Author Description

These official NASA history documents provide unique accounts of the Apollo lunar landing program. The first document, What Made Apollo A Success? (NASA SP-287) describes three of the basic ingredients of the success of Apollo: spacecraft hardware that is most reliable, flight missions that are extremely well planned and executed, and flight crews that are superbly trained and skilled. Contents: Introduction by George M. Low; Design Principles Stressing Simplicity by Kenneth S. Kleinknecht; Testing To Ensure Mission Success by Scott H. Simpkinson; Apollo Crew Procedures, Simulation, And Flight Planning by Warren J. North And C. H. Woodling; Flight Control In The Apollo Program by Eugene F. Kranz And James Otis Covington; Action On Mission Evaluation And Flight Anomalies by Donald D. Arabian; Techniques Of Controlling The Trajectory by Howard W. Tindall, Jr.; Flexible Yet Disciplined Mission Planning by C. C. Kraft, Jr., J. P. Mayer, C. R. Huss, And R. P. Parten. The introduction states: We will limit ourselves to those tasks that were the direct responsibility of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center: spacecraft development, mission design and mission planning, flight crew operations, and flight operations. We will describe spacecraft design principles, the all-important spacecraft test activities, and the discipline that evolved in the control of spacecraft changes and the closeout of spacecraft anomalies; and we will discuss how we determined the best series of flights to lead to a lunar landing at the earliest possible time, how these flights were planned in detail, the techniques used in establishing flight procedures and carrying out flight operations, and, finally, crew training and simulation activities - the activities that led to a perfect flight execution by the astronauts. The First Lunar Landing As Told By The Astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins in a Post-flight Press Conference, the second document in this ebook compilation, is a transcript of the Apo