Rocket Age: The Race to the Moon and What It Took to Get There

by George D. Morgan

Overview

Rocket Age traces the history of spaceflight innovation from Robert Goddard’s early experiments with liquid fuel rockets, through World War II and the work of Wernher von Braun and his German engineers, on to the postwar improvements made by Sergei Korolev and his team in the Soviet Union, and culminating with the historic Moon walk made by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969. From designers to engineers, and even communication specialists and the builders who assembled these towering rockets, hundreds of thousands of people worked on getting humans to the Moon, yet only a few have been recognized for their contributions. George D. Morgan sets the record straight by giving these forgotten figures of space travel their due. The son of rocket scientists who worked directly on NASA projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, Morgan gives behind-the-scenes details on the famous missions, including a rare interview with Dieter Huzel –Wernher von Braun’s right-hand man and a chief engineer on every major manned space program. Even the most voracious readers of US space flight history will discover things in this book that they have never read before. Rocket Age shines a light on those that have for too long been left out of the picture of the race to land on the Moon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781633886360
Publisher:	Prometheus Books
Publication date:	06/09/2020
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,039,846
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

George D. Morgan (Santa Paula, CA) is the Playwright in Residence at the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of Rocket Girl, as well as more than a dozen stage plays and musicals, including Second to Die, Nevada Belle, and Thunder in the Valley. He is the son of two rocket scientists, including Mary Sherman Morgan, America's first female rocket scientist.

Table of Contents

1 A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes 1

2 Burning down the House 4

3 PT-109 and the Butterfly Effect 8

4 Desperation, Salvation, and the Transfer of Technology 13

5 The Wild, Wild West 17

6 Man in Space 23

7 Chief Designer 29

8 Competition 34

9 Showstopper 41

10 Hullabaloo 44

11 The Early Probes 53

12 The Mercury Project 57

13 Mission: Control 66

14 Second Man in Space 73

15 King Kong 82

16 Castor, Pollux, and the "New Nine" 88

17 Plan X 93

18 Castor, Pollux, and the "Third Fourteen" 97

19 EOR, LOR, and LEM 104

20 Death of a Dreamer 112

21 Ocean of Storms 115

22 Showstopper No. 2 119

23 A Rough Road 122

24 Rebuilding 131

25 Mach 33 141

26 Amiable Strangers 150

27 Dress Rehearsals 154

28 The War of "What Ifs" 157

29 Apollo 11 162

30 Epitaphs for the Pioneers 191

Acknowledgments 197

Notes 199

Index 215