posted 04-20-2011 01:56 PM            

Former NASA Flight Director Glynn Lunney just shared the following information with me, and feel free to share the following description he wrote. I have not seen the book yet, but just ordered it, as it sounds like a fascinating one. Our museum plans to blog about it and I’ll post it in a few other social media spots. I encourage you to spread the word too, as otherwise these small-print-run books tend to slip under the radar of those who would love to read them. The link below allows you to preview book pages.

In the early 60's, I was chief of a small branch which was the home of the trajectory and guidance flight controllers in NASA's Mission Control. Their tasks were so woven together that they adopted a team designation for the 3 consoles in the first row of MCC and called themselves 'the Trench'. A group of seven of us has written our stories for our families and descendants to come to describe where we came from, how we got to NASA and some of what we did there. We were a very small group in the huge enterprise of Apollo and we still feel like a 'band of brothers' who enjoyed a truly grand adventure. The stories are compiled in one book, now in print at an online printing firm. The stories are probably typical for the thousands of young Americans who came to do Apollo. These young men and their 'brothers' did a fabulous job and this is an opportunity to know at least some of them.

posted 05-03-2011 11:16 AM            

It is a marvellous book with extensive contributions and memoirs from Glynn Lunney, Jerry Bostick and Charles Deiterich among others. As well as covering their own experiences they remember colleagues who have passed away, such as Cliff Charlesworth and Carl Huss.

My hardback copy of this 'print on demand' book is superb in every respect and came packaged safe and secure.

I do have a particular interest in the Flight Control aspect of spaceflight and if it wasn't for this forum (and Francis) I probably would have missed this, so Thank You.

posted 10-10-2011 12:38 PM               

There were a number of new things that I had not read elsewhere, including a fairly detailed description of the behind-the-scenes efforts to figure out where the Apollo 11 LM was on the moon (kind of important since an error in that location would mean incorrect timing of liftoff and an overly-complicated lunar orbit rendezvous). Fascinating stuff.

posted 11-23-2011 08:47 AM               

However one thing has been overlooked - every single person in this book talks positively about the quality of the NASA management they worked for. They say they learned things from these people that helped them their entire careers, not just in their NASA responsibilities.