Zero Hour, 9 a.m.

Another September 1 rolls around and we're at the top of that long slide into cold short days. Already the Sun goes down much noticeably sooner than before, but at least it still provides warm days, like today. The crickets are still singing and the grass is still growing. I could do without that last one.

Rocket Men (Craig Nelson, 2009) is a pretty good read so far, especially when it talks about some of the lesser-known aspects of German rocketry and then the American and Soviet space programs, such as the horrible fate of cosmonaut-in-training Valentin Bondarenko (talked about in some detail mid-way through this book chapter by Soviet space program expert James Oberg).

Still, the book also features all kinds of odd errors, such as this peculiar description of the Apollo 4 launch: "Two F-1 rockets abruptly quit during liftoff, at which the stack pulled a U-turn and headed screaming back to the ground. But the guidance system righted the vehicle, and the CM dummy capsule was successfully put into orbit."

That's a Saturn V he's talking about, during its first unmanned test in 1967. "Pulled a U-turn?" A cartoon rocket could do that, maybe, but it's hard to image that happening for real without being followed by an absolute disaster. And besides, everywhere else (such as in the remarkable Chariots For Apollo, for instance), the Apollo 4 mission is described as an unqualified success. Apollo 6, on the other hand, was a near failure with various problems with some of the engines, but nothing along the lines of making a U-turn.