Angle of Attack
Apollo, the most ambitious engineering project ever undertaken by man: to build a rocket 36 stories high, load it with the explosive power of a nuclear device, put men on top of it, and shoot it at the moon - this is a task more complicated by far than the Manhattan Project and the Panama Canal combined. Angle of Attack is the story of one of America's most triumphant achievements: two decades later the Apollo Mission stands as a stirring reminder of what this country is capable of when the chips are down. In the panic that follows the Soviet launch of Sputnik, it is Harrison Storms, the legendary chief engineer of North American Aviation, who captures the job of building the Apollo spacecraft. Storms is one of the country's foremost airplane designers, and at North American he is known, only half- jokingly, as The Creator. But building the ship that will carry the astronauts to the moon and back is a challenge of a new and frightening order. As Storms and his engineers feel their way through uncharted technologies on a killing schedule, the blizzard of changing orders from NASA keeps the design of the ship a constantly moving target. To wage the battle, Storms assembles a vast technical empire that includes some of the greatest minds in industrial America.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
5mentions
3people
2018–2025years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon, by Mike Gray.
- _Angle of Attack_ by Mike Gray is a good one about Apollo, specifically about North American Aviation and how they built one of the Apollo stages (and a bunch of other neat flying things!). Lots of information but definitely a fun read.
- There's an excellent book called Angle of Attack by Mike Gray that follows North American's development of their part of Apollo, as well as touching on the immense efforts of all the other contractors in the program. It's not too long a book and reads like an adventure story despite being nonfiction, which I think just speaks to the kind of cowboy mentality that went into building a moon rocket in such a short time. Also neat because the other big players are companies like Lockheed, Northrop, Martin, McDonnell, Grumman, and Douglass -- all before their eventual mergers!
- The book "Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon" by Mike Gray, was published in 1992 to 1994, so it is available at low cost at AbeBooks.
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?cm_sp=SearchF...
- Pre-sputnik and pre-Gagarin, the US approach to space exploration was conservative, and my understanding is that Braun was pushing for a less cautious approach [1]. One issue was apparently a reluctance to lean too heavily on 'Nazi' technology. This caution contrasted with the US' approach to airplane development, which had a lot of moving fast and breaking things (and people.)
Ironically, if von Braun had got what he wanted then, there may have been no Moon race and no Apollo program.
[1] Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon, Mike Gray, ISBN 978-0393325133
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