skyring's review against another edition
4.0
I love reading the story of the moon race. It all seemed so easy on the diagrams printed in the paper. Just fly to the moon, descend to the surface, walk around a bit, fly back up, light the rocket and come home.
But every step of the long way there was difficult, once you begin to "drill down" into the details. Things like gimbal lock and Max-Q emerge from the murk of technology. Every tiny problem had to be solved, and solved in a way that didn't cause problems for anything else. Make a support member stronger and it makes it heavier, which means more fuel needed to lift it, which means more fuel needed to lift the extra fuel, which means bigger tanks, which leads to a point where you have to make compromises.
It's a fascinating tale of engineering and systems, let alone the people who gave up years of their lives to do it all. A whole generation of engineers and pilots barely got to share in their children's lives. Meetings were regularly scheduled for two in the morning.
You'd think after reading the same tale so many times, i'd know all the details, but no, every retelling adds fresh perspectives, fresh anecdotes. This book is no exception, drawing on political perspectives long suppressed for security reasons. We know a lot more about the Soviet effort now, for example.
And, despite those inspiring words which rang out in the early Sixties, JFK really had no great interest in spaceflight.
I enjoyed this book immensely. The oral history interviews, the memories freed up after decades, the embarrassing details of the German scientists running slave camps, the explanations of the reasons why certain things were done that way - it's all a great read for anyone with a passing interest.
I envy the reader coming in "cold". This book would seem like magic to the younger folk who have grown up with no direct experience of those great days. I saw the moonwalk at school, but for so many it's just a fuzzy, grainy video clip from the olden days.
The olden days when great deeds were done, when the curves all lined up to impel nations to do wondrous things. Nowadays, we just go to war and try to pound the other guy flat.
But every step of the long way there was difficult, once you begin to "drill down" into the details. Things like gimbal lock and Max-Q emerge from the murk of technology. Every tiny problem had to be solved, and solved in a way that didn't cause problems for anything else. Make a support member stronger and it makes it heavier, which means more fuel needed to lift it, which means more fuel needed to lift the extra fuel, which means bigger tanks, which leads to a point where you have to make compromises.
It's a fascinating tale of engineering and systems, let alone the people who gave up years of their lives to do it all. A whole generation of engineers and pilots barely got to share in their children's lives. Meetings were regularly scheduled for two in the morning.
You'd think after reading the same tale so many times, i'd know all the details, but no, every retelling adds fresh perspectives, fresh anecdotes. This book is no exception, drawing on political perspectives long suppressed for security reasons. We know a lot more about the Soviet effort now, for example.
And, despite those inspiring words which rang out in the early Sixties, JFK really had no great interest in spaceflight.
I enjoyed this book immensely. The oral history interviews, the memories freed up after decades, the embarrassing details of the German scientists running slave camps, the explanations of the reasons why certain things were done that way - it's all a great read for anyone with a passing interest.
I envy the reader coming in "cold". This book would seem like magic to the younger folk who have grown up with no direct experience of those great days. I saw the moonwalk at school, but for so many it's just a fuzzy, grainy video clip from the olden days.
The olden days when great deeds were done, when the curves all lined up to impel nations to do wondrous things. Nowadays, we just go to war and try to pound the other guy flat.
tarmstrong112's review against another edition
5.0
Pretty fantastic book on the Apollo 11 mission. I really enjoyed all of the background information and context in regards to the Space Race and Cold War, I felt that added greatly to the story and was information not found in other books about the Apollo program. An informative and engaging read.
k8iedid's review against another edition
3.0
I would have loved to rate this higher except for the reports I read about the factual inaccuracies. Real bummer -- the information was great and gave me a much better appreciation for the space program in the 1960s. Very interested in reading von Braun's biography!
fastfinge's review against another edition
4.0
It can be dry at times, so if you don't have an abiding interest in space travel as I do, you might not enjoy this one.
ncrabb's review against another edition
5.0
Neil Armstrong’s death earlier this fall had a profound impact on me. It served as a stark wakeup call and reminder that even boyhood heroes who slip the surly bonds of Earth with such majesty and dignity cannot live forever. I remember thinking on the day Armstrong died that is death was “one giant loss” to mankind, and I still feel that today. I remember that Sunday afternoon when the lunar landing actually happened. I was in my dad’s pickup, high in the Uinta mountains. My folks were packing the truck to come home from a successful weekend camping trip; I was too enthralled with the moon landing to help, and they were too wise and intelligent to force me out of that truck. Its windows were down, its doors were open, and the lunar landing feed was being pumped at me through the blow torch signal of KSL radio.
Even now, I remember vividly the dialogue between Armstrong and Aldrin as he, Aldrin, described what he could see as Armstrong manually piloted Eagle to a safe landing spot. It would be years before I would fully understand the comment from the ground “you have a bunch of guys down here about to turn blue” as a reference to the ship’s perilously empty fuel tanks.
Craig Nelson’s ability to so eloquently tell the story of the Apollo 11 success enabled me to relive the magnificence of that one shining day in my boyhood as nothing has before. But that’s only a tiny part of why this book matters and why you should read it.
I’ve read many of the books that deal with the space race, and this one will go down as my all-time favorite. Here’s why:
First, it humanizes these astronauts in ways that left me constantly charmed and amazed. In fact, so enthused was I as I read this that my wife checked the print copy out from the local library and finished it as well this weekend. She found it a sheer pleasure to read, and remarked frequently as she read about some of the fascinating facts presented here that you simply don’t get elsewhere and that force you to really think.
First, you should understand that this book is not an exhaustive treatise on the American space program. It pays brief attention to the Mercury program, even less so to Gemini, but it focuses heavily on the Apollo portion, particularly Apollo 11. There’s nothing in this that smacks of boring names and dates. You go into the lives of these astronauts and their families. You agonize with NASA officials about budgetary decisions that can make all the difference in whether men come home alive or never come home at all. Did you know, for example, that President Nixon had, prior to the Apollo 11 flight, written a speech announcing to the American people that the two men of the lunar module were forever stranded and would die on the moon? He did indeed, and there is a brief excerpt from that speech in this book.
You’ll read about how Aldrin and Armstrong debated as to which would actually be the first to step onto the lunar surface, with Aldrin strongly pushing for him to be the one, and Armstrong, in that laconic manner of his, ultimately putting an end to the debate. You will read with some wistful sadness of the fact that so few pictures of Armstrong were actually taken while on the moon. You’ll read about how they handle floating vomit and how they defecate in zero-gravity. It’s all in here.
You’ll read about the young marine who, upon opening the capsule at splash-down is shaken—not by how the three men look, but by how they smelled after so long in space. You’ll read about the mushy foods they had to eat, and you’ll read about Michael Collins and his extreme isolation whenever the main module of Apollo 11 went around the side of the moon that prevented him from communicating with Earth or with his comrades on the moon.
In short, this is a beautiful story breathtakingly told. Perhaps you’re one of those readers who is easily pushed away from a book where there might be long or detailed scientific explanations. That won’t be a problem here. Where there is a need for scientific explanations, they are presented in wonderfully plain language that will in no way leave you confused or uninterested. How does all this impact the children of these astronauts? It’s all in this book.
Nelson takes you skillfully through the early days of the space program when the Russians were succeeding time after time, leaving American shaken and wondering whether a dictatorship was indeed better than a democracy in terms of providing the talent and resources necessary to go into space. So acrimonious was the space race at one point that the Russians sent an unmanned rocket up at the same time as Apollo 11 was journeying to the moon. Russia’s hope was that Apollo 11 would spectacularly fail and that its rocket would successfully land on the surface. Of course, history points out that just the opposite was true. This book, as no other has for me, points out with stark clarity that the space race may have been a massive factor in the prevention of nuclear war between the two super powers during the height of the cold war. The author postulates that had the two nations not sought to achieve astronautical supremacy, they might have poured even more of their energies into achieving nuclear supremacy, which could have ended badly for everyone concerned.
There’s plenty in this book to smile about as well. There’s a great story here about a Congressman who insisted, despite the pleas of NASA officials, on seeing the chimp training facility involved in gearing a chimp up to go into space.
The Congressman’s visit happened on a day on which a monkey had finished some arduous training which had frightened it. When it saw the Congressman, it apparently defecated, picked up its newly minted calling card, and hurled it dead center against the Congressman’s chest. He belatedly understood why NASA officials had initially begged him not to enter the facility at that point.
To the degree that it can, this book even puts a human face on the more than 400,000 contract employees who made the moon landing possible. You’ll read about what happened to some of the lunar mineral samples brought back, and you will experience real sorrow as you watch three men whose lives could never again be the same upon their return to Earth adjust to those new lives with varying degrees of success. Ironically enough, it seems to be Michael Collins whose life was the least marred by the Apollo 11 experience. But that’s all in here, and there’s a better explanation of what I mean by that if you decide to read this.
Nelson’s writing style is as on-course and powerful as the Saturn V. rocket that launched the craft into space that July. His access to the astronauts and even to once-classified documents paid off handsomely in this book. In short, if you were too young to have meaningful memories of Apollo 11, this book will give you an accurate feel for what it was like to experience. If you remember it vividly, you will find in these pages not merely a reaffirmation of your memories but scores and scores of additional reasons to be impressed by the endeavor and thrilled that you lived during that time.
Even now, I remember vividly the dialogue between Armstrong and Aldrin as he, Aldrin, described what he could see as Armstrong manually piloted Eagle to a safe landing spot. It would be years before I would fully understand the comment from the ground “you have a bunch of guys down here about to turn blue” as a reference to the ship’s perilously empty fuel tanks.
Craig Nelson’s ability to so eloquently tell the story of the Apollo 11 success enabled me to relive the magnificence of that one shining day in my boyhood as nothing has before. But that’s only a tiny part of why this book matters and why you should read it.
I’ve read many of the books that deal with the space race, and this one will go down as my all-time favorite. Here’s why:
First, it humanizes these astronauts in ways that left me constantly charmed and amazed. In fact, so enthused was I as I read this that my wife checked the print copy out from the local library and finished it as well this weekend. She found it a sheer pleasure to read, and remarked frequently as she read about some of the fascinating facts presented here that you simply don’t get elsewhere and that force you to really think.
First, you should understand that this book is not an exhaustive treatise on the American space program. It pays brief attention to the Mercury program, even less so to Gemini, but it focuses heavily on the Apollo portion, particularly Apollo 11. There’s nothing in this that smacks of boring names and dates. You go into the lives of these astronauts and their families. You agonize with NASA officials about budgetary decisions that can make all the difference in whether men come home alive or never come home at all. Did you know, for example, that President Nixon had, prior to the Apollo 11 flight, written a speech announcing to the American people that the two men of the lunar module were forever stranded and would die on the moon? He did indeed, and there is a brief excerpt from that speech in this book.
You’ll read about how Aldrin and Armstrong debated as to which would actually be the first to step onto the lunar surface, with Aldrin strongly pushing for him to be the one, and Armstrong, in that laconic manner of his, ultimately putting an end to the debate. You will read with some wistful sadness of the fact that so few pictures of Armstrong were actually taken while on the moon. You’ll read about how they handle floating vomit and how they defecate in zero-gravity. It’s all in here.
You’ll read about the young marine who, upon opening the capsule at splash-down is shaken—not by how the three men look, but by how they smelled after so long in space. You’ll read about the mushy foods they had to eat, and you’ll read about Michael Collins and his extreme isolation whenever the main module of Apollo 11 went around the side of the moon that prevented him from communicating with Earth or with his comrades on the moon.
In short, this is a beautiful story breathtakingly told. Perhaps you’re one of those readers who is easily pushed away from a book where there might be long or detailed scientific explanations. That won’t be a problem here. Where there is a need for scientific explanations, they are presented in wonderfully plain language that will in no way leave you confused or uninterested. How does all this impact the children of these astronauts? It’s all in this book.
Nelson takes you skillfully through the early days of the space program when the Russians were succeeding time after time, leaving American shaken and wondering whether a dictatorship was indeed better than a democracy in terms of providing the talent and resources necessary to go into space. So acrimonious was the space race at one point that the Russians sent an unmanned rocket up at the same time as Apollo 11 was journeying to the moon. Russia’s hope was that Apollo 11 would spectacularly fail and that its rocket would successfully land on the surface. Of course, history points out that just the opposite was true. This book, as no other has for me, points out with stark clarity that the space race may have been a massive factor in the prevention of nuclear war between the two super powers during the height of the cold war. The author postulates that had the two nations not sought to achieve astronautical supremacy, they might have poured even more of their energies into achieving nuclear supremacy, which could have ended badly for everyone concerned.
There’s plenty in this book to smile about as well. There’s a great story here about a Congressman who insisted, despite the pleas of NASA officials, on seeing the chimp training facility involved in gearing a chimp up to go into space.
The Congressman’s visit happened on a day on which a monkey had finished some arduous training which had frightened it. When it saw the Congressman, it apparently defecated, picked up its newly minted calling card, and hurled it dead center against the Congressman’s chest. He belatedly understood why NASA officials had initially begged him not to enter the facility at that point.
To the degree that it can, this book even puts a human face on the more than 400,000 contract employees who made the moon landing possible. You’ll read about what happened to some of the lunar mineral samples brought back, and you will experience real sorrow as you watch three men whose lives could never again be the same upon their return to Earth adjust to those new lives with varying degrees of success. Ironically enough, it seems to be Michael Collins whose life was the least marred by the Apollo 11 experience. But that’s all in here, and there’s a better explanation of what I mean by that if you decide to read this.
Nelson’s writing style is as on-course and powerful as the Saturn V. rocket that launched the craft into space that July. His access to the astronauts and even to once-classified documents paid off handsomely in this book. In short, if you were too young to have meaningful memories of Apollo 11, this book will give you an accurate feel for what it was like to experience. If you remember it vividly, you will find in these pages not merely a reaffirmation of your memories but scores and scores of additional reasons to be impressed by the endeavor and thrilled that you lived during that time.
kaitwalla's review against another edition
2.0
I wanted badly to like this book. It's about the nerdiest of nerds, guys who literally wore pocket protectors and carried around slide rules, and yet managed to land a dozen human beings on a rock floating through space.
Never has the use of precisely controlled unfathomably large explosions to propel a massive vehicle into the heavens managed to seem so boring. I get that the vast majority of the guys you're talking to were the engineers whose professional lives definitely peaked when they launched dudes into space, but that's where you, as the writer, are supposed to work your magic. Even oral histories tend to use editing to make things seem connected, and make sense, and maybe even work out a logical structure, please?
But no. There's a common format for works about monumental events: You start right around the most exciting time, then leave the reader hanging on a pivotal moment as you circle back and start at the beginning. The thought, I suppose, is to hook the reader's interest so you can explain what led up to it (ignoring the fact that the personal already bought a multiple-hundred-page book about the topic). In this case, the author liked it so much he used it twice: We start a few months out and tiptoe right up to the Apollo 11 launch ... then we back up to the beginning of the Apollo 11 program, when it looks like it might not launch at all. Then, after we get about to where we started ... we back up to the entire history of rocketry and missiles.
If it sounds confusing and disjointed, that's because it is.
But it's not the only issue. From ninth-grade essays up to the latest historical monographs, the best writing tends to be done by those with a passionate interest in the topic. Which makes total sense! Frankly, if you're pounding out a couple hundred pages on a topic that bores you to death, it's unlikely anyone is going to derive any enjoyment from reading it (see: Every primary/secondary education textbook ever).
But there's a distinction you have to draw between interest and advocation when you're writing objectively: In the same way I don't 100 percent trust everything Fox News or the Huffington Post says without third-party verification, I'm also gonna need a little bit more background before I swallow the entirety of Winston Churchill's History of English-Speaking Peoples (spoiler alert: The British come off pretty good in it).
Rocket Men Author Craig Nelson is a homer of the highest order who, if he doesn't actuallly believe it himself, let the astronauts and people deeply involved with the space program inform too much of the narrative thrust of the book.
To be clear, I think the Apollo program (which is mostly what this book chronicles) was a masterful effort of technology, government, politics, engineering and human spirit. Landing on the moon is probably the most significant event for the human species to date. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we should be spending trillions of dollars to put a man on Mars, and I resent the implication that questioning that notion makes me unpatriotic or terminally short-sighted.
I really do think it's unfortunate. There are great stories, anecdotes and personalities on display throughout Rocket Men, and the author clearly did an enormous amount of research bringing it all together. I just wish he would have focused a little bit more effort on the writing part, too.
Never has the use of precisely controlled unfathomably large explosions to propel a massive vehicle into the heavens managed to seem so boring. I get that the vast majority of the guys you're talking to were the engineers whose professional lives definitely peaked when they launched dudes into space, but that's where you, as the writer, are supposed to work your magic. Even oral histories tend to use editing to make things seem connected, and make sense, and maybe even work out a logical structure, please?
But no. There's a common format for works about monumental events: You start right around the most exciting time, then leave the reader hanging on a pivotal moment as you circle back and start at the beginning. The thought, I suppose, is to hook the reader's interest so you can explain what led up to it (ignoring the fact that the personal already bought a multiple-hundred-page book about the topic). In this case, the author liked it so much he used it twice: We start a few months out and tiptoe right up to the Apollo 11 launch ... then we back up to the beginning of the Apollo 11 program, when it looks like it might not launch at all. Then, after we get about to where we started ... we back up to the entire history of rocketry and missiles.
If it sounds confusing and disjointed, that's because it is.
But it's not the only issue. From ninth-grade essays up to the latest historical monographs, the best writing tends to be done by those with a passionate interest in the topic. Which makes total sense! Frankly, if you're pounding out a couple hundred pages on a topic that bores you to death, it's unlikely anyone is going to derive any enjoyment from reading it (see: Every primary/secondary education textbook ever).
But there's a distinction you have to draw between interest and advocation when you're writing objectively: In the same way I don't 100 percent trust everything Fox News or the Huffington Post says without third-party verification, I'm also gonna need a little bit more background before I swallow the entirety of Winston Churchill's History of English-Speaking Peoples (spoiler alert: The British come off pretty good in it).
Rocket Men Author Craig Nelson is a homer of the highest order who, if he doesn't actuallly believe it himself, let the astronauts and people deeply involved with the space program inform too much of the narrative thrust of the book.
To be clear, I think the Apollo program (which is mostly what this book chronicles) was a masterful effort of technology, government, politics, engineering and human spirit. Landing on the moon is probably the most significant event for the human species to date. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we should be spending trillions of dollars to put a man on Mars, and I resent the implication that questioning that notion makes me unpatriotic or terminally short-sighted.
I really do think it's unfortunate. There are great stories, anecdotes and personalities on display throughout Rocket Men, and the author clearly did an enormous amount of research bringing it all together. I just wish he would have focused a little bit more effort on the writing part, too.
jjwalter2001's review against another edition
5.0
This was a phenomenal read - especially coming on the back of having just read Space Barons. The two books were both extremely well-written - and presented a great contrast between the early days of lunar travel against the resurgence/recreation of the space industry today.
rainbowbookworm's review against another edition
4.0
A through history of the various elements that had to come together in order for the U.S. to have a man walk on the moon.