Journey to Tranquillity: The History of Man's Assault on the Moon

The History of Man's Assault on the Moon This is the first major interpretive history of the moon shot, concentrating not only on how it happened, but why. Why, in the first place, did America in the 1960s decide to go to the moon? Why did the programme ignite such extraordinary pressures throughout the nation - from Congress to the industrial, military and scientific communities? In the face of these pressures why did the achievement actually take so long? Why did the tragic fire (about which this book gives crucial new facts) take place? Why did opposition in the United States develop so late and prove so ineffectual? Why were jobs given to certain people and companies, and what led to the final choice of the actual rocket, module and capsule combination which took men to the moon? In search of answers, the authors three journalists with the Sunday Times travelled to all the major space installations and talked with all the leading scientists, engineers, politicians and managerial experts connected with the moon programme. They have re- searched and read prodigiously. The story they have brought back is one which no American could write contentious, detached, free of space-age rhetoric — which, as well, reads as grippingly as a novel. It has to be a story of human motivation and, beginning with the German-American rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun, it explores the motives of the men involved from President Kennedy to the astronauts continued on back flap