Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles (opens in new tab)

This is a pretty good book. It does fail to compare and contrast the different stages of the Saturn launch vehicle.

For example, the S-II, the 2nd stage, and the S-IVB, the 3rd stage, use a "common" dome between fuel and oxidizer tanks. The S-I, first stage, did not. Why? The S-II apparently used elliptical domes on both fuel and oxidizer tanks, but it appears that the S-IV and S-I used hemispherical domes. There's advantages and disadvantages to both, but why not set a standard? Titans all used "square-root of 2" elliptical domes, and I believe that the Centaur upper stage did as well.

Anyway, a compare-and-contrast on technical issues would have gone a long way with me.

Ive bought the book off Amazon a few years back, along with 2 other space related ones.

I have to say, I've been appalled by the print quality of that one. It looks like someone took too big blank book (the white edges are humongous) then xero'ed stuff onto it directly from old typewriter pages (you can see the characteristical typewriter not-entire-letters-printed)

Technically interesting, but a little dry

Also available a 169 MB scanned PDF: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/1997000...

This is a history of Saturn rockets commissioned by NASA (and thereby in the public domain)