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This book is a rich history of Apollo that never forgets that it was all about people. There are political histories, largely concerned with the Cold War or with NASA bureaucratic maneuvering. But there are very few broad, deep, and balanced histories of Apollo that do justice to its human dramas. There have been many books about the history of the Apollo program, most of them with a limited focus. It started with ancient human dreams about the moon, it was full of interesting characters and dramas, and in the end it offered a vision of life on Earth far greater than the nationalistic rivalries that gave it momentum. There are memoirs and biographies of the astronauts. There are chronicles of events. There are accounts focused on the technology.
Among other things, his divorce was a contributing factor to his never having flown again. The only weak spot in this book is the chapter on the Soviet space program during the same era. I'm happy to say that "In the Shadow of the Moon" is very much in the mold of the former. Of course, Apollo would never have been possible without the knowledge gained during Gemini. Since you're reading this review, and this is a somewhat obscure book, I'll assume that you're like me: you've read a lot of books covering the history of the Apollo Project already.
They include it for that reason, but also because it's impossible to tell a personality-based story of the astronauts without covering their experiences during their first flights. Best of all, they're not guessing here -- their text comes from extensive interviews with many of the astronauts themselves. Frequently, competence demonstrated in Gemini was the determining factor in deciding who got assigned to what position in Apollo. It lacked much of the impact of the rest of the book and I raced to get through it so that I could return to "the good stuff". It benefitted the other astronauts in allowing them to get their own divorces once the barrier had first been breached by Eisele. The authors also draw extensively from the best of the previously released histories to fill in the gaps where their own research didn't provide complete coverage -- something that's clear from the impressively lengthy bibliography.Another nice aspect of this book is that they pay a lot of attention to Project Gemini -- probably half the book.
Some have been outstanding, like Murray & Cox's "Apollo: the Race to the Moon" and Chaikin's definitive "A Man on the Moon", and some have been awful like Alan Shepard's ghost-written "Moonshot". Time has loosened their lips and by the year 2000, many of them were willing to give an honest and no holds barred assessment of their former peers. This is a well-deserved spotlight for a program that is often completely overshadowed by Apollo. Still others have been middle-of-the-road -- competent but unremarkable accounts that offer little to what's already widely known. Both his former and second wives provided quite a bit of detail to the researchers here. an entire chapter on Donn Eisele().
Beyond being a carefully researched and accurate account of the Gemini and Apollo missions leading up to the first landing, it adds much to what's known about the behind the scenes social drama of "astronaut politics".While paying reasonable attention to some of the technical aspects of early spaceflight, French and Burgess choose to focus more on the social interplay between the astronauts, what made each one different, who had what strengths and weaknesses, who knew how to play the political game to position themselves for a choice flight assignment and who didn't. Interested readers get some real gems here including (are you ready for this).
The exploration of the moon was mankind's greatest adventure and its greatest achievement during a time of international tension. Thanks to Francis and Colin for making this all much clearer and understandable to us all. If you want to know about the voyages of the Lunar astronauts during the golden age of space flight, read this book. The benefits of the lunar landings, in terms of the technology and management system that were developed gave us a quantum leap in capability and understanding. I know, I was there. Francis and Colin capture not only the hard detail of lunar flights, but also the human side of the living and working in space. What is it like to fly to the moon and how we as humans do it.
For enthusiasts of the entire space push of the 60's, this book is an excellent and thorough review of the space flights and the exceptional individuals who gave their all for their country's moon goals.The author delves deep into the Gemini flights in particular, and provides some very interesting personal and mission info, including detailed accounts of the ongoing Soviet missions being conducted in parallel to the US effort.For those like me that are craving to know the history of the early NASA flights up to Apollo 11, and the individuals that made them successful, I highly recommend this book.
This brilliant book carries the story up to 1969 with many glimpses past Apollo 11. He worked on Vanguard 1, the oldest artificial satellite still in orbit, and Minitrack. They referred to it as victory disease. Its instrument panel remained attached much longer than it was supposed to and almost killed the pilot since the spacecraft was reentering back to front until it finally was detached.
A slower pace may have allowed NASA time to learn the lessons from the previous EVA in preparing for the next one. Marty commented that a problem with the Vanguard rocket was that it was sometimes treated as a production project rather than a development project. It was more difficult to fix defects there than at the factory. I highly recommend this book. Even though Gemini was a great success, it took NASA far too long to realize how to correct its EVA problems. The tragic story of Apollo 1 reminds me of the comments of some Japanese about the arrogance that led to their defeat at the Battle of Midway.
The schedule became the god and rockets with problems were shipped to Cape Canaveral to stay on schedule. Even though you know that the Apollo 11 landing will be successful, French and Burgess make the story exciting as Armstrong looks for a good landing site with his fuel running out. NASA tried to do too much too fast and three astronauts died as a result.The story of Soyuz 5's reentry is alone worth the price of the book. One wonders why the Soviets had not fixed this problem since it appeared in a less dangerous form in the first two Soviet spacecraft.A while back, I spoke with Marty Votaw about Project Vanguard.
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