denverpilot
Tied Down
Just adding some books here...
"Stages to Saturn" is dry but has awesome gems about the insanity of engineering and building the Saturn rockets... And some awesome statistics, like fuel burn per second, etc. 30 meter long continuous welds that had to be right in a single pass...
Also for more interesting stuff, search the modern usage of all of the facilities that were named and involved in the program. Especially the ones you don't recognize because they're "gone" or not mentioned much in association with NASA.
(One in particular is fascinating. Site of the world's first nuclear commercial power and also the first commercial nuclear accident... 35 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Which is just now getting around to tearing down the test stands for various rocketry programs in the 60s and 70s.)
"In the Kingdom of Ice" is just an incredible survival story... Don't read it in winter when it's cold out. You'll want to move south.
"Wings in Orbit", similarly dry but chock full of awesome stuff on Shuttle. Multiple authors and published through Nebraska university system, some authors spend too much time on internal politics at NASA which is kinda telling, really. There's two volumes. If you like geeking out to Shuttle stuff, these are hard to beat.
And someone here mentioned this fictional tale... Airplanes, Dogs, Zombies, and Guns... And a raid on a Coke truck gone wrong... And a surprise at the Grand Junction Airport. What's not to like? Haha. Totally unrealistic but a good yarn.
"Stages to Saturn" is dry but has awesome gems about the insanity of engineering and building the Saturn rockets... And some awesome statistics, like fuel burn per second, etc. 30 meter long continuous welds that had to be right in a single pass...
Also for more interesting stuff, search the modern usage of all of the facilities that were named and involved in the program. Especially the ones you don't recognize because they're "gone" or not mentioned much in association with NASA.
(One in particular is fascinating. Site of the world's first nuclear commercial power and also the first commercial nuclear accident... 35 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Which is just now getting around to tearing down the test stands for various rocketry programs in the 60s and 70s.)
"In the Kingdom of Ice" is just an incredible survival story... Don't read it in winter when it's cold out. You'll want to move south.
"Wings in Orbit", similarly dry but chock full of awesome stuff on Shuttle. Multiple authors and published through Nebraska university system, some authors spend too much time on internal politics at NASA which is kinda telling, really. There's two volumes. If you like geeking out to Shuttle stuff, these are hard to beat.
And someone here mentioned this fictional tale... Airplanes, Dogs, Zombies, and Guns... And a raid on a Coke truck gone wrong... And a surprise at the Grand Junction Airport. What's not to like? Haha. Totally unrealistic but a good yarn.