Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles - Softcover

Bilstein, Roger

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813026911 ISBN 13: 9780813026916

Publisher: University Press of Florida, 2003

Synopsis

A study of the development of the Saturn launch vehicle that took Americans to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s. The Saturn rocket was developed as a means of accomplishing President John F. Kennedy's goal for the United States to reach the moon before the end of the decade. Without the Saturn V rocket, and its capability of sending as payload the Apollo Command and Lunar Modules - along with support equipment and three astronauts - more than a quarter of a million miles from Earth, Kennedy's goal would have been unrealizable. This volume not only tells the story of the research and development of the Saturn rockets and the people who designed them but also recounts the stirring exploits of their operations from orbital missions around Earth testing Apollo equipment to their journeys to the moon and back. This history should be of interest to anyone seeking to understand the development of space flight in America and the course of modern technology. This reprint edition includes a new preface by the author providing a 21st-century perspective on the historic importance of the Saturn project.

About this title

Review:

"This is the story of the Apollo and Saturn programs that need to be told. . . . It is a first-class organisational and technological history, and it stands alone as perhaps the very best of the overall government 'official histories.'"--Balloons to Drones

About the Author:

Roger E. Bilstein is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Houston, Clear Lake. He is the author of Flight Patterns: Trends of Aeronautical Development in the United States, 1918-1929; Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles; and Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts, the last available from Johns Hopkins.

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Florida
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0813026911
• ISBN 13: 9780813026916
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 538