send twelve humans to the Moon. Based on exhaustive research and equipped with extensive bibliographic references, this book comes as close to being a definitive history of the Saturn rocket program as is ever likely to appear. Moreover, it is not simply a technical history but covers the decision-making process that lay behind the technological development, making it not just a history of hardware development but also an analysis of technical management and organization. As one reviewer said in Air University Review, “This volume is just one of many excellent histories produced by government and contract historians for the NASA History Office....The book is enhanced by many excellent appendixes and charts, and it has a thorough essay on sources and documentation....Author Roger Bilstein...gracefully wends his way through a maze of technical documentation to reveal the important themes of his story; rarely has such a nuts-and-bolts tale been so gracefully told.”
______. “From the S-IV to the S-IVB: The Evolution of a Rocket Stage for Space Exploration.” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. 32 (December 1979): 452-8. This article explores the evolution of the S-IVB stage used in the Saturn IB and Saturn V launch vehicles. Noting that the liquid-hydrogen fuel for this stage “presented unique design challenges,” Bilstein shows that although the earlier S-IV and its successor, the S-IVB “were developed and built by two different contractors,” NASA arranged for the information from the one to be available for the development of the other, helping to ensure the success of the Apollo mission. This detailed but readable article also shows the debts of both stages to previous designs for space and missile systems such as Thor.
Boeing Company. Apollo/Saturn V Roll of Honor. Seattle, WA: The Boeing Co., 1970. This rare book, filled with photos and diagrams, covers every aspect of Boeing’s manufacturing, assembly, and testing at the Michoud Plant in Louisiana of the first stage (S-IC) of the Saturn V rocket. It also covers Boeing’s activities at NASA’s Marshall, Kennedy, and Manned Space Flight centers as well as its involvement in Apollo technical integration at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. The “roll of honor” reference in the title refers to a 174-page collection of short biographical sketches of Boeing personnel involved in the Apollo program. There is also a list of associate contractors at the end of the thick, large-format volume, a copy of which is available in the rare book collection of the Library of Congress and another in the NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
Bond, Aleck C., and Faget, M[axime Allen]. Technologies of Manned Space Systems. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1965. A useful early description of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo systems.
Boynton, John H., and Kleinknecht, Kenneth S. “Systems Design Experience from Three Manned Space Programs.” Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. 7 (July 1970): 770-84. Two managers at the Manned Spacecraft Center summarize the systems design experience for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. 77 bibliographic notes.
Brooks, Courtney G., and Ertel, Ivan D. The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume III, October 1, 1964-January 20, 1966. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4009, 1973. This volume in the series (see below for volume 1 under Ertel) covers primarily the detailed engineering of the three spacecraft being manufactured by North American and Grumman—the command and service and the lunar excursion modules.
Brooks, Courtney G.; Grimwood, James M.; and Swenson, Loyd S., Jr. Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft. Washington: National Aeronautics and Space Administration SP-4205, 1979. The authors of this book describe it accurately in their preface (p. xiv) as beginning “with the creation of NASA itself and with the definition of a manned space flight program to follow Mercury. It ends with Apollo 11, when America attained its goal of the 1960s, landing the first men on the moon and returning them to the earth. The focal points of this story are the spacecraft—the command and service modules and the lunar module.” Based on exhaustive documentary and secondary research as well as 341 interviews, this well-written volume covers the design, development, testing, evaluation, and operational use of the Apollo spacecraft through July 1969.
Dooling, Dave. “The Evolution of the Apollo Spacecraft, Part 1,” Spaceflight, 16 (March 1974): 82-88. An account of the background discussions and activities leading up to the development of the Apollo hardware in the 1960s.
______. “The Evolution of the Apollo Spacecraft, Part 2,” Spaceflight, 16 (April 1974): 127-36. A continuation of the discussion of the design and development of the Apollo hardware in the 1960s, including the decision in favor of the lunar (rather than Earth) orbit rendezvous of the lunar excursion module and the command and service modules following the trip to the Moon.
Ertel, Ivan D., and Morse, Mary Louise. The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume I, Through November 7, 1962. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4009, 1969. This chronology actually begins in 1923 with Hermann Oberth’s book on rocketry but proceeds rather quickly through the launch of Explorer I with a Jupiter-C in January 1958 to the beginnings of Project Mercury later that year. The bulk of the volume recounts the actual history of the Apollo spacecraft themselves through 7 November 1962 when NASA selected Grumman to develop the lunar excursion module under the direction of the Manned Spacecraft Center. A useful foreword provides context for the remainder of the volume, while a number of appendices add further information in the form of a glossary, tables, and charts.
Ertel, Ivan D.; and Newkirk, Roland W.; with Brooks, Courtney G. The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume IV, January 21, 1966-July 13, 1974. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4009, 1978. This volume, organized similarly, carries the story through to the end of the program. It includes all flight tests of the Apollo spacecraft, the last five Gemini flights, the Apollo 204 fire, the follow-on review board activities, the efforts at redefinition that followed its recommendations, and the entirety of the manned Apollo flight program together with its results.
Evanzia, W.J. “A Look at Apollo Electronics.” IEEE Spectrum. 6 (September 1969): 81-86. A discussion with photos and a map of the electronics devices used on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions with their spinoff benefits for life on Earth.
Faget, Max[ime Allen]. Manned Space Flight. New York: Rinehart and Winston, 1965. This little book by then-assistant director for engineering and development at the Manned Spacecraft Center discusses the technical problems involved in developing manned spacecraft and the elements of science present in engineering solutions. Necessarily technical in places, the book is written in layman’s language as much as possible and equipped with photos and diagrams to make it accessible to the general reader.
Gatland, Kenneth W. Manned Spacecraft. New York: Macmillan, 1976. Covering Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, and the Russian space effort as well as Apollo, this little encyclopedia by one of the major popularizers of space’s technical side provides a good deal of information and many photographs and diagrams for the interested general reader.
General Motors Corporation. Apollo 11; guidance and navigation summary: CM software, LM software, ASPO 45 CRT displays, launch and burn schedule. Milwaukee, WI: AC Electronics Division, 1969. This highly technical publication will be unintelligible to the technically uninitiated reader but contains a wealth of information for those trained in electronic engineering.
“A Golf Cart to Cruise on the Moon.” Life. 11 June 1971, pp. 70-74. 10 color photos. Very good coverage of the Moon car to be carried on Apollo 15, including testing by the Apollo 15 astronauts.
Heppenheimer, T.A. “Requiem for a Heavyweight.” Air and Space/Smithsonian. 4 (June-July 1989): 50-55, 59-60. A brief and somewhat popular account of the development of the Saturn V booster with several photos and an illustration of the Saturn V configuration.
Hu, Steve S. Editor. Saturn V/Apollo and beyond. Tarzana, CA: American Astronautical Society, 1968. 4 volumes. Also available in the AAS astronautics microfiche series. This compilation publishes the papers presented at the AAS National Meeting, held June 11-14, 1967, at Huntsville, Alabama, cosponsored by the University of Alabama, Marshall Space Flight Center, and United States Army Missile Command. It includes a great variety of papers ranging from one on “The Saturn Instrument Unit” to “The Thermoluminescence of the Moon.” Most of the papers are highly technical and equipped with scholarly references. Each is typically accompanied by an abstract and biographical material on the author(s), but there is no table of contents or index to these four volumes, so they are hard to use without the separate chronological, numerical, and author index to its publications that the AAS later prepared.
Kleinknecht, Kenneth S. “Design Principles Stressing Simplicity.” Astronautics and Aeronautics. 8 (March 1970): 46-49. This brief account by the manager for the command and service modules at the Manned Spacecraft Center discusses the principles established to guide engineers designing hardware for the mission.
Kosloski, Lillian D. U.S. Space Gear: Outfitting the Astronaut. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. With more than 150 illustrations, this book describes the development of each component of the space suit from Project Mercury to the Shuttle.
Kudish, Henry. “The Lunar Rover.” Spaceflight. 12 (July 1970): 270-74. A brief discussion by the project manager at Boeing of the design of the lunar rover. Easy to understand with a photo and several diagrams.
Lankes, L.R. “The Role of Optics in the Apollo Program.” Optical Spectra. 3 (September/October 1969): 39-56. This lengthy account discusses the many optical devices used on the Apollo 11 mission. They included a variety of cameras, lenses, filters, light meters, mirrors, sights, and combinations thereof into sextants and telescopes. This variety of equipment funneled a significant portion of the information obtained from the mission. Somewhat technical in places, for the most part this account is accessible to the lay reader.
Lay, Bierne. Earthbound Astronautics: The Builders of Apollo-Saturn. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971. A breezy and rather superficial account of the government and industry team that designed, managed, and built the Apollo spacecraft. For the general reader rather than the serious researcher except to the extent that it imparts some of the flavor of the enterprise and provides anecdotes, character sketches, and the like.
Lloyd, Mallon. Suiting up for Space. New York: John Day, 1971. Details the development of the space suit in Europe and the United States through the full-pressure suits used in Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
“Lunar Roving Vehicle.” Space World. December 1971, pp. 12-25. As the title suggests, a detailed description with diagrams and photos of the lunar roving vehicle used on Apollo 15.
Mast, L.T.; Mayper, V.; and Pilnick, C. Survey of Saturn/Apollo Checkout Automation, Spring 1965; Detailed Description. Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Corp., 1966. Besides a study of the checkout testing system for the Saturn launch vehicle, this report provides information on stages and launch vehicles, test planning, and programming.
Morse, Mary Louise, and Bays, Jean Kernahan. The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume II, November 8, 1962-September 30, 1964. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4009, 1973. Organized like the previous volume (by Ertel and Morse) in the series, this one covers the period from the conceptual design of the Apollo spacecraft through the formal inspection and review of the so-called Block II command and service module mockup. Included are the reorganization of the Office of Manned Space Flight under George E. Mueller and his appointment of Maj. Gen. Sam Phillips as deputy director and then director of the Apollo program.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Congressional Relations. Saturn SA-1. Washington, DC: Office of Congressional Relations, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, n.d. This booklet contains a series of documents and illustrations from 1961, prepared to explain to Congress the impending first launch of the Saturn I (Saturn-Apollo 1) rocket on 27 October 1961. Useful for its specific information about that initial version of the Saturn family of launch vehicles that ultimately carried humans to the Moon.
Ordway, Frederick Ira, III, and Sharpe, Mitchell R. Foreword by Wernher von Braun. The Rocket Team. New York: Crowell, 1979. This popular history by an associate of von Braun who has written widely on space issues and another noted writer about space is devoted almost exclusively to the V-2 rocket with only a few pages providing an overview of the Saturn program.
Pellegrino, Charles R., and Stoff, Joshua. Chariots for Apollo: The Making of the Lunar Module. New York: Atheneum, 1985. A popular and not always accurate discussion of the development of the Lunar Module by Grumman.
“Project Apollo: The Last Lap.” Spaceflight. 11 (June 1969): 186-8. A foretaste of Apollo 11 with a description of the lunar module.
“Project Apollo: The Portable Life Support System.” Spaceflight. 12 (April 1970): 155-7. Describes the system inside the Apollo space suit that supports life during lunar excursions or extra-vehicular activities.
Simpkinson, S.H. “Testing to Insure Mission Success.” Astronautics and Aeronautics. 8 (March 1970): 50-55. Simpkinson, who ran the Apollo spacecraft test program, discusses the testing procedures used to date in the Apollo program, including changes introduced after the Apollo 204 fire. He lists sixteen principles and recommendations resulting from the experience thus far in the program.
Stachurski, Richard J. “A Look at Apollo Ground Support Control.” Air University Review. 23 (March-April 1972): 55-67. This article by a junior Air Force officer who served two tours with NASA discusses NASA’s ground tracking network in a broad and comprehensible way with a number of photos to illustrate a key element in carrying out the Apollo and other missions into space.
Stengel, Robert F. “Manual Attitude Control of the Lunar Module.” Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. 7 (August 1970): 941-48. An extremely technical description of the way the astronaut-pilot controlled the lunar module. 15 reference notes and 12 figures.
Swenson, Loyd S., Jr. “On the Mixture of Science and Technology in the Apollo 8 Circumlunar and the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing Missions.” Actes du XIIIe Congres International d’Histoire des Sciences. 12 (1974): 226-46. These remarks, delivered as a paper at the 13th International Congress of the History of Science in Moscow in 1971, concludes that the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 missions fit better into the rubric of the history of technology than the history of science, with the latter mission representing a “compromise between scientific and engineering trade-offs” that could hardly satisfy either scientists or engineers. However, the follow-on Apollo missions after the technology had been demonstrated did yield greater scientific returns on the technological investment.
Tomayko, James E. “Achieving Reliability: The Evolution of Redundancy in American Manned Spacecraft.” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. 38 (1985): 545-53. Devoted mainly to the computer systems on the Shuttle, this brief article also discusses the backup systems employed on Gemini and Apollo.
______. Computers in Space Flight: The NASA Experience. NASA Contractor Report 182505, 1988, multilith. Much broader in its coverage than Apollo, this rather technical and conceptually narrow study contains a lengthy chapter on the computers used in the lunar program.
______. Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience, published as volume 18, Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, Kent, Allen, and Williams, James G., editors. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1987. A published version of the report above.
______. “Digital Fly-by-Wire: A Case of Bidirectional Technology Transfer.” Aerospace Historian. 33 (Spring 1986): 10-18. This article deals mostly with post-Apollo technology but does discuss the origins of the fly-by-wire concept in the attitude control devices used for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft.
______. “NASA’s Manned Spacraft Computers.” Annals of the History of Computing. 7 (January 1985): 7-18. Argues that contrary to popular belief, NASA has not been at the forefront of computer development except in the areas of fault tolerance and software verification. Elsewhere, NASA has used existing computer technology that has already proved itself, thereby ensuring reliability.
United States General Accounting Office. Incentive Provisions of Saturn V Stage Contracts: Report to the Congress on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, 1970. A detailed report discussing NASA’s $26.2 million in schedule incentives written into contracts for the S-IC and S-IVB Saturn V stages. GAO believed the incentives were unnecessary but NASA argued that they reduced costs, permitted mission adjustments, and kept the program costs at the minimum obtainable.
United States General Accounting Office. Overstatement of Contract Target Cost for First Stage of Saturn V Launch Vehicle: Report to the Congress on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, 1970. This short report concludes that Boeing overcharged NASA for the first stage of the Saturn V launch vehicle by about $695,000. Boeing disagreed. United States General Accounting Office. Overstatement of Contract Target Costs for F-1 Rocket Engines for Saturn V Launch Vehicle: Report to the Congress on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, 1970. A detailed report claiming that North American Rockwell overcharged NASA by $6.5 million for the Saturn V’s F-1 engine. North American disagreed generally with the findings.
United States General Accounting Office. Review of the Saturn S-IVB-503 stage accident under the Apollo Program; Report to the Congress on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, 1969. A report on the acceptance test firing of the S-IVB-503 stage of the Saturn launch vehicle, in which the stage exploded and was destroyed, it estimates costs of $13.3 million for the accident. The report concluded that if McDonnell Douglas Corporation and its subcontractors had followed established quality assurance procedures, there probably would have been no accident.
United States House, Committee on Science and Astronautics, Subcommittee on NASA Oversight. Investigation into Apollo 204 accident, Hearings, Ninetieth Congress, first session. Washington, DC: Govt. Print. Off., 1967. This 3-volume committee print contains testimony, a summary of actions taken on the findings and determinations of the accident review board, the report of that board itself, and a report on the principal new features of the new (Block II) command and service module as compared with the one involved in the accident (Block I), together with a description of the testing planned to validate the changes made.
Widnall, William S. “Lunar Module Digital Autopilot.” Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. 8 (January 1971): 56-67. A highly technical discussion of the autopilot system on the lunar module. 16 reference notes and 10 figures.
Williamson, Mark. “Engineering the Lunar Module.” Space. 7 (1 May 1991): 20. The author retraces how Grumman fought to keep the weight of the Apollo Lunar Module down while maintaining the project on schedule.