posted 11-10-2015 10:24 AM               

This bound NASA Saturn I Countdown Manual, with a vivid full-color painting of a Saturn I launch on the cover, "is the official schedule to be utilized by the operational personnel directly involved in the launch preparation of Saturn Space Vehicle SA-5." That was the January 29, 1964 launch that President John F. Kennedy was anticipating when he visited Cape Canaveral on November 16, 1963. This manual is the January 16, 1964 edition and contains about 100 pages of procedures.

It is signed on the cover by Wally Schirra, the astronaut who would later command the first Apollo mission (and the only Apollo mission to use a Saturn I).

It is also signed by Werhner von Braun, the leader of the German rocket team during WWII; a proponent of manned space exploration in the U.S. during the 1950s; and, as director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, the chief architect of the Saturn launch vehicles.

Finally, it is signed by Kurt Debus, the first director of NASA's Launch Operations Center (as mentioned on the cover; later renamed Kennedy Space Center) and director of launch operations during Apollo.

(Interestingly, Debus had a designee sign on the title page for him.)

posted 11-10-2015 10:27 AM               

And here is the page showing the first 30 seconds of the mission after launch:

This was a working copy that belonged to Judson James Hart. His 1955 article in The American Journal of Physics, "Maximum Range of a Projectile in a Vacuum", got him noticed by NASA, where he was soon working on guidance. He's named at the end of the 1964 NASA manual "Space Vehicle Guidance," and in the 1965 publication "Application Of An Iterative Guidance Mode To A Lunar Landing", he is the first person whose work is acknowledged. He is also named in the Saturn I Block II Guidance Summary Report.

The von Braun and Debus autographs are in pen with decent contrast. Schirra signed with a thin pencil, so his autograph is not as bold.

posted 11-10-2015 03:56 PM               

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Originally posted by stsmithva:
...Schirra, the astronaut who would later command the first Apollo mission (and the only Apollo mission to use a Saturn I)....

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Maybe I'm being too technical, but I thought that the Saturn 1 didn't fly beyond 1965 or so? Apollo 7 was the upgraded Saturn 1B, which was also used for flying crews to Skylab and the ASTP. (OK, technically those weren't Apollo missions.) But this book is specifically about the Saturn 1.

posted 11-10-2015 04:20 PM               

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Originally posted by Glint:
Maybe I'm being too technical, but I thought that the Saturn 1 didn't fly beyond 1965 or so? Apollo 7 was the upgraded Saturn 1B,

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