Apollo:\u00a0 Race to the Moon<\/p>\n
Skip Chapters 10, 26-29 (But Read Chapter 30, Epilogue,\u00a0 and Apollo As History)
\nThere are a lot of names!\u00a0 Try to keep the main ones straight, but you do not have to remember them all!<\/p>\n
For Sept 4 We will try to keep our discussion on pages 1-178\u00a0 (That is up through Chapter 12)
\nFor Sept 9\u00a0 We will consider the whole book.<\/p>\n
Some things to think about as you read:<\/p>\n
Why do you think the authors wrote the book?
\nAre you familiar with the Apollo program? Are you familiar with it the way it is told by these authors?\u00a0 What does that tell us?
\nThe authors have a section on abbreviations.\u00a0 Is it important to get the pronunciation of the abbreviations right?\u00a0 Why or why not?\u00a0 Why do the authors give us so many acronyms–MOCR, EECOM, MSC, ASPO, PGNS…..
\nThere are a lot of names in this book. Why?\u00a0 Should the authors have tried to reduce the number of names?
\nWhat are some of the most important social groups you see in this book?\u00a0 Pick a group or two and think about how their ideals and goals differ from other groups.
\nDo you see paradigms in this book?\u00a0 Where?
\nWhat sort of engineering cultures do you see in this book?
\nLangley, the Germans, the systems engineers (see Chapter 11)\u00a0 How do they see things differently?
\nThe authors say at the beginning “Apollo was an epic and epics must be captured in miniature”\u00a0 Prologue, p. 17.\u00a0 What do they mean by this?
\nThe epigraph to Book I says
\n“I talk to people who say, Gosh, John, all we gotta do is think back twenty-five years ago and then we can go to Mars the same way.”\u00a0 I say “No, you can’t.\u00a0 It was a unique set of circumstances that lined up all these dominoes.”\u00a0 Do you agree?\u00a0 What were the circumstances?
\nHow might you define the qualities that make a good engineer? Are there a single set of them?\u00a0 Do you think they are specific to this context or are they universal?\u00a0 Pick an engineer and describe what qualities they have that make them either good a good engineer or not.<\/p>\n
Do you think there are any indispensable engineers in this story?\u00a0 Why or why not?<\/p>\n
How would you describe Murray and Cox’s perspective?\u00a0 What other perspectives might Murray and Cox have written Apollo from?\u00a0 What are the strengths and weakness of their perspective?<\/p>\n
In our next book Steven Johnson talks about the idea of the adjacent possible, a state of development from which it is possible to make certain new developments, but not others.\u00a0 How would you define the adjacent possible for the Apollo program?\u00a0 That is, what was the preceding state from which it was possible to go to the moon?<\/p>\n
Today Elon Musk has a program to put people on Mars.\u00a0 \u00a0How do you think the NASA\/Apollo paradigm might be different from the commercial\/Musk paradigm of space travel?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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