Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth
£0.44
A book by an ordinary guy meeting ordinary guys...who did extraordinary things - I was a real spaceflight geek when I was a kid - I think I still am, deep down. But I d had my fill of cutaway-diagrammed, statistic-filled glossy coffee-table books about the Apollo Missions and, at the age of 30, wanted to read something a bit more human.Some of the reviewers here have criticised the book because it s more about Andrew Smith s journey than it is about the astronauts themselves. But that s the point. He starts out being this schoolkid, wowed by the Apollo landings on TV, and as an adult decides to track the pilots down before they re lost forever. It s about his personal mission as much as theirs. And if their missions changed their lives, their lives certainly changed Smith s mission. The long, friendly chat with Alan Bean, still cheery and talented at the age of over 70, is pivotal to this. For these people are more than just astronauts: They re flesh and blood people with families, just like the rest of us. Smith is one of the few spaceflight authors who deals with this aspect of things head-on.This book was fascinating, sometimes hilarious, often profoundly moving. Very few books tell the story of Apollo from this perspective, because they re books for the brain. This is a book for the heart, and needs to be read as such.
in search of the moon men - between 1969 and 1972, six spacecraft landed on the moon. Twelve men in total walked on the surface of another heavenly body. all came back to earth afterwards. nine of them are still with us. so what was it like to walk on the moon?in this book, which runs for roughly 350 pages, of nine chapters and has a biblography and an index at the back, the writer sets out to ask them that. some are easier to find than others, as neil armstrong for instance does not give interviews. but can each of them tell us what the experience was like? and how if affected their subsequent life?added to which, the writer considers the wider context. the history of america at the time and since, and the effect that the whole thing had on the nation. the mood of optimism and interest at the time and how things have changed since. this he does via personal recollections and historical notes. thus, as other reviews say, a lot of the book is about the writer rather than the astronauts, but in the context of what he is trying to achieve this approach works fine.and the astronauts, when spoken to, are all very interesting to read about as well. it affected each in different ways, and the stories of what they ve done since and why make fascinating reading. nobody can explain something like the feeling of a moon walk to those who haven t done it, but what they say makes you think, and it s absorbing reading as a result.a good, different approach to the whole subject, and a really good read.
Too much subjective speculation and not enough about the astronauts! - This book tells more about Andrew Smith s quest to meet the nine men remaining from the twelve who walked on the Moon than it does about the men themselves. It is fascinating, much of the time. It s frustrating, too, when Smith waxes lyrical about his own memories, clearly forgetting that it s not his memories we want to hear about. When he gets down to business and talks to Ed Mitchell, who has subsequently set up an organisation to unify science and religion, or `Buzz Aldrin, who hit the depths of despair after his return, and found his way out of the mire again, or even why he s trying to get Neil Armstrong to describe his feelings at being the first man on the Moon, the book s compelling. It s also the story of Apollo, and the ex-Nazi, Wernher von Braun, who was instrumental in its success. Smith details the many contradictions and conundrums of Apollo, setting it against the background of the 1960s counterculture - the 60s ended, he says, in December 1972, when the last man left the Moon. It s a book filled with memorable encounters and observations, but at the end just two stuck in my mind. The first was from Bill Anders, who was aboard Apollo 8, and so never set foot on the Moon at all. Anders points out that the whole point, the only point, of putting a man on the Moon, was to beat the Russians, to demonstrate American technological pre-eminence. NASA, however, was a civilian organisation, so they started pushing exploration as the motive - and soon... began believing their own PR. When Neil Armstrong and `Buzz Aldrin planted the American flag on the Moon, the programme was over and NASA didn t realise it. The other, more chilling comment, came from John Young, who was on Apollo 16, and who comes over as a curious, eccentric, genius. The chance of a civilisation-ending event occurring in the next hundred years is 1 in 455. Very high risk, he warns. You re ten times more likely to get killed in a civilisation-ending event than you are of getting killed on a commercial airline flight. Console yourself with that next time you take off for sunnier climes! Overall, a patchy book, often fascinating, but equally often frustrating, and certainly not the final word on these astronauts.
Doesn t every product appeal to a different market? - This book appealed to me straight away, dealing with a subject that I have long been fascinated in- Man landing on the moon- but that I have not yet had the inclination to wonder about any further than the fact that this amazing event happened 5 years before I was born (my wife would debate this latter point, but anyway. . .)Therefore I would have to say that, with the added concept of interviewing the last remaining humans to have walked upon another celestial body (literally a dying breed), I enjoyed this book like no other I have read in a long time.The writers style is relaxed, he injects just enough technical detail into his writing to make you want to find out more and I think it was great to have his own experiences linked to the unfolding story of Mankinds greatest achievement.Overall, a triumph. The wife even read it after me. . .
Houston, we have a problem. - Despite a stellar launch describing the agonising suspense of the first moon landing, Moondust soon plummets disappointingly back to earth. Awkwardly caught between biography and travelogue and between accurate description and personal reflection, Andrew Smith s first book suffers from the same lack of direction that has evidently plagued the space programme in recent decades.Putting aside the occasionally sloppy writing style, tricky phrasings and an irritating I would later discover... narrative device, Moondust has the feel of a distended Where are they now? magazine article, which may be an inevitable consequence of Smith s journalistic background. Sadly, many of the interesting observations, reflections and revelations in this account are second-hand - borrowed honestly from third-party sources, the masses of existing literature on this well-trodden subject, and rarely from the nine surviving moonwalkers themselves.Nevertheless, the informality of this book may appeal to those who cannot stomach a more factual analysis of the Apollo programme - Smith s hazy recollection of his childhood and an ongoing commentary on the political situation of America in the late 1960 s certainly sets the scene for mankind s `giant leap into the unknown. As this is forced to prop up an increasingly skimpy collection of anecdotes from each astronaut however - not to mention a disappointing no-show from the elusive Neil Armstrong - one cannot help wondering whether other accounts of the moon landings (many of which Smith teasingly references) would provide a more fulfilling exposition of this fascinating subject.