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Comment by leemac | Hacker News Reader

Its always fascinating to me seeing some of the technical papers on the space industry. Space and rocketry is a very complex topic that's always intrigued me.

Here's another for the Saturn V flight manual for those who love this stuff: http://history.nasa.gov/ap12fj/pdf/a12_sa507-flightmanual.pd...

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I am actually more interested in the sociological aspects of the early space race. The technology was essentially lifted from German rocket engineers. A significant amount of them who would have been classified as war criminals and tried had their skills not been such an asset.

Wernher Von Braun exemplifies this.

I believe his team only worked on the lower or upper stage. The middle stage was a pain in the butt to develop because the overseer was incompetent, and I think a death occurred (via accident) before they finally got a grip of the situation.

The Saturn V was a stunning success, but it took a lot of work and a hell of a lot of money to get it to that level of sophistication and reliability.

I just can't resist... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio

Ha, I heard of this but never actually saw it. Catchy.

(Tom Lehrer tinkling out a little ditty mocking von Braun, in case it's blocked or whatever.)

[Sometime in the mid 60s, given the prefacing dig about "spending twenty thousand million dollars of taxpayer money putting some idiot on the Moon."]

Interesting document! As a contractor working for Chrysler, my father worked on the Saturn 1B stage telemetry system. The flight data recorder, I think. This was in Huntsville, AL, where I grew up.

Woah! Was he working under Von Braun? Because his entire team was based in Huntsville.

If Kerbal Space Program taught me anything, it's that space and rocketry aren't as complicated as they seem.

When in doubt, add more boosters.

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