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 10-10-2011 12:38 PM               

When reading, you have to keep in mind that it really is a single binding of multiple memoirs of Trench members. There was (I think) little to no effort to make the stories flow from one to the next, which was perfectly okay with me.

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.

posted 09-10-2019 01:21 PM               

Author and NASA Flight Dynamics Officer for Apollo Program to Sign Books at Air Force Museum

David Reed, co-author of the book "From the Trench of Mission Control to the Craters of the Moon" and former Flight Dynamics Officer for the NASA Apollo program will be signing copies of the book on Friday, Sept. 13, 2019 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. in the Air Force Museum Store.

The subject of the book is "The early years of America's human space program. Stories from the men of NASA's Mission Control Flight Dynamics group: The Trench." Copies of the book will be available for $20/copy. The Air Force Museum Store is located inside the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.

After graduating from the University of Wyoming in 1964, Mr. Reed began his career with the Government at the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas. There he was a mission controller in the Apollo Space Program. He was instrumental in the development of the pinpoint landing techniques that were used during lunar landings.

He is a joint recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts in the safe return of the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft. In appreciation of his contributions to the Manned Space Flight Program, the Apollo 14 astronauts named a crater on the moon after him.

His activities in the Space Program have been depicted in various movies and are recorded in numerous books. He is depicted in the movie "Apollo 13" and he is one of Mission Controllers highlighted in the film "Apollo 11: First Steps Edition" currently showing daily at the Air Force Museum Theatre. Others include: "Apollo to the Moon", "Moon Rocks", "13 The Flight That Failed", all by S. F Cooper; "APOLLO The Race To The Moon" by Charles Murray; "A Man on The Moon" by Andrew Chaikan; "From the TRENCH of Mission Control to the Craters of the Moon"; "Apollo 13" by James Lovell and "Go Flight" by Rick Houston.

After a rewarding career in the Space Program, he joined the U. S. Department of Transportation and developed a world-wide satellite based communication and tracking system. In 1989, in cooperation with the USAF, the first around the world flight tracking using commercial satellite assets was demonstrated by the U.S. Air Force test aircraft known as "Speckled Trout" (see Aviation Week, December 14, 1989).

Derivatives of this system were then used on behalf of the United Nations, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Army and the Air Force in locations around the world from the Antarctic to Iraq.

Mr. Reed retired in 2000.