Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon

by Mike Gray

Overview

“Few people know the real story behind the building of Apollo, but Mike Gray has managed to capture the drama and excitement of those urgent times. This is a fascinating book full of lessons about what America can achieve with vision and teamwork.” —Buzz Aldrin

Centuries from now, when the Cold War is as remote as the War of Roses and the passions of our time have faded into footnotes, humanity will still remember July 16, 1969, the day the first human beings departed from earth bound for a landing on the moon. Angle of Attack turned out to be a story of ordinary people organized for an extraordinary purpose. It is an anthem to human cleverness, and it is a vivid reminder of what we are capable of when we choose to follow leaders with courage and vision.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393325133
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/10/1992
Pages:	308
Sales rank:	816,189
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Mike Gray (1935—2013) was an engineer, screenwriter, and author. He was the co-founder of The Film Group, a Chicago-based production company.

Editorial Reviews

This swaggering portrait of NASA's Apollo project might well be called Indiana Jones and the Engineering Mission of Destiny. Harrison Storms, the tough but adored head of North American Aviation's Space Division, has the title role, but Gray (The Warning) introduces hundreds of other characters, both human and mechanical (often blurring the distinctions)--a load that weighs heavily on his occasionally breathless prose. More than 30,000 people worked on the mission to put a man on the moon, beginning with the Cold War politics of the 1950s race for space and ending with that triumphal one small step in 1969. Under Storms's right stuff leadership, the project ran a corporate and governmental gauntlet toward a goal that defined the technological era: Man, Moon, Decade. Even NASA fans disillusioned by recent revelations of the agency's flaws will feel reinvigorated by the pure sense of mission manifest in this account. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

On Harrison Storms, chief engineer of North American Aviation, and the team that built the Apollo spacecraft. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Rip-roaring history of the Apollo Project, which brought men to the moon in 1969, recounted at full-turbo power by screenwriter Gray (The China Syndrome, 1979; coauthor, The Warning, 1982). In retrospect, the pace was incredible: The US launched its first puny satellite in 1958, yet 11 years later deposited Neil Armstrong on lunar soil. How did we do it? This was a communal triumph, 400,000 men and women buzzing like a hive of bees on speed to launch a spaceship of 3,000,000 parts that "had to intersect with an almost mystical cohesion heretofore seen only in Nature herself." Gray zooms in on the project leaders—above all, a human whirlwind aptly named Harrison Storms, an aeronautic wizard, builder of the X-15 test plane and head of North American Aviation's Space Division. Storms first joins forces with German rocket-ace Werner von Braun, designer of the mammoth Saturn rocket, then signs on Maxine Faget, "a creative little live-wire" space- capsule designer; Charlie Feltz, "the Billy Goat Gruff of the machine shop"; and innumerable other Tom Swift clones—and the Race Is On. Gray milks much drama from the all-out intercorporate war to snare the spaceship contract from the federal government. Once Storms gets his mandate, scientific headaches pile up: Should the capsule have an explosive hatch? Should there be a separate lunar lander? A new rocket fuel must be invented, as well as insulation that can withstand reentry temperatures equal to those on the surface of the sun. Workers drop like flies from nervous breakdowns and heart seizures; divorce becomes endemic. Most terribly, three astronauts die in a capsule fire, suffocated by toxic fumes from burning Velcro. But500 million man-hours of labor come to fruition in 1969 as Storms watches his metallic behemoth roar into space from the Florida swamps. A breathtaking ride, with an ideal mix of human interest and technical detail, that burns almost as brightly as Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff.

Kirkus Reviews