Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon

The book centers on Harrison (Stormy) Storms who was a lead engineer at the aviation company North American. Responsible for both the X-15 and the Valkyrie Mach 3 bomber Storms wanted North American to be an active contractor in NASA's moon program.
Although billed as an outsider in the contract race Storm's North American team managed to beat the main competitors, McDonnell Douglas and Martin Marietta. North American were ultimately responsible for both the second stage of the Saturn V moon rocket and the Apollo Command and Service module. (Boeing built the first stage, McDonnel Douglas the third stage and Grumman the Lunar Module).
Ground breaking technology (for the time) was used in the project given that no one had built such large structures to such precise tolerances and reliability. After reading the account of building the heat shield (a honey comb shell filled with ablative resin where each cell had to be X-ray inspected) you wonder how they did the job on time.
North American took the blame for the Apollo 1 fire, although they had repeatedly told NASA of the dangers of a pure oxygen cabin test at atmosperic pressure. Storms became the scapegoat and left North American before the first successful landing.
Readers of this book who have also read Voyage (by Stephen Baxter) will note that Mr Baxter based the character of the designer of his Mars lander on Harrison Storms.
Harrison Storms is also a lead character in HBOs TV series "From the earth to the Moon".

Exciting alternative view of recieved history (1/1 people found this helpful)

This is a stupendous read.The accuracy of the reported speech after the length of time that has passed is open to debate but the thrust of the narrative -- that there was wrong on both sides in the control of the building of the Apollo spacecraft -- strikes the reader as probably being more balanced than the received wisdom that all the fault was down to North American. And the book is tremendously good at explaining the complexity of the engineering task involved. Buy it if you want an alternative view of the heroics involved in the Apollo programme from a different angle than that of the astronauts. Its also very interesting to compare and contrast it against "The Challenger Launch Decision" by Diane Vaughan

Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon

M Gray

Reader Reviews:

An inside look at the building of the Apollo moonship. (0/0 people found this helpful)

Exciting alternative view of recieved history (1/1 people found this helpful)

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