in2reading's review against another edition
5.0
I loved reading this book! The explanation of the science and will to succeed that led to the moon landings is enhanced by the context of history, before, during and after the Apollo years. I was almost 10 years old at the time of Apollo 11 and I remember staying up late to watch the landing on TV. This book illuminates many things I was too young to understand at the time and makes a great argument for regarding the Apollo mission as an amazing success. Highly recommended.
lizziepagereads's review against another edition
3.0
⭐️ ⭐️⭐️✨
3.5 stars. This is not your typical Apollo history - it isn’t a recitation of facts that everyone who reads space history knows. Rather, it focuses on the tech that powered Apollo, including a highly technical account of the computer systems used to fly to the Moon. It provides examples of how to enter commands and requests using verb/noun combos. It details the rope coding systems used when software WAS hardware (i.e., pre-silicon chip). Most of the missions themselves, Mercury, Gemini, through Apollo, are covered in less than a handful of pages.
While I tend to prefer historical over highly technical accounts of America’s moon shot, the conclusion Fishman presents is worth the time it takes to get there: the most obvious and important result of the US space program during the 60s was creation of a market for integrated circuits and the foundation it laid for the acceleration of the digital age.
3.5 stars. This is not your typical Apollo history - it isn’t a recitation of facts that everyone who reads space history knows. Rather, it focuses on the tech that powered Apollo, including a highly technical account of the computer systems used to fly to the Moon. It provides examples of how to enter commands and requests using verb/noun combos. It details the rope coding systems used when software WAS hardware (i.e., pre-silicon chip). Most of the missions themselves, Mercury, Gemini, through Apollo, are covered in less than a handful of pages.
While I tend to prefer historical over highly technical accounts of America’s moon shot, the conclusion Fishman presents is worth the time it takes to get there: the most obvious and important result of the US space program during the 60s was creation of a market for integrated circuits and the foundation it laid for the acceleration of the digital age.
readbydeb's review against another edition
4.0
Overall, this was a fascinating look into America’s emergence into the space age. I appreciated the holistic approach this book took, by not only providing a thorough overview of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, but also enumerating the many steps it took to get there (starting from the historical, political and technological context and the programs proceeding it) as well as how the program affected technology and American culture.
One negative aspect of this book is that at times, the author would string together a long series of statistics without much intervening explanation or context. While this information was often interesting overall, it did start to get overwhelming. There were also several instances where the content started getting repetitive. In addition, the author often jumped around the chronology to explore a theme rather than the next step in history. While overall this added a dynamic and in depth sense to the book, at other times it felt haphazard or uncoordinated.
Despite these downsides, One Giant Leap offers a unique approach to presenting the Apollo space program, and is definitely worth the read.
——
Three times as many people worked on Apollo was on the Manhattan project
In 1966, five years after JFK formally announce the project, Nas I was spending $1 million every three hours 24 hours a day on the Apollo project. By comparison, they only spent $1 million total in 1961.
There was surprisingly little public support for the moon landing. In 1960 for a pole show that only 26% of Americans thought we should go all out to make the Russians to the moon.
Apollo eight orbited the moon in 1968, making America the first country to reach the Moon
Four weeks after Apollo eight mission, a Paul show that only 39% of Americans favored up moon landing. 55% of Americans said they didn’t think the space program was worth a $4 billion a year it cost it
The space shuttle program shut down in 2011; and 2018 in order for American astronauts to go to space we have to pay for tickets on a Russian shuttle which is only slightly improved be on the technological capabilities of the shuttles that went up in like the 1960s.
94% of US households watched the Apollo moon landing on TV. However, the interest quickly deteriorated as if you were people watched the Apollo 17 mission, the last Apollo mission and watch that weeks episode of all in the family.
The Apollo computer fit into one cubic foot of space and did it calculations practically instantaneously; this was an astonishing feet of engineering because at the beginning of that decade, computers took up entire rooms and took hours for days to do their calculations.
The Russians were the first ones to send a satellite into orbit around the earth, have a satellite reach the moon, have an unmanned craft land on the moon and place a flag, send a satellite to take pictures of the Darkside of the moon, launch animals into space and bring them back safely, and launch a man to orbit. This all happened before JFK was elected president, most of it happening in the late 1950s with the dogs and the astronaut occurring in 1960
Every pound of supplies on the lunar module required 3lbs of fuel at takeoff, which is why they didn’t give the Eagle lunar module lots of extra fuel
The navigation and guidance computer for the lunar module was able to instantly do the difficult calculations to navigate space, but had less computing power than most microwave ovens today
The MIT engineers who created the real time computing module for the lunar landing module had to do so using a computer that did its calculations from punchcards that took hours or days to calculate
Apollo 11 was the first time that human lives were placed in the hands of a computer
The Apollo computer had 73 kB of memory which is less than the average email size today. The computer had two millions of 1% of the computing capacity of an iPhone XS
In space, if you’re going to the moon and your course is off by 0.5°, then you end up 2100 miles out space, off by the distance of the diameter of the moon.
It takes about 65 hours to fly back from the moon to earth. When you’re getting close to re-entering the atmosphere, you’re going 7 mi./s and the reentry zone is only 40 miles wide, so there’s absolutely no room for error.
When NASA selected the company that would be building the lunar module, the company asked MIT how big the computer would be. At that point am I T had no idea how big the computer with me so they just guessed it would be about a cubic foot; keep in mind that at this time most computers were the size of an entire room. Once it was complete, the computer and it up being just over one cubic foot. When MIT made the one cubic foot guesstimate, the materials for the computer filled four refrigerator sized racks.
When NASA was designing a probe to go to Venus, they had one error in the handwritten calculations that were put on a punchcard for the ground computer that ended up making the rocket not able to calculate its course and aborted mission. Hey single bar going to the-was missing over in a bar that would’ve change the equation, A mistake that cost $18.5 million. It was the mariner one probe.
Every hour of Apollo space flight required 1 million hours of work on the ground
There were 589,824 wires in the Apollo 11 computer, each one related to either a 1 (threaded through a ring magnet) or a 0 (next to the magnet). Each was threaded by hand. Because of the time-consuming nature of this software coding, the software had to be complete 8-12 weeks before launch and no changes could be made.
During the 1960s in the lead up to the Apollo program, Nassau went from the government agency with the 10th largest budget to the one with the third largest budget
In a secretly taped meeting with the heads of NASA, Kennedy admitted that he wasn’t really interested in space exploration/travel, he just wanted to beat the Russians to the moon
There was a loss of support and funding in the months leading up to Kennedy‘s assassination because people didn’t see the reason why so much money should be in funneled towards the lunar program to try and force a man landing on the moon by 1970 because it really didn’t seem like we needed to be in such a rush to beat the Russians anymore. However, Lyndon B Johnson was an authentic believer in the space program and reignited the vigor for getting a man to the moon by 1970 and requested the necessary funds to do self following Kennedy‘s assassination. “There is no second class ticket to space.”
The exit strategy from the lunar module was almost a rope with knots on it that the astronauts would have to clamber up and down to get in and out of the module. It ended up being a ladder in the end because there were too many potential issues with the rope (what if one astronaut was injured and couldn’t haul themselves up? What if they were too tried for the extremely strenuous task of hauling themselves up while wearing a bulky spacesuit? What if they fell? Etc.)
The idea of doing a lunar rendezvous which involves taking just the lunar module down to the moon and having a rendezvous back up with the main spaceship was text initially look down on us too difficult or impossible because of how difficult and unknown space style rendezvous‘s are because of gravitational mechanics. However that ended up being the method they went with because it allowed the shuttle that landed on the moon to have to carry significantly less weight and therefore less fuel, and it’s also easier to land the module than an entire space shuttle.
The company that made the lunar modules was a fighter jet making company in World War II; during World War II they made 14 warplanes a day; and contrast it took them 10 years to make 14 lunar modules.
Apollo didn’t usher in the space age, but it did usher in the digital age. We would have eventually made the technological leaps that were made because of the Apollo missions, but they gave America and excitement about technology and probably help speed up the process but it would’ve otherwise gone.
From start to finish, Apollo cost $19.4 billion; in 2019, dollars, that’s equivalent to $125.4 billion
Just because time, money and resources went into the winter project, doesn’t mean that it was necessarily taking away from other items; for example, it’s not like money was taken away from the defense or education budget to fund the winter program. Even if the winter program hadn’t happened the money that has been allocated to it would not have ended up going to cancer research or education or what have you because it wasn’t earmarked for that and they weren’t even in the same category.
One negative aspect of this book is that at times, the author would string together a long series of statistics without much intervening explanation or context. While this information was often interesting overall, it did start to get overwhelming. There were also several instances where the content started getting repetitive. In addition, the author often jumped around the chronology to explore a theme rather than the next step in history. While overall this added a dynamic and in depth sense to the book, at other times it felt haphazard or uncoordinated.
Despite these downsides, One Giant Leap offers a unique approach to presenting the Apollo space program, and is definitely worth the read.
——
Three times as many people worked on Apollo was on the Manhattan project
In 1966, five years after JFK formally announce the project, Nas I was spending $1 million every three hours 24 hours a day on the Apollo project. By comparison, they only spent $1 million total in 1961.
There was surprisingly little public support for the moon landing. In 1960 for a pole show that only 26% of Americans thought we should go all out to make the Russians to the moon.
Apollo eight orbited the moon in 1968, making America the first country to reach the Moon
Four weeks after Apollo eight mission, a Paul show that only 39% of Americans favored up moon landing. 55% of Americans said they didn’t think the space program was worth a $4 billion a year it cost it
The space shuttle program shut down in 2011; and 2018 in order for American astronauts to go to space we have to pay for tickets on a Russian shuttle which is only slightly improved be on the technological capabilities of the shuttles that went up in like the 1960s.
94% of US households watched the Apollo moon landing on TV. However, the interest quickly deteriorated as if you were people watched the Apollo 17 mission, the last Apollo mission and watch that weeks episode of all in the family.
The Apollo computer fit into one cubic foot of space and did it calculations practically instantaneously; this was an astonishing feet of engineering because at the beginning of that decade, computers took up entire rooms and took hours for days to do their calculations.
The Russians were the first ones to send a satellite into orbit around the earth, have a satellite reach the moon, have an unmanned craft land on the moon and place a flag, send a satellite to take pictures of the Darkside of the moon, launch animals into space and bring them back safely, and launch a man to orbit. This all happened before JFK was elected president, most of it happening in the late 1950s with the dogs and the astronaut occurring in 1960
Every pound of supplies on the lunar module required 3lbs of fuel at takeoff, which is why they didn’t give the Eagle lunar module lots of extra fuel
The navigation and guidance computer for the lunar module was able to instantly do the difficult calculations to navigate space, but had less computing power than most microwave ovens today
The MIT engineers who created the real time computing module for the lunar landing module had to do so using a computer that did its calculations from punchcards that took hours or days to calculate
Apollo 11 was the first time that human lives were placed in the hands of a computer
The Apollo computer had 73 kB of memory which is less than the average email size today. The computer had two millions of 1% of the computing capacity of an iPhone XS
In space, if you’re going to the moon and your course is off by 0.5°, then you end up 2100 miles out space, off by the distance of the diameter of the moon.
It takes about 65 hours to fly back from the moon to earth. When you’re getting close to re-entering the atmosphere, you’re going 7 mi./s and the reentry zone is only 40 miles wide, so there’s absolutely no room for error.
When NASA selected the company that would be building the lunar module, the company asked MIT how big the computer would be. At that point am I T had no idea how big the computer with me so they just guessed it would be about a cubic foot; keep in mind that at this time most computers were the size of an entire room. Once it was complete, the computer and it up being just over one cubic foot. When MIT made the one cubic foot guesstimate, the materials for the computer filled four refrigerator sized racks.
When NASA was designing a probe to go to Venus, they had one error in the handwritten calculations that were put on a punchcard for the ground computer that ended up making the rocket not able to calculate its course and aborted mission. Hey single bar going to the-was missing over in a bar that would’ve change the equation, A mistake that cost $18.5 million. It was the mariner one probe.
Every hour of Apollo space flight required 1 million hours of work on the ground
There were 589,824 wires in the Apollo 11 computer, each one related to either a 1 (threaded through a ring magnet) or a 0 (next to the magnet). Each was threaded by hand. Because of the time-consuming nature of this software coding, the software had to be complete 8-12 weeks before launch and no changes could be made.
During the 1960s in the lead up to the Apollo program, Nassau went from the government agency with the 10th largest budget to the one with the third largest budget
In a secretly taped meeting with the heads of NASA, Kennedy admitted that he wasn’t really interested in space exploration/travel, he just wanted to beat the Russians to the moon
There was a loss of support and funding in the months leading up to Kennedy‘s assassination because people didn’t see the reason why so much money should be in funneled towards the lunar program to try and force a man landing on the moon by 1970 because it really didn’t seem like we needed to be in such a rush to beat the Russians anymore. However, Lyndon B Johnson was an authentic believer in the space program and reignited the vigor for getting a man to the moon by 1970 and requested the necessary funds to do self following Kennedy‘s assassination. “There is no second class ticket to space.”
The exit strategy from the lunar module was almost a rope with knots on it that the astronauts would have to clamber up and down to get in and out of the module. It ended up being a ladder in the end because there were too many potential issues with the rope (what if one astronaut was injured and couldn’t haul themselves up? What if they were too tried for the extremely strenuous task of hauling themselves up while wearing a bulky spacesuit? What if they fell? Etc.)
The idea of doing a lunar rendezvous which involves taking just the lunar module down to the moon and having a rendezvous back up with the main spaceship was text initially look down on us too difficult or impossible because of how difficult and unknown space style rendezvous‘s are because of gravitational mechanics. However that ended up being the method they went with because it allowed the shuttle that landed on the moon to have to carry significantly less weight and therefore less fuel, and it’s also easier to land the module than an entire space shuttle.
The company that made the lunar modules was a fighter jet making company in World War II; during World War II they made 14 warplanes a day; and contrast it took them 10 years to make 14 lunar modules.
Apollo didn’t usher in the space age, but it did usher in the digital age. We would have eventually made the technological leaps that were made because of the Apollo missions, but they gave America and excitement about technology and probably help speed up the process but it would’ve otherwise gone.
From start to finish, Apollo cost $19.4 billion; in 2019, dollars, that’s equivalent to $125.4 billion
Just because time, money and resources went into the winter project, doesn’t mean that it was necessarily taking away from other items; for example, it’s not like money was taken away from the defense or education budget to fund the winter program. Even if the winter program hadn’t happened the money that has been allocated to it would not have ended up going to cancer research or education or what have you because it wasn’t earmarked for that and they weren’t even in the same category.
byrningup's review against another edition
2.0
Okay, in all fairness, this book was well researched. However, I never felt like I had the nostalgia to care about the events or to accept his conclusions about the American spirit.
carriekellenberger's review against another edition
5.0
Anything you've ever wanted to know about the race to the moon and how America achieved this in a decade can be found right here in One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon.
Fishman covers every topic you can possibly think of that's related to the space race, and he does it with flare and finesse.
There are so many great facts packed into this book, I felt like I got a first-rate education on the 60s and the giant effort it took for Americans to put a man on the moon.
The last part of this book covers why it was so important and how humanity benefited from this remarkable achievement. It also outlines the costs of the space program and put things into perspective for me in terms of the political and technological details of America's space program.
Fascinating read. This is a book that sparked interest in a number of other arenas as well. For example, I'm now exploring the USS Nautilus (SSN-571), which was the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine. It was also the first submarine to navigate 400 meters below the ice under the North Pole on August 3, 1958.
Fishman covers every topic you can possibly think of that's related to the space race, and he does it with flare and finesse.
There are so many great facts packed into this book, I felt like I got a first-rate education on the 60s and the giant effort it took for Americans to put a man on the moon.
The last part of this book covers why it was so important and how humanity benefited from this remarkable achievement. It also outlines the costs of the space program and put things into perspective for me in terms of the political and technological details of America's space program.
Fascinating read. This is a book that sparked interest in a number of other arenas as well. For example, I'm now exploring the USS Nautilus (SSN-571), which was the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine. It was also the first submarine to navigate 400 meters below the ice under the North Pole on August 3, 1958.
nogglization's review against another edition
5.0
Amazing book that looks at more than just the moon missions. How the jump in technology affected the everyday lives of Americans was extremely interesting.
nickertz's review against another edition
3.0
This is more than a history of the moon landing. It places the feat in context and demonstrates the true value of the mission. Fishman describes Kennedy's motivation for the challenge and how he drove everyone's commitment. Keep members of NASA are also profiled for how the "saved" the mission. The author takes time to discuss the value of the landing beyond the trite items like Tang and Technology. He argues effectively that going to the moon was NOT an either or choice between the moon and poverty programs; rather, it was a matter of giving the country a direction and a common goal. Going to the moon was about leadership.
brucery's review
adventurous
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
Well researched, but even better written. Cleverly combines interesting anecdotes and facts about the Apollo space program with big picture perspective on why it all matters.