The Fortieth Anniversary of the First Moon Landing: review
‘Fine and powdery,” was how Neil Armstrong described the lunar landscape when he became the first man to walk through it. “Magnificent desolation,” said Buzz Aldrin, who has never recovered from being only the second man on the moon. Meanwhile, orbiting the spooky grey-white sphere in the command module overhead, lonely Michael Collins would gaze down at a “withered, sun-seared peach pit”. While Armstrong and Aldrin were setting up the experiments listed on their spacesuit gloves and struggling to erect the American flag on the tough moon rock, Collins was sweating. “If they fail to rise from the surface or crash back into it,” he resolved, “I am not going to commit suicide; I am coming home, forthwith, but I will be a marked man for life and I know it.”
Forty years on from Apollo 11’s historic mission, a glut of books have been published to explore how, why – and even if – mankind went to such extraordinary costs and risks to reach this celestial peach pit.
Readers in quest of a gripping and thoughtful paperback account should set their coordinates for Dan Parry’s Moonshot, which is far better written than your average “accompanying the major television factual-drama” book. Parry is great on the personalities of the three men – enigmatic Armstrong, articulate but reclusive Collins and ambitious Aldrin. And while never letting the pace of his narrative drag, he packs in lots of extra information surrounding the mission.
We hear the gossipy details of how and what the astronauts ate in space and how their nappies worked. We learn that they suffered from terrible flatulence to the extent that Aldrin joked they might as well shut down their altitude-control thrusters and do the job themselves.
It brought me up short to discover that the average age of staff back at mission control was just 26, and that the Lunar Landing module had to be fixed, mid-mission, with a felt-tip pen.
Parry also looks at why amply qualified female test pilots were barred from becoming astronauts, and ends with the sad reflection that, while the moon rocks collected by Nasa are stored under sterile conditions, we’ve dumped 118 tons of man-made junk up there.
For those keen to read a more in-depth account, taking in the complex politics behind the space race, Craig Nelson’s Rocket Men is an excellent read, which quotes at well-selected length from many of the Nasa staff who worked with tireless ingenuity to fulfil JFK’s 1962 boast that his nation would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade.
For those interested in finding out what happened to the 12 men (nine still living) who walked on the moon, Andrew Smith’s Moondust has been reissued. Since few astronauts are great communicators, it’s good to have his insightful take on their characters and his view on how their experiences shaped their later lives: the “flashes of understanding” – religious or otherwise – some gained, the need to quietly get back to what Armstrong (who became a teacher) described as “the fundamentals of the planet”, the alcoholism and depression experienced by others such as Buzz Aldrin.
It’s a better read than Aldrin’s Magnificent Desolation which leaden-bootedly describes his long crawl through mental illness, alcohol addiction, infidelity and celebrity that followed the triumph he couldn’t top. It’s sad that he still bleats on about feeling like a backing singer to Armstrong’s Elvis.
Now in his eighties, he hopes man will reach further into space and is trying to get a reality television show called Who Wants to Be an Astronaut off the ground. If you want a first-hand account then the best astronaut memoir by far is still Michael Collins’s Carrying the Fire (1974).
Forty years on, what have we learned?..
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
Forty years on from Apollo 11’s historic mission, a glut of books have been published to explore how, why – and even if – mankind went to such extraordinary costs and risks to reach this celestial peach pit.
Readers in quest of a gripping and thoughtful paperback account should set their coordinates for Dan Parry’s Moonshot, which is far better written than your average “accompanying the major television factual-drama” book. Parry is great on the personalities of the three men – enigmatic Armstrong, articulate but reclusive Collins and ambitious Aldrin. And while never letting the pace of his narrative drag, he packs in lots of extra information surrounding the mission.
We hear the gossipy details of how and what the astronauts ate in space and how their nappies worked. We learn that they suffered from terrible flatulence to the extent that Aldrin joked they might as well shut down their altitude-control thrusters and do the job themselves.
It brought me up short to discover that the average age of staff back at mission control was just 26, and that the Lunar Landing module had to be fixed, mid-mission, with a felt-tip pen.
Parry also looks at why amply qualified female test pilots were barred from becoming astronauts, and ends with the sad reflection that, while the moon rocks collected by Nasa are stored under sterile conditions, we’ve dumped 118 tons of man-made junk up there.
For those keen to read a more in-depth account, taking in the complex politics behind the space race, Craig Nelson’s Rocket Men is an excellent read, which quotes at well-selected length from many of the Nasa staff who worked with tireless ingenuity to fulfil JFK’s 1962 boast that his nation would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade.
For those interested in finding out what happened to the 12 men (nine still living) who walked on the moon, Andrew Smith’s Moondust has been reissued. Since few astronauts are great communicators, it’s good to have his insightful take on their characters and his view on how their experiences shaped their later lives: the “flashes of understanding” – religious or otherwise – some gained, the need to quietly get back to what Armstrong (who became a teacher) described as “the fundamentals of the planet”, the alcoholism and depression experienced by others such as Buzz Aldrin.
It’s a better read than Aldrin’s Magnificent Desolation which leaden-bootedly describes his long crawl through mental illness, alcohol addiction, infidelity and celebrity that followed the triumph he couldn’t top. It’s sad that he still bleats on about feeling like a backing singer to Armstrong’s Elvis.
Now in his eighties, he hopes man will reach further into space and is trying to get a reality television show called Who Wants to Be an Astronaut off the ground. If you want a first-hand account then the best astronaut memoir by far is still Michael Collins’s Carrying the Fire (1974).
Forty years on, what have we learned?..