Superb Engineering Book

[selenite0]

My favorite book on the Apollo program, Apollo: The Race To the Moon by Murray and Cox is finally back in print. Anyone who's interested in the moon shot or just the engineering of vast projects in general should pick it up. It takes a "behind the scenes" look at it, going into the detail on the engineering and operations side. It does a great job. It's one of the best illustrations I can think of on how you have to settle the architecture for the system (the "mode decision") before you can do any useful detail work. And the operations section is done very well--I did satellite operations in the Air Force so I appreciate seeing the importance of the ops team discussed properly. Yeah, the astronauts are nice guys but they couldn't do the job by themselves. It's not just nerd-talk either, it gets into the people and their personalities. It took a rare type to handle working on a project that challenging.

Highly recommended.