Countdown to a Moon Launch: Preparing Apollo for Its Historic Journey by Jonathan H. Ward

Countdown to a Moon Launch, published in 2015, is part of publisher Springer-Praxis’s long-running space exploration series. In the book, author Jonathan H. Ward presents a detailed look at the bustling Kennedy Space Center (KSC) during the lead-up to an Apollo launch. He takes the reader from the arrival of the rocket and spacecraft components at KSC to the instant the Saturn V lifts off the launch pad. Between these bookending events are myriad tests, dry runs, examinations, modifications, and delicate assembly procedures. At first glance, it may seem as though Countdown to a Moon Launch is certain to lack the glamour of other Apollo books. After all, the book ends at the moment the mission actually begins. But Ward’s smart structuring, his extensive use of interviews with KSC employees, and his integration of illustrations into the text make the title a compelling examination of a relatively unknown, yet critically important, aspect of Apollo.

The early sections of Countdown to a Moon Launch are a bit dry. They focus on things such as management practices, test procedures and scheduling, and the early computers that helped automate checkout and launch processes. I was worried for a time that the book was sliding into acronym-soup territory—something into which I’ve seen a few Apollo books descend. But a few chapters in, Ward gets to the meat of the book: a chronological rundown of everything that happened to the major parts of the Saturn V and the Apollo spacecraft at KSC, beginning many months before liftoff.

At first it may seem as though hundreds of days of lead time would provide a generous schedule for putting a rocket together. But as Ward takes us through the astonishingly complex testing procedures (and the nearly infinite number of potentially fatal errors), it becomes clear that it's amazing that the work was done in such a short span.

The reader becomes intimately familiar with parts of the rocket rarely discussed elsewhere. In particularly, we learn a lot about the Spacecraft/Lunar Module Adapter (SLA), the conical shroud that protects the Lunar Module and supports the Command/Service module during liftoff. The SLA is abuzz with activity in the last few weeks before launch, with workers climbing around inside it to make last-minute changes to the Lunar Module.

The chronological structure means that the reader sees each part of the moon rocket slide into place. As the various rocket stages and spacecraft components are tested, checked out, and assembled, the familiar outline of the Saturn V takes shape. It’s fascinating to watch the stack rise into being until it becomes the rocket we all know from footage of Apollo launches. The book’s structure also means that the launch becomes the story’s natural climax. The book becomes a genuine page-turner in the chapters leading up to the event.

Ward has done fantastic research. He interviewed dozens of people who worked at KSC during Apollo, ranging from technicians to managers to astronauts. He provides their perspectives throughout the text, letting them speak for themselves in extended block quotes. They bring their day-to-day work at the space center to life in vivid, humanizing detail. The work at KSC was highly extremely regimented and things were done by the book. The accounts here demonstrate how actual people clocked in each day to make this all happen.

The managers at KSC learned this lesson themselves. Ward relates how, in early Saturn V testing, the staff in the firing room would remain at their consoles for a dozen or more hours at a time. There were no shifts to replace them. When managers realized these tests could take multiple days to complete, they reorganized the staffing so that people could work regular shifts and get sufficient rest. They came to appreciate the human factors of a stressful job.

Among the dozens of workers featured are several women. Apollo books rarely feature female voices, so I found it especially interesting to hear some here. There isn’t any discussion of what it was like to work in the male-dominated space program—the accounts deal strictly with the work these women did. But it was refreshing to see them depicted as dedicated, skilled members of the team, no different from their male counterparts.

One result of Ward’s thorough research and interview process is a collection of wonderful anecdotes I haven’t seen elsewhere in the Apollo literature. For me the most amazing was an event that happened in the lead-up to the Apollo 13 launch. As workers filled the Saturn V’s tanks with liquid oxygen (LOX), excess LOX flowed into a ditch where it would normally boil off into gaseous oxygen and harmlessly blow away. But on March 25, 1970, unusual weather conditions resulted in a cloud of nearly pure oxygen settling on a security road nearby. When a guard got into his car and turned the key, his vehicle essentially exploded into flames. A pipeline just a few meters away from the car was still carrying LOX. Technicians quickly drained the line, and the fire was finally extinguished an hour later. Ward includes an incredible photo of the aftermath—it looks as though the front half of the car has basically melted.

The selection of personal accounts also helps give the reader a better sense of the personalities of the major figures at KSC. In particular, we hear about many people’s interactions with Rocco Petrone, the director of launch operations at KSC. Petrone was a no-nonsense manager with a single-minded focus on launching rockets safely. He was fully willing to pound tables and yell to get his point across; his subordinates both feared getting chewed out by him and respected him for his intelligence and managerial skills. He feels like a fleshed-out character in Ward’s narrative; the reader can combine multiple accounts in a sort of triangulation to generate an image of what Petrone was like. In the absence of a fully fledged biography of Petrone, this in itself makes Countdown to a Moon Launch a valuable addition to an Apollo library.

Like many of the Springer-Praxis books on Apollo, Countdown to a Moon Launch is lavishly illustrated. Ward brings multiple valuable sources to bear here. Photos and diagrams from NASA, snapshots from individual workers, scans of program paperwork, and images from Ward’s unique personal collection of KSC access badges fill the book. There are literally hundreds of these images—it’s rare to find a two-page spread without one.

The photos aren’t just interesting decorations. They’re integral to understanding the complex procedures and hardware discussed in the book. Using the text alone, it’s hard to visualize the vast array of service bays, vacuum chambers, and testing facilities Ward describes. But the photos make it easy. They work with the text to give the reader a strong impression of these spaces and the work done within them.

The images of paperwork and ephemera from the workers help to further humanize the army of engineers, technicians, and managers of KSC. During the Apollo program, daily cartoons starring Snoopy started appearing on daily reports. These cartoons often commented humorously on recent events at the center, giving the workers a way to let off steam in the midst of high-pressure conditions. Thanks to the cartoons, we learn not only how the workers did their jobs, but also how they felt about them.

For me there were two major takeaways from the book. First, it made it clearer than ever that an astonishing number of things can go wrong in an Apollo mission, and that it’s incredible there were so few errors made. Second, it reinforced the sense of urgency that NASA had in reaching the moon, highlighting the organization’s surprising flexibility in service of achieving its deadline.

The potentially catastrophic flaws that have the potential to crop up before a space flight are essentially limitless. What if a crane in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) drops a stage as it’s being lifted hundreds of feet into the air? What if a failure in the crawler causes a rocket en route to the launch pad to tip over? What if a fully fueled rocket undergoing testing is accidentally sent a launch command while the pad is still swarming with workers? Dozens of explosive devices are installed throughout the Saturn V stack, some for use in emergencies (to destroy a wayward rocket) and some for normal operation (to separate stages)—what if one of these prematurely blows up? Any of these or myriad other situations could have killed people, destroyed facilities, and drastically set the entire program back. Yet through 13 Saturn V launches, no errors of this scale ever occurred.

One of the hazards I hadn’t considered before reading this book: dealing with hypergolic propellants, or hypers. These rocket fuels are designed for maximum reliability. Simply mix them together and they ignite—no need for complicated machinery to light the rocket engine. This quality makes them ideal for situations in which a rocket absolutely must fire, such as during liftoff from the moon. But it also makes these fuels spectacularly dangerous to handle. Ward details how workers donned full-body pressure suits when filling tanks with hypers. In the book’s photos the members of the hyper-loading crew look practically like astronauts themselves. The images of these suited workers drove home for me how dangerous their jobs could be.

The essentially flawless launch record of the Saturn V may make it seem as though NASA, or at least the launch team at KSC, was an infallible organization. Ward’s book makes it clear that this wasn’t the case. The success rate stems initially from high-quality hardware. It then comes to fruition through a massive complex of infrastructure, processes, and people dedicated to weeding out the tiniest problems that could occur in the thousands upon thousands of parts that make up a moon rocket. Tracking, documentation, and accountability made it possible to construct safe space ships.

One of the hallmarks of the Apollo program is its deadline. The idea that America would put a man on the moon “before this decade is out” was a bold pronouncement, and it required haste on the part of the nation’s space program. But the practical reality of that time pressure is tough to appreciate without the nuts-and-bolts look at the program Ward gives us. Among many examples of this is an instance in which engineers made modifications to the spacecraft even as it sat on the launchpad just weeks before a mission.

As the Apollo 11 crew neared their launch, they requested a slight change to mission rules. Originally, they were to shut down the Lunar Module’s engine as soon as the contact light lit up. This indicator in the spacecraft showed when the probes at the bottom of the footpads were touching the lunar surface. The lander would then drop the last few feet to the surface. The astronauts asked that they be able to keep the engine on until they could confirm they were on the surface. The engineers agreed, but a modification was needed. The bottoms of the lander’s legs lacked the protective gold mylar foil that covered much of the rest of the ship. But if the engine continued firing so close to the surface, the reflected energy could damage these parts of the legs.

Technicians could add the foil, but there was one problem: the Lunar Module was already stacked atop the Saturn V on the launch pad. It was late June. Rather than rolling the rocket back into the VAB and de-stacking it to make the change, NASA developed a procedure for making the fix on the pad. Workers squeezed inside the SLA to install the extra shielding. NASA’s obsessive testing, documentation, and quality controls made this kind of speedy flexibility possible.

The book's look inside KSC at the peak of Apollo also demonstrates the concurrent nature of the work being done there. It’s one thing to know that Apollo 11 went up in July and Apollo 12 went up in November. But it’s another to read how workers were already assembling the stages of the Apollo 12 rocket in the VAB as Apollo 11 rolled out to the pad. KSC’s ability to run two or three sets of complex processes in parallel, all under a strict deadline and in the view of the world, makes their record of success all the more impressive.

It’s probably clear from this review that I was a big fan of Countdown to a Moon Launch. Despite some dryness in the early sections, Ward does a wonderful job of bringing to life some of the less-heralded aspects of Apollo. His chronological structure, deep research, and judicious use of imagery come together to make a truly compelling story. He shows how the dedicated workers of KSC, ranging from the top managers to the on-the-ground technicians, made a moon landing possible. Countdown to a Moon Launch is so comprehensive and readable that it deserves to be one of the core volumes in any Apollo nerd’s library.