How Apollo Flew to the Moon
"David Woods tells the exciting story of how the Apollo flights were conducted by following a virtual flight to the Moon and back. From launch to splashdown, he hitches a ride in the incredible spaceships that took men to another world, exploring each step of the journey and detailing the enormous range of disciplines, techniques and procedures the Apollo crews had to master. While describing the tremendous technological accomplishment involved, he adds the human dimension by calling on the testimony of the people who were there at the time." "In How Apollo Flew to the Moon there is wealth of accessible material: the role of the powerful Saturn V, the reasoning behind trajectories, the day-to-day concerns of human and spacecraft health between two worlds, and the sheer daring involved in traveling to the Moon in the mid-twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.
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10recommend
17mentions
11people
2012–2026years
94% recommend6% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Watching the Artemis II live feed and watching the earth getting bigger by the minute and listening to the radio communication is breathtaking, and every bit fits perfectly to everything I read about Apollo. Anyone interested should read "How Apollo flew to the moon" by W. David Woods (ISBN978-0-387-71675-6). In my opinion the best and most detailed report of the procedures, technology and processes of the moon landings.
- There are opposed thrusters, but I assume that in atmosphere and under parachute canopy it’s harder to make sure they are perfectly opposed.
Heating likely plays a role as well.
I am not a rocket engineer, but I have read How Apollo Flew to the Moon and Ignition!: an informal history of liquid rocket propellants, both of which cover these issues. Highly recommended.
- Depending how deep you want to dive into this rabbit-hole:
-How Apollo flew to the Moon: https://amzn.eu/d/1QtsN1D Covers in my opinion all aspects of the Apollo/Saturn programme, including design, technology, procedures and a lot of history as well. A must read if you are interested in such things
-Moon Lander https://amzn.eu/d/bI3wpt7 Memoire of Thomas Kelly the chief engineer for the Lunar Lander. Gives great insights of the technical and management challenges while desiging the first "true" spaceship. Highly recommendet!
-Digital Apollo: https://amzn.eu/d/0KigTU9 Focuses on software development (actually an afterthought to hardware development) for the Command Module and the Moon Lander and on the important aspect how much controll should be given to the astronauts against automatic systems. Includes a very detailed analysis of the software alarms that almost compromised the first moon landing.
-Failure Is Not An Option: https://amzn.eu/d/ix6CWnq The memoir of the Gene Kranz, the tough, no bullshit flight controller pictured in the Apollo 13 movie. Kranz was a key player in the manned space program for decades. Here we learn that almost each moon mission had critical moments and had to be saved by the teams at mission controll and the astronauts.
Other interesting books: -Moon Launch: https://amzn.eu/d/1Z6U5f6 on Saturn Apollo Launch Operations -Sunburst and Apollo: https://amzn.eu/d/2ms3IW8 a personal memoire of one of the software designers for the LM computer
Hope there is something interesting for you in the list.
- It feels like few people nowadays appreciate just how amazing Apollo was, some people even deny it happened at all.
I strongly recommend the book "How Apollo Flew to the Moon" by W. David Woods if you are interested in them, it covers all of the missions in detail, including beautiful photographs. I felt sad when I came to the end.
- Not a film, but the book How Apollo Flew To The Moon is a fairly technical story of how it was done.
- Ullage thrusters are used exactly as you described, for tanks that do not have PMDs. For example, the large second or third stage main propellant tanks which need to be lit in zero G. On Saturn V, the ullage motors themselves were solid rocket boosters mounted to the aft end of the stage, and thus did not themselves need PMDs, nor access to the main liquid propellants. On some videos of stage separation, you can see these solids firing from the point of view of the jettisoned stage facing forward. (In fact, I think there were also retrograde solid thrusters at the fore end of the stages to aid in separation.) I suppose you could call ullage solid motors PMDs, too.
For an excellent deep dive into the systems, operations, and functions of the Saturn V, get a copy of "How Apollo Flew to the Moon" by W. David Woods.
