Before This Decade Is Out..."; Personal Reflections on the Apollo Program, The NASA History Series, NASA SP-4224

Washington DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA History Office, Office of Policy and Plans, 1999. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Format is 6.75 inches by 9.75 inches. [4], xiv, [2], 408 pages. Illustrations. Annotated Project Apollo Bibliography. Index. Editor and historian Glen Swanson had hundreds of interviews from which to choose, including those conducted with many of the program's actors by journalist Robert Sherrod, who covered the Apollo program for Life magazine. The Editor was the program director for the Michigan Space Center early in his career. He founded CSPACE Press, an aerospace publishing firm. In 1992, he founded Quest, the world's only publications devoted to the history of space flight. He then became a NASA historian based at the Johnson Space Center. On July 24, 1969, the astronauts of Apollo XI splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, having triumphantly answered John F. Kennedy's 1961 challenge to land an American on the moon "before this decade is out." These fascinating oral histories recount the inside story of the lunar landing project, recapturing the excitement, daring, and idealism of the Apollo program. Drawn from hundreds of interviews from the NASA archives, the Johnson Space Center, and the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, this volume features the recollections of fourteen program participants. Commenters include NASA administrators James Webb and Thomas O. Paine; Wernher von Braun, architect of the Saturn V rocket; spacecraft designer Maxime A. Faget; and astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Charles Duke. Introductory material provides background on the Apollo program, and nearly seventy black-and-white images illustrate the captivating first-person accounts of history in the making.