Bill Causey (@ApolloAuthor) header
Bill Causey (@ApolloAuthor) profile picture

Author of The Unsung Hero of the Apollo Moon Landings (Purdue Studies in Aeronautics and Astronautics)

Joined December 2019
Photo by Bill Causey (@ApolloAuthor)
...and back in the 60's, folk would do anything to hitch a ride to the Moon...
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Grumman were instructed by NASA to build a LM where no single point failure would endanger the crew. This was achieved through redundant / backup systems. However there was one primary system which couldn’t really have a backup - the Ascent Propulsion System / APS.
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What a truly epic shot of the brand new rocket capable of sending humans back to the Moon.
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September 25, 1969: Wernher von Braun strolls through a simulated Apollo 11 moon landing site at Atlanta’s Southeastern Fair.
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Bill Causey retweeted
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Born #OTD in 1930 - the 'astronaut's astronaut', John Young. Here he is on the Moon, during Apollo 16, inspecting his Moon dust brush - all future Moon voyagers will need one! Newly recovered from high resolution scan of Hasselblad 70mm flight film. #ApolloRemastered #NASA
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Zoom in on Cernan’s visor!
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The F-1 was so powerful it blew its nozzle extension off!
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Next time you visit a LM look out for the running lights that are placed across its body. These lights were copied from aircraft coding at the time and they helped determine a vehicles altitude and attitude with respect to a vehicle to which it would dock.
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At a recent Tuesday Talk, we were “over the moon” to have Woodley Park’s @ApolloAuthor discuss his book about an “unsung” hero of the Apollo moon-landing missions. districtbridges.org/local-au…
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Replying to @ApolloAuthor
And why stop there: AFTER SPUTNIK: 50 Years of the Space Age; Martin Collins (2007) JOHN HOUBOLT: The Unsung Hero of the Apollo Moon Landings; William F. Causey (2020) THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH: A Political History of the Space Age; Walter A. McDougall (1985)
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Rendezvous of the Apollo LM & CSM. I love this image of Al Worden looking at Falcon. In the picture you can see that the EVA floodlight is extended, just in case an emergency EVA transfer needs to be conducted.
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Replying to @ApolloAuthor
#OTD in 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, establishing NASA. Our series on aeronautics and astronautics includes books that cover NASA's most famous astronauts as well as its behind-the-scenes heroes. blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/ca…
I really liked the Gemini program and got to fly with one of the best in John Young.
On this day in 1966, Michael Collins and John Young launched on Gemini 10 to dock with the Agena Target Vehicle.
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The definitive account of LOR and Houbolt is here: thepress.purdue.edu/titles/f… @ApolloAuthor
April 10, 1919: Born on this date, aerospace engineer John C. Houbolt. His advocacy for the lunar-orbit-rendezvous (LOR) approach to get astronauts to the Moon proved the solution for the eventual success of the Apollo Program.
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March 24, 1950: A book editor at Doubleday writes Wernher von Braun rejecting his novel The Mars Project. “It’s a perfectly fascinating book—but not…a salable novel…There isn’t much story there…The only thing I can think of that we could do with it is build a rocket ship.”
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On March 15, @ApolloAuthor discusses the unsung hero of the Apollo moon landings in JOHN HOUBOLT bit.ly/2W3J5kN
Bill Causey @ApolloAuthor introduces his definitive bio of John Houbolt, the persevering #NASA engineer who figured out how to put human beings on the moon by the end of the 1960s -- and bring them back! @PurduePress #Apollo
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