Rocketman, Nancy Conrad

Rocketman is subtitled "Pete Conrad's Incredible Ride to the Moon and Beyond" and purports to be a biography of Gemini and Apollo astronaut Charles 'Peter' Conrad Jr. Except it doesn't actually read like a biography. It reads more like a novel, in which Pete Conrad happens to be the main character. As a result, it offers little insight into its subject.

Perhaps this is because the book was co-written by Howard Klausner, who is better known as the screenwriter for the film Space Cowboys. While that certainly means he's familiar with the material, writing a screenplay and writing a biography are not the same. A biography, for example, does not need a story. It doesn't require a three-act structure. And the character-arc is a function of the subject's life, and not something that is imposed by the biographer.

All of which explains in part why I found Rocketman such a dissatisfying book. It was certainly a fast and easy read, but its style gave it no authority. It was based upon notes left by Conrad on his death in 1999, and from which he intended to write an autobiography himself, but for all that it doesn't seem to really capture what it was like to be a Gemini and Apollo astronaut.

For whatever reason, Nancy Conrad and Klausner chose to frame Rocketman using Conrad's record-breaking around the world Learjet flight in 1996. Which in turn gives the chapters on Conrad's childhood, his career at NASA, and his days afterwards at McDonnell Douglas, the feel of reminiscences. It distances his achievements. In fact, one of the few sections of the book which gives a real feel for the man is a direct quote taken from, I assume, his notes, regarding his Gemini 5 mission. He and Gordo Cooper set a new space endurance record of eight days in, as Conrad described it, "a garbage can". In the quote in Rocketman, he mentions that his knees dried up and began to hurt. It's details such as this which make the man and his mission come alive for the reader. It's a shame there aren't more in the book.

In places, Rocketman reads as though Klausner were trying to tell his own history of the space race, a story in which Conrad was an important, but not major, player. The focus of the book occasionally shifts to the world stage and describes events in which Conrad played no part - because, it feels like, Klausner has something to say about the representation of the USA in geopolitics. There's a lot of rah-rah "our country, 'tis for thee" nonsense, which might fit the macho character of the test pilots and astronauts, but seems faintly risible to a non-American reader in the twenty-first century. Admittedly, the space race took place because of politics, and Apollo was indeed an astonishing achievement. But an Apollo astronaut's biography is not the right place to give the US's somewhat tarnished international reputation a buff and polish.

Rocketman hits the highlights of Conrad's career - Gemini 5, Gemini 11, Apollo 12, Skylab and the McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper. The book ends with a dramatised description of the motorcycle accident which caused his death in 1999. In many respects, Conrad was a typical astronaut. Like many of them he spent much of his youth hanging around an airfield and learned to fly in his teens. He was described as one of the best pilots among the astronauts - as most of them have also been described. Clearly he was as driven and determined as the other astronauts, although he was perhaps atypically approachable. He liked a good joke and reading between the lines his sense of humour unlike, Alan Shepard, another astronaut known for his jokes, was not cruel.

Reading Rocketman, the over-riding impression is of a man who was liked by everyone who knew him. While it seems a little unlikely - the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts were, after all, highly-driven, highly-ambitious military jocks - Conrad definitely appeared to be a more likable man than many of his colleagues.

But I'd have sooner Rocketman left an impression of Conrad's career and achievements, rather than simply the fact that he was a nice guy for an astronaut. Disappointing.

Rocketman: Pete Conrad's Incredible Ride to the Moon and Beyond, Nancy Conrad with Howard A Klausner (2005, New American Library, ISBN 0-451-21509-5, 275pp + appendices and index)

Moon Shot, Alan Shepard & Deke Slayton

I admit I had high hopes of this book. Someone had told me it was their favourite book on the Apollo programme, and the identities of the two authors promised much. Perhaps my expectations were too high...

Moon Shot covers the entire Space Race, from Sputnik to the Apollo Soyuz Test Project. It is an accessible read, written by two astronauts, Alan B Shepard and Donald K Slayton, who were important to the American effort. With the help of journalists Jay Barbree and Howard Benedict.

But. This is non-fiction, it is documented history... so I fail to understand how the authors can know what the Soviet Ambassador to the US was actually thinking when he heard of the Apollo 1 fire. Throughout the book, the authors imagine themselves in the heads of various people. Such "fictionalisation" of real people and events may make Moon Shot easier to read, but it also undermines its authority. How can it be an accurate depiction of events if it makes things up?

But then the prose-style itself also undermines the book's authority. It reads like a bad Kevin J Anderson novel:

Flying backwards with their faces parallel to the silent and airless surface below, they glanced at the glowing numbers of their timers. They were minutes from the moment they would ignite the engine beneath their feet and descend to the moon's surface. Time seemed to stretch endlessly.

They are about to land on the Moon - we know it is "airless". And if it is airless, it must by definition be "silent" - sound, after all, cannot travel in a vacuum. And, "Time seemed to stretch endlessly"...? What does that mean? Moon Shot is rife with these meaningless sentences, which attempt to evoke mood but actually add nothing of verifiable substance to the story being told. It is possible to write readable gripping non-fiction without resorting to such cheap tricks.

This penny-dreadful style spoils what could have been an interesting history of Apollo and its precursors. Sadly, Moon Shot also offers very little to the documented history of the Space Race. There is very little technical detail, and remarkably few anecdotes which have not been used in other works on the same subject. It is not wholly devoid of insight, however, and some good points are made regarding various aspects of the US space programme. Of course, given its authors, it's no surprise that Moon Shot privileges the astronauts and the role they played.

If anything, in fact, the book also has a tendency to whitewash its subjects. When Gordo Cooper's Mercury flight is almost given to Alan Shepard, there is no mention of Shepard's behind-the-scenes politicking to make this happen. Some of the astronauts come out of Moon Shot considerably better than others - it's easy to spot who Shepard and Slayton liked and admired, and who they had very little time for. Their own role in almost every aspect of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes is also inflated somewhat. As are the personal qualities of the astronauts. True enough, they were clever men. But they weren't geniuses. If they had been they would have been Nobel Prize-winning scientists, not fighter pilots.

Throughout Moon Shot, Shepard and Slayton refer to themselves in the third person - unlike Stafford in his We Have Capture - which makes you wonder how much they contributed to the book. From the prose-style alone, I suspect Moon Shot was actually written by Barbree and Benedict. Shepard and Slayton likely added a participant's dimension to what would have been a history written by observers. They may well also have provided much of the information - although both journalists have reported on space matters for decades - as well as approving the final text. And, of course, their names on the cover allowed the book to be subtitled "The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon".

A disappointing read. There are better-written and more informative books available on the subject. Tom Stafford's We Have Capture is a much better "inside story", and Neal Thompson's Light This Candle provides an excellent study of Alan Shepard and his career.

Moon Shot, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton (1994, Turner Publishing, ISBN 1-878685-54-6, 365pp + index)

We Have Capture, Tom Stafford

Thomas Patten Stafford, a USAF pilot and flight test instructor, joined NASA in the second group of astronauts in 1962. He flew two Gemini missions, and commanded Apollo 10 and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). He is also one of the three people to have travelled at the fastest speed ever attained by a manned vehicle - during the return from the Moon, Apollo 10's trajectory resulted in a speed of 24,791 mph.

We Have Capture is Stafford's autobiography.

If a biographer has to struggle to capture his subject's personality and character, you would imagine an autobiographer would have a much easier job of it. And it's true that We Have Capture reveals Tom Stafford's nature much better than, say, One Giant Leap did of Neil Armstrong's. Of course, there's an all too natural tendency to be less than truthful when writing about yourself - unless you particularly enjoy embarrassing yourself in public. But for a Gemini and Apollo astronaut, one of only 24 men to ever fly to the Moon, there's more than enough that's worthy of admiration in Stafford's life to fill a book without including the "warts and all".

That's not to say that We Have Capture gives a reader a real idea of what he was like as a person. It's written in a personable, affable style, and Stafford is as honest about his mistakes as he is eager to recount his told-you-so moments. But it's the achievements more than the man which are the real focus of the book. However, where We Have Capture really scores over other books about astronauts I have read is that Stafford gives a very real feel for what it was like to be there, to be in the Gemini 6-A capsule, or the Apollo 10 CSM.

Obviously, Stafford was there. But it's more than that. His descriptions include many small details - which, perhaps, a conscientious biographer might have picked up - and it is those which make his prose seem more real. For example, when describing the deaths of cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolsky, Viktor Patsayev and Vladislav Volkov in Soyuz 11, Stafford explains:

Seeing that the front hatch was still sealed, the crew realized that the leak was probably coming from that ventilation valve, which was located under Dobrovolsky's seat. They tried to crank it shut - there was a backup master valve, but this unit, like a basic steam valve, was mounted over the crew's shoulders and took nineteen turns to close.

It's that "nineteen turns". Only someone who had spent time in a Soyuz capsule, and knew it well - as Stafford had while training for ASTP - could write something like that. It's such details which lift Stafford's book above others I've read on the subject.

Having said that, Stafford does have a tendency to drop into the language he used while at NASA. Some of it went straight over my head; such as this, while arguing with Apollo Spacecraft Program Office manager, Joe Shea:

"Inertial reference is fine for certain phases of the mission," I said, "starting in posigrade attitude with inertial attitude, When you're 180 degrees around the world, that's retrograde. It makes a hell of a difference how you apply that thrust with respect to the rotating radius vector."

After ASTP Stafford felt he was no longer needed at NASA, and returned to the Air Force. He was given command of Edwards AFB. Eighteen months later, he retired from the military, and went into consulting. He remained involved, however, with space exploration - in fact, if his take on events is to be believed, he was responsible for creating the F-117, B-2, getting the International Space Station "off the ground", saving the Space Shuttle from being cancelled after the Challenger disaster, and repairing the Hubble Space Telescope. According to We Have Capture, Stafford was probably NASA's most important astronaut - or rather contributed the most to manned spaceflight - even more so than the likes of Neil Armstrong or Al Shepard. Yet, as commander of Apollo 10 and ASTP, he's little more than a footnote to Project Apollo in the history books. Perhaps in the future his contribution will be better known by the general public. Certainly, there should be more books about him. Nonetheless, this one is recommended and belongs in the collection of anyone interested in manned space exploration.

We Have Capture, Tom Stafford (2002, Smithsonian Institute Press, ISBN 1-58834-070-8, 296pp + notes and index)

One Giant Leap, Leon Wagener

An event as momentous as the first human being to land on the Moon is sure to attract a lot of commentary, and certainly Neil Armstrong has been the subject of a number of books. One Giant Leap is subtitled "Neil Armstrong's Stellar American Journey"... And right there you have the first indication that this is not going to be one of the better books about him. Armstrong, of course, did not make a "stellar" journey - he stayed entirely within the Solar System, travelled no more than a quarter of a million miles from Earth, in fact. Okay, perhaps that's poetic licence. But the cover also depicts a figure in a spacesuit on the Moon. There are no photographs of Armstrong on the Moon. Aldrin didn't take any. So that can't be Armstrong on the cover.

Not good omens, and I've not even opened the cover. Once I have done, it comes as no surprise to learn that Wagener has little or nothing to say about Armstrong and Apollo 11 that has not been said elsewhere. And more accurately. He perpetuates, for example, the myth that Buzz Aldrin didn't take any photos of Armstrong because he was upset at not being first to leave the LM. Not to mention misnaming Alexei Leonov as Alexei Leonor (isn't that a fabric conditioner?). Armstrong is described throughout in language not unlike "the noble-countenanced astronaut", even if those exact words are not used. Wagener claims that Armstrong's childhood dream had been to land on the Moon, and that he was chosen as the first man to walk on the Moon by NASA because he was a civilian. The latter is certainly untrue - there was a lot of juggling of crews and missions prior to Apollo 11. The former... well, I'll reserve judgment on that claim until I've read more on the subject, but I find it hard to believe.

One Giant Leap reads more like a hagiography than a serious attempt to document and understand its subject and his life. I'll admit I knew little about Armstrong - he is, after all, an intensely private man - and I now know more having read One Giant Leap. But I found the book's uncritical appreciation of Armstrong annoying, and its occasional inaccuracies irritating. On the plus side, the book has a good index, and it does seem a fairly complete description of Armstrong's life.

One Giant Leap doesn't really get to grips with Neil Alden Armstrong, the man, although I'll concede that's not an easy task. If there's a better biography of Armstrong available - and James R Hansen's First Man may be it, but we'll see - then I'd suggest One Giant Leap is for completists only.

One Giant Leap: Neil Armstrong's Stellar American Journey, Leon Wagener (2004, Forge, ISBN 0-312-87343-3, 302pp)