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Summary: An insider's candid account of NASA's evolution
Review: After reading many books about NASA's early days including Moon Shot and Failure is Not an Option, I was expecting Flight to follow the same formula of a chronological mission-by-mission playback. Instead, I found what I think is one of the best accounts of how NASA evolved and became what it is today.Though he does include the missions, each with their own difficulties, from Mercury through Apollo, Chris Kraft writes much more from a management standpoint. He describes how decisions were made and how design and planning was accomplished without going too much into the technical nitty-gritty. This is truly a behind-the-scenes look at the early manned spaceflight program. Kraft starts the book with a description of of his boyhood and college years, explaining how he came to work for what was then known as NACA. Having been a part of NASA from the first days of the Space Task Group, he is one of a few who are in the best position to describe it's evolution. He is open and honest about his feelings toward various people in the industry and the agency itself as it has come to be today. He also gives Bob Gilruth the credit and attention he deserves as the true father of NASA. The only drawback I found to this book is that the chronology can get a bit confusing at times. Once the Space Task Group is formed, Kraft breaks the book up into Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. Because the programs overlapped, there is a bit of backpedaling at the start of each section which you have to keep track of - just something to keep in mind while you read. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in early space flight, anyone who wants to revisit those years with an insider's look and anyone currently within NASA. Though all the other books about NASA's best years have their selling points - Flight should be at the top of any list.
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Summary: great book about a great era from a guy who lived it
Review: Another great book about these times. When great talent comes together with a singular objective, it is impossible to fail. Kraft was one of those men, and he tells it like he seen it from his view---very enlightening & refreshing.
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Summary: Great old war stories
Review: Another great book of old war stories from one of the main guys involved with the Apollo program. Along with the books by Gene Kranz, Guenther Wendt, and several of the astronauts, these make for fine reminiscing about the good old days, though hopefully they don't lead to too much wallowing in the past.
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Summary: Absolutely wonderful!
Review: Anyone who is familiar with the numerous television documentaries about the early years at NASA knows about Chris Kraft. NASA's original flight controller, Kraft takes the reader on the journey of his amazing life story from a small town in Virginia to the top levels of management at NASA's Johnson Space Center. The reader will come away with an amazing appreciation for the contributions that Kraft gave to this nation as well as the numerous other unsung heroes that helped America get to the moon. As NASA's original flight conroller, Kraft was personally present for the most memorable moments in the history of space exploration including Alan Shepard's first trip into space in 1961 and John Glenn's historic orbital flight in 1962. Kraft takes the reader behind the scenes and shows what was really going on inside NASA that the public never knew about. The story he tells is amazing. The best part of this book is that Kraft acknowledges that the race to the moon was a team effort where everyone including managment, astronauts, mission control and contracters all contributed to this historic effort. Kraft was part of the story from the beginning and anyone interested in the least about the greatest story of the 20th century should and needs to read this fine book. It is well written, candid and an easy read.
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Summary: great overview of the US space program from the beginning
Review: Chris Kraft has a unique perspective with regards to the US space program in that he got in on the ground floor. The early chapters tell his story of studying to become an engineer, designing planes for WWII, and falling into the company of those who would eventually build NASA into the agency that dominated American life in the 1960's. Unlike some of the books written by the Astronauts, this one provides a "bottoms up" account of the exciting stuggle NASA had on its hands to fulfill JFK's pledge of a safe manned Moon landing by the end of the decade. There have been many books written about the glorious Apollo missions, so I found the time devoted to the Mercury and Gemini missions particularly enlightening. As flight director for those missions, nothing got by Kraft, and he vividly recounts his experiences in text that while technical at times, flows seamlessly thoughtout. For anyone who wants an overview of NASA from the late 1950's until the last Apollo flight, this might be the book for you.
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Summary: Chris Kraft is not a pleasant man
Review: Chris Kraft is one of those brilliant rarities that can lead and design complex and difficult projects and has complete faith that the answer is just around the next corner.
He was the FLIGHT director of all three distinguished space programs beginning with Mercury and ending with Apollo.
Gemini was stuck in the middle and without Gemini, Apollo would never have landed on the moon. It's so odd that many people STILL refuse to accept the facts that the USA DID in fact land on the moon on that fateful day, July 20th, 1969.
YES - 44 years ago Apollo 11 did so on the EAGLE at exactly 3:17:39.9PM CST in the United States of America.
Neil Armstrong's voice was clear over the radio, a quarter million miles away,
"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."
Armstrong was much admired in NASA for having a cool head under intense pressure and he was unanimously voted to be the first man to step foot on the moon.
At the time, it was unknown what the surface of the moon was made of...some scientists feared the top layer of the moon dust was one mile of soft sand that would collapse under any weight and swallow up the landing ship upon it's landing.
Thankfully, this did not occur, nor were there any life-threatning germs found on the lunar surface. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
Those words forever changed our world. Along with the lunar landing came many inventions that blessed our quality of life with many newfangled inventions like the super speedy computers and telemetry that could monitor heart rhythms of people. Everyone got their due in this tell-all book and what a page-turner it proved to be. Kraft is a brilliant man who can tell it like it is and he sure lead an exciting and intellectual life.
It's sad that his family got the short end of the stick, but the nation recieved his best and most intensive labor.
Without Kraft, I seriously doubt that the US would have made the moon in 1969...I really do.
Read this book and understand the whole story....all the twists and turns and convolutions of the bueracracy.
It's interesting and I need to mention that initially, Kraft had a low interpersonal assesment of the genious scientist, Wernher von Braun. He disliked the fact that von Braun bombed Europe with his evil VH bombs --- he hated the fact that Hitler bossed von Braun around the way he did. But then later, he had to understand that a knife was held at von Bruan's throat and he HAD to do those evil things.....or Hitler would of had him executed or shot or whatnot.....Kraft later awarded von Bruan with his highest admiration because without von Braun, there'd very likely be no Saturn V moon rocket. It's statistics must NEVER be forgotten, insists Kraft, and here I will discuss it with you.
The Saturn V had 3 stages, the first was 33 feet in diameter.
It had 5 monster rocket engines and each one could produce 1.5 MILLION pounds of thrust! (That's 7.5 million pounds on this stage alone....)
Now add stage 2 : it was 30 feet in diameter and had 5 smaller engines that punched up 1 million pounds of thrust.
(uh let's see --- 5 more million pounds added to #1.)
Then the third stage was 22 feet across with no specified thrust given, but it was impressive!!!
Add the equation up and add some more millions to it and uh --- well -- you get the idea! That mutha kicked!!!
All this power was required to break free of Earth's gravitational field and launch Apollo into Earth orbit.
WOW! What a ride it must have been!
All this happened so long ago and before long, Americans took space travel for granted.
According to Kraft, we could have landed on MARS in the 1990's had we stuck to our high ideals and kept the NASA space exploration programs going at full tilt.
But politics and Viet Nam came into the picture and that was the piece of pie NASA needed to perform these unrealized dreams.
They went as far as Apollo 17 - that was as far as the budget and national interest allowed for them.
Kind of a shame to stop dreaming big....but I know other programs need our aid too.
Some people say we don't need space and we don't need to explore while world hunger is still a reality here along with homelessness and child abuse.
Maybe we should forgo it and take care of the more fundamental problems facing humanity here on Earth.
But after reading this quality book, it encourages one's intellect to reach for the stars and never stop thirsting for the truth about our universe and the many associated discoveries that will come with other great adventures up there in the mysterious cosmos.
I bought this book for a mere $3.98 and I wish I could share it with every person who is reading here at AMAZON dot com.
It's a wonderful book that you should endeaver -- it will bring you much discovery and knowledge.
Thank you Chris Kraft for living an exemplary life and sharing your brain power with all those programs that improved the world. The story is worth reading from all who shared in it and have a point of view.
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Summary: A quality work from NASA's first Flight Director
Review: Christopher Columbus Kraft, Jr., was one of the key players behind the beginnings of what was to become the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Through this book he details his experiences through NASA's predecessor, the NACA, where he and other engineers and technicians tested aircraft and flight hardware. Then he became one of the original members of the Space Task Group, which helped to organize America's first manned space efforts. It is clear through his retelling of this period that the STG's efforts to put the first human in space was truly a "crash program," and its members had to learn by doing. Kraft's work in designing mission control also was very important, becaue of course the mission control center has become the backbone of America's human spaceflight program ever since its beginnings. As the book continues, Kraft is candid and clear in the description of his involvement in the race to the moon-he describes his elation at Alan Shepard's fifteen minute suborbital flight, and his frustration at Scott Carpenter's subpar performance on the second Mercury orbital flight in May 1962. The book provides many of his experiences and thoughts in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs as NASA gained more experience in sending astronauts into orbit, and eventually as Neil A. Armstrong stepped from the lunar module Eagle and onto the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969. I've read both this book and Failure is Not An Option, by Apollo flight director Gene Kranz, and while both books are good, I think this one is better written and more candid.
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Summary: Chris Kraft is not a pleasant man
Review: I enjoy all the books on the space program and I am really glad that Scott Carpenter was able to tell his side of of the story in his book "For Spacious Skies" (which is very good). Chris Kraft makes Scott out to be a dopey day dreamer behind the controls of the Mercury Capsule. Chris ensures that the world knows that it was "his" decision alone to kick Scott out of the space program. Chris should have been more fair and point out that Scotty was overloaded with "space experiments". It was Scotty's flight that proved that you cannot overload the man in capsule with experiments and NASA never did it again in the "and on" flights. Give Scotty a break. He put put his life on the line while Chris played big shot engineer.
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Summary: A Vicarious peek at the flight director position
Review: I found Chris Kraft's book a vicarious adventure of the development of the manned space program. Mr. Kraft created the position of flight, and explains how he got to that position, and why he made his choices. His comments of what he felt like during some of the crises of the programs (fighting elected officials during John Glenn's instrumentation problems, the Apollo fire, and Apollo 13) gave me an I-was-there feeling.
This is a must-have book for any armchair astronaut.
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Summary: What a surprise
Review: I used to think that the (many) hints in other books about the early US space program of the egotism and arrogance on the part of the NACA/NASA managers were probably cases of sour grapes or exaggerations, BUT NOT ANYMORE! This book clearly (and, I'm certain, unintentionally) reveals the (laughable if it weren't so tragic) degree to which the "Old Boys Club of NACA" believed themselves absolutely, and solely, responsible for the success of the US space program. It's clear that Mr. Kraft believes that without his, and the other NACA aero engineers-turned NASA managers' guidance (and firm control), the private-sector aero companies and their engineers (the simpltons who actually designed and built the rockets and spacecraft) couldn't have changed a light bulb! It sure would have been nice to have been in Mr. Kraft's position (i.e., the right place at the right time) when the explosive growth of NASA propelled the small core of NACA engineers to such powerful and lofty heights of management. I'm sure that he was far more handsomely compensated financially than the military pay astronauts (and their families), yet he even manages to begrudge them the supplemental income they EARNED from the Time magazine contract! If you are seeking a GOOD book on the early US space program, I highly recommend Guenter Wendt's "The Unbroken Chain". Harrison Storm's "Angle of Attack" and Charles Pellegrino's "Chariots for Apollo" are also excellent.
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