Alan Lawrie

Guest: Alan Lawrie. Topics: Saturn 1/1B rocket, A-1B manned flights, Saturn 5, rocket engineering, design challenges, Von Braun, lost knowledge. Alan Lawrie was our guest to talk about his new Apogee book, "Saturn 1/1B." We discussed the Saturn rocket program in-depth from the engineering qualifications and risk-taking to the management and leadership needed to make the program successful.

Alan Lawrie, author of "Saturn," was the guest for this special Space show program. We began the interview by asking Mr. Lawrie why he had an interest in the Saturn V rocket. For many of us, the answer does not come as a surprise given our having grown up in the Saturn V space era. Mr. Lawrie then took us through many of the Saturn V components, manufacturing processes, transportation to Florida, safety, quality control, redundancy, etc. We talked about lessons learned for the modern day rockets, suborbital space tourism, and more.