How Apollo Flew to the Moon: Springer Praxis Books

To me, amongst books, the gold standard for explaining difficult scientific and technological projects and concepts to non-technical readers is Richard Rhodes's "The Making Of The Atomic Bomb". I've long felt that a similar book was needed to explain for us non-techies the other greatest technological achievement of the 20th century--the Apollo moon project. I think this book fills that void. The tone of this book is different from that of Rhodes's. Rhodes's was conceived as an historical epic, beautifully written and researched, while this book, though just as deeply researched, is less formal, sort of as if someone sat down to talk to you to tell, "Well, son, here's how it happened."My own tech level is about that of Popular Mechanics, and my scientific knowledge is on the level of Popular Science, except in Geology, in which I took a number of college level courses. So I'm no expert on these things, though I came to the book with a knowledge of some terms and concepts. This book is much deeper than that, but the writer works you into the concepts and the jargon slowly enough that you begin to get them page by page. By the end, the only subject I was still having a little difficulty with was the navigation and such things as X, Y and Z axes and Refsmmat. I did get them, but only having to go back and re-read some passages several times. But then I bombed badly in trigonometry in high school, so maybe it's a personal mental block.What I found this book especially useful for is in learning and understanding all of NASA's very arcane jargon. I have a number of Spacecraft Films' Apollo DVD sets, which present video and audio of the Apollo missions in a raw footage format, with no narration or notes to help you get what is being said, all numbers and abbreviations and acronyms, by the crew and controllers during the film and audio sequences. But after reading this book, I found myself able to understand most of it. For example, when you listen to the on-board tape recording of the crew during the re-entry phase of the Apollo 8 mission, and you hear them say, "There's the .05 G indicator" and everything starts getting exciting, after reading this book you know why. This understanding adds a whole lot to the enjoyment of watching the videos.I'll echo one complaint of a previous reviewer. That concerns the use of the metric system rather than the standard measurements used by NASA during the missions. Instead of distances given in miles, we get kilometers; instead of feet per second, we get meters. For weights we get kilograms instead of pounds. This takes away a lot of understanding from many readers. The writer explains this in his introduction, saying something like, "when we write the history of Rome, we no longer use such obsolete measurements as cubits and spans", but the difference is that measurements like pounds and miles are not obsolete. They are still used by hundreds of millions of people, in the very country that acutally landed on the moon and from which country there would seem to be the most interest in a book like this. To me, this wasn't a petty gripe. It took away a lot from this book. When you try to impress us, for instance, with the size and power of a Saturn V rocket, it doesn't help when you tell us "The Saturn V was 100 meters tall" when the reader doesn't know how big 100 meters is. To us it could be ten miles or it could be two feet. The measurements could have been given both as metric and standard units without adding too much bulk to the book. This almost made me reduce my ratings from 5 to 4 stars, but I kept it at 5 because the book is helpful in so many other ways, and because the writer seemed to be so genial.I've noticed that a number of very good books on the Apollo and other US space programs have been written, like this one, by Australians, and find this phenomenon to be very interesting. I wondered how much it had to do with the major NASA radio tracking installation at Carnavon. But I think I got a clue while recently watching an Apollo 12 onboard video beamed to Earth during the powering up & checkout of the LEM after docking. Houston tells the crew that they are "Live on TV in Australia right now". So many of the key parts of these missions happened in the middle of the night here in the US with everyone asleep, but that meant they were being shown in prime viewing hours in Australia. It may be, because of this, that more people were watching Apollo in Australia than in the US. So maybe more Australians than Americans are interested in Apollo now, and that justifies the use of metric instead of standard measurements. But I still would have liked the standard.

I have a casual interest in space. I'm not a professional but am fascinating by processes and decisions, how things work. This book covered the type of details related to pivotal decisions in the Apollo Program which get glossed over by more accessible books. For example, how the Apollo Program reached a decision to use 1) a really big rocket, 2) a earth orbit rendezvous or 3) a lunar orbit rendezvous is presented. That type of detail, the people involved and the thought behind each of the proposals was discussed and provide important and fascinating context to the following chapters.The book has a fantastic (and now dog-eared) abbreviation appendix and while I was more fascinated by the early Apollo missions instead of the final scientific missions, Mr. Woods does a fantastic job of relating the scientific importance of the latter Apollo missions.Mr. Woods also does a fantastic job of adding incremental detail to equipment usage such as the guidance computer. Instead of spending an entire single chapter on what the computer does and then referring to it in another chapter dedicated to periods of flight, he introduces the guidance computer early as a more general overview. Then, at moments when it is being used he walks through the detail of how it is used at that moment. Again, the way he does this is perfect. It is contextually relevant to the stage of flight he is describing and his method helped me understand details in equipment operation which I'm certain I would have glossed over had he approached it any other way.The book is chronological but he uses various Apollo programs and the events that occurred during those flights in a way doesn't feel like he's skipping moments. While the flights were different, large macro-type events in each timebase were somewhat similar and Mr. Woods uses examples in ways which make each timebase stand out.I honestly loved this book.My only issue with the book is the scant photographs and somewhat smallish schematics. To augment his descriptions and some of the books photos, I purchased the Saturn Rocket Haynes Guide and spent time on the internet looking for additional detail. The images in Mr. Woods book were fantastic, to be sure, but I wanted more. I realize a book of this size has limited space and as a result I'm certain there are photos the author and others reluctantly had to discard so this does not detract in any way from his work. The Haynes Guide provided some additional important details about the saturn rockets which helped visualize their immense scale and the internet provide the ability to look at larger schematics of items such as the guidance computers.

Amazing book. Describes in minute details the technology developed specifically for the challenge they faced. A must read for every nerd engineer.

Großartiges Buch. Wer die technischen Details des Apollo Programms wissen will ist hier genau richtig. Das Buch ist auch 50 Jahre nach den Mondlandungen spannend zu lesen. Ich bin ein Kind dieser Zeit (Jahrgang 1958) und bin begeistert viele neue Details erfahren und buchstäblich die Flüge miterlebt zu haben. Ich kann dieses Buch jedem empfehlen, der sich mit der Apollo Technik und Geschichte eingehender befassen möchte. Ergänzende Angaben der beteiligten Astronauten während der Flüge sowie bei den De-Briefings geben weitere faszinierende Einblicke in diese spannende Phase der menschlichen Geschichte wieder.

Eccellente guida sulle operazioni del programma Apollo. Questo eccellente libro descrive in una quantità di dettagli notevole tutte le operazioni di una tipica missione Apollo, dal lancio all'allunaggio e ritorno. Vengono dati dettagli tecnici e aneddoti, man mano che vengono descritte le varie fasi del volo.Ammetto che mi aspettavo una trattazione più tecnica di certi dettagli, ma c'è da dire che se fosse stato così ci sarebbe stato meno spazio per menzionare l'enorme quantità di dettagli necessari a portare un equipaggio umano sulla Luna!Il testo è accessibile ed è consigliato a tutti, in particolare gli appassionati si scienza, ingegneria e astronautica.

Des détails et extraits de transcriptions de missionsChapitres clairs et retraçant les missions vers et sur la lune de manière chronologiqueDivers aspects de navigation et de conception des différents éléments composant les missions ApolloExcellente compilation de toutes les informations disponible mais éparpilléesEn Anglais mais accessible

I was 10 years old when Apollo 11 landed on the moon and I've been a space buff my entire life. This book is by far the most informative essay on the Apollo program I've ever seen. Enough detail for the technically inclined interspersed with some amazing human narrative. I learned so many things I never knew about the missions and the technology of the spacecraft. An absolute must read for anyone even moderately interested in the space program.