Apollo, the race to the moon

What Hacker News says

1. GlennFarrantJan 2025
   Apollo: The Race To The Moon Charles Murray, Catherine Bly Cox

   My favorite book of this type by far.

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2. stonlybJan 2025
   list of (most of) the books mentioned in this thread so far. I tried reading every comment but used chatGPT instead.

   1. The Big Rich - Texas oil boom.

   2. Barbarians at the Gate - Private equity origins.

   3. Masters of Doom - John Carmack and Id Software.

   4. Einstein by Walter Isaacson - Einstein's discoveries.

   5. Houdini!!! - The escape artist and magician.

   6. The Double Helix - DNA discovery.

   7. Stress Test by Tim Geithner - Financial crisis.

   8. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - Concentration camp survival.

   9. The Chariots of Apollo - NASA's space program.

   10. Across the Airless Wilds by Earl Swift - Development of the moon buggy.

   11. Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox - Apollo missions.

   12. The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr - Food supply chains.

   13. The Prize by Daniel Yergin - Oil industry evolution.

   14. Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson - Ambitious wreck divers.

   15. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes - Manhattan Project.

   16. American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin - Robert Oppenheimer.

   17. Conquistador by Buddy Levy - Hernán Cortés and the Aztecs.

   18. Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner - Water infrastructure in the American West.

   19. The Wright Brothers by David McCullough - The invention of flight.

   20. Walt Disney by Neal Gabler - Vision and innovation in entertainment.

   21. Tuxedo Park by Jennet Conant - Invention of radar.

   22. Insisting on the Impossible - Edwin Land and instant photography.

   23. The Logic of Failure - Understanding and avoiding failure.

   24. The Big Short by Michael Lewis - 2008 financial crisis.

   25. The Box by Marc Levinson - Shipping container revolution.

   26. Latitude by Nicholas Crane - Cartography innovations.

   27. When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashlee Vance - Space startups.

   28. The Founders by Jimmy Soni - PayPal's early days.

   29. The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester - Precision engineering.

   30. The Little Engine That Could - Children's classic.

   31. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - Success mechanics.

   32. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight - Founding of Nike.

   33. Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin - Building LIGO.

   34. Freedom’s Forge - WWII industry mobilization.

   35. Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes - Electrification by Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse.

   36. The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough - Panama Canal construction.

   37. Annapurna by Maurice Herzog - Climbing a Himalayan peak.

   38. Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder - Data General engineers.

   39. Showstopper by G. Pascal Zachary - Development of Windows NT.

   40. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand - WWII survival.

   41. The Measure of All Things by Ken Alder - Defining the meter.

   42. The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll - Tracking a hacker.

   43. The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel - Srinivasa Ramanujan.

   44. The Power Broker by Robert Caro - Robert Moses and New York infrastructure.

   45. How Big Things Get Done - Large-scale project execution.

   46. Dealers of Lightning by Michael A. Hiltzik - Xerox PARC.

   47. Built by Roma Agrawal - Civil engineering insights.

   48. The Will to Keep Winning by Daigo Umehara - Competitive gaming.

   49. Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold - Low-temperature physics.

   50. Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins - Apollo 11.

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3. pjmorrisDec 2018
   > The best and most comprehensive historical account of the Apollo 8 lunar decision is contained in Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox’s 1989 book Apollo: the Race to the Moon. Murray and Cox devoted ten pages to the subject. They clearly stated that the decision to send Apollo 8 on a circumlunar mission was overwhelmingly determined by Apollo’s aggressive schedule and not Cold War competition.

   1) The book is terrific, well worth the time for anyone interested in these matters.

   2) I didn't see anything in the article that contradicts the idea that the decision was made based on schedule rather than competition. Did I miss something?

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4. davebindyApr 2013
   And I'd recommend "Apollo - The Race To The Moon" by Murray & Cox. Unlike most books about the US space program, this deals with everything except the astronauts. I've read it so many times my copy is falling apart...
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5. WalterBrightApr 2026
   (I misremembered it slightly, so sue me)

   From "Apollo The Race to the Moon" pg 102:

   The joke that made the rounds of NASA was that the Saturn V had a reliability rating of .9999. In the story, a group from headquarters goes down to Marshall and asks Wernher von Braun how reliable the Saturn is going to be. Von Braun turns to four of his lieutenants and asks, "Is there any reason why it won't work?" to which they answer: "Nein." "Nein." "Nein." "Nein." Von Braun then says to the men from headquarters, "Gentlemen, I have a reliability of four nines."

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