A review by keithlafountaine
Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings by Earl Swift

4.0

What's fascinating to me about this book is how much I didn't know or understand about the lunar rover. From a layman's perspective, it's easy to think the lunar rover is just a car that drives around. From the get-go, Earl Swift lays out why that's not the case -- how it has to contend with both the sun's burning temperature and Space's freezing cold; how it had to be a certain weight so it could get off Earth; how it had to be a certain size so it could be stowed with the Apollo crew. Even something as erudite as driving is different since the Moon's surface is littered with stones, craters, mountains, and hills, all of which make traversing it both difficult and dangerous.

This proved to be a page-turner for that reason. The conception and creation of the lunar rover, along with the scientific results it helped yield, are fascinating. I don't have a background in engineering or science, but I found myself inhaling pages upon pages of dense information about the different concepts and designs anyway. Swift brings all of this down to the layperson's level, which definitely helps.

I wasn't expecting to tear through this as quickly as I did, but it was well worth the read. A fascinating subject and one of the unsung products of the Space Race.