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Subtitled Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961 - 1965
, this book covers the early US and Soviet space programmes, focusing specifically on the manned space missions. It opens with Yuri Gagarin's historic flight, covers Project Mercury, and then both the Soviet Vostok and Voskhod missions. A detailed biography is given of each astronaut or cosmonaut as they are introduced. There are also a great many anecdotes by those who were present during the events being described. The authors clearly used a large number of materials in their research - the bibliography is thirteen pages long! - as well as interviewing many of the personalities involved.
Like many books on this subject, the tone of Into That Silent Sea initially seemed a little too in awe of its subject. Anyone named was the best at what they did, the astronauts were near-superhuman, and nobody ever made any mistakes. However, as the book progressed, the authors seemed to have gained more confidence in their material and Into That Silent Sea became more objective.
Perhaps where Into That Silent Sea was most interesting and useful was when discussing those astronauts and cosmonauts of the early Space Race who have not been the subjects of many other books. Into That Silent Sea is especially good on the early cosmonauts; and astronauts Wally Schirra and Gordo Cooper are treated with more detail than the better-documented John Glenn, Al Shepard or Gus Grissom.
There is also an interesting diversion on the Mercury 13 - thirteen female pilots who underwent the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts, believing that NASA was intent on forming a female astronaut squad. French and Burgess are quite critical of Jerrie Cobb, the most vocal of the Mercury 13, but they did appear to me to be a little too forgiving of the government's and NASA's role in the affair.
There is a wealth of material available on the early American and Soviet manned space flights, treated both singly and together. So any new book on the subject needs something extra to stand above the rest. I don't know that Into That Silent Sea possesses that quality. It's certainly an informative read and, given the ground it covers, contains an impressive amount of detail. As an overview, or introduction, to the subject, it's very effective. If you want to read further, there are plenty of books on specific areas covered by Into That Silent Sea - Jamie Doran & Piers Bizony's Starman on Yuri Gagarin, for example; Neal Thompson's Light This Candle on Al Shepard; John Glenn's own autobiography; The Mercury Thirteen by Martha Ackmann...
I will say one thing very much in Into That Silent Sea's favour. There has been over the last two decades a worrying trend in biographical and non-fiction works in which authors "fictionalise" their subjects. In other words, they "imagine" how the person they are writing about might have reacted to a situation, or what that person might have been thinking at a specific point in time. To me, that completely invalidates the work. It's no longer factual. Admittedly, a biographical work cannot be an entirely objective account of a person, no matter how it tries. Some subjectivity is sure to creep in. It's the nature of the enterprise. French and Burgess, however, are careful in Into That Silent Sea only to report only what their research has told them. If they mention a person's thoughts, then they use a direct quote from that person - i.e., the authors have the person themselves describe how they felt, what they were thinking.
There are those who will always be more interested in the personalities of the Space Race, and those whose chief interest lies in the hardware. I must admit I fall mostly into the latter camp. Which means books such as Into That Silent Sea are never going to be a favourite. But I did find this book a readable and interesting treatment of its subject. Recommended.
Into That Silent Sea, Francis French and Colin Burgess (2007, University of Nebraska Press, ISBN 978-0-8032-1146-9, 383 pp)
This handsomely-presented hardback volume is subtitled "A Pictorial history of Lunar Vehicles"
. In it, Godwin has brought together all the various proposals and designs for lunar vehicles - landers, bases and rovers - and presented them in full colour. There are photographs of mock-ups, blueprints and artist's impressions. Godwin has also created 3D computer graphics of many of the vehicles.
The evolution of the Apollo LM is documented, and the various designs it went through are well illustrated. Other designs - particularly those from Boeing - were far more ambitious, and their rovers resemble the huge lunar vehicles of science fiction. Among the stranger ideas presented, I liked the Winged Apollo by North American Rockwell in 1967. By adding two protruding fairings, it was thought the CSM could fly like a lifting body and so land on a runway. It's not the Space Shuttle by any means, but it could have been a valuable step forward to reusable spacecraft. Other designs are stranger still: the lenticular CSM proposal from the Martin Company, for example, looks like the starship Enterprise.
The Lunar Exploration Scrapbook is an excellent study of what-ifs and what-might-have-beens. It's very well-presented, is well indexed, and is definitely worth having in your collection. It is only available from the Apogee Books web site. Recommended.
The Lunar Exploration Scrapbook, Robert Godwin (2007, Apogee Books, ISBN 9781-1894959-81-0, 221pp)
This book does exactly what its title promises. It's a copy of a training document, dated 13 March 1968, used by NASA to familiarise astronauts and staff with various aspects of the Apollo spacecraft and their missions. Each page is an annotated diagram - on Apollo systems, basic procedures, trajectories, etc. The book is split into ten sections:1 - Introduction and Mission
2 - Structures
3 - Electrical Power4 - Environment Control
5 - Guidance and Control
6 - Propulsion
7 - Communications8 - Sequencing9 - Crew Equipment
10 - Apollo Abbreviations
The diagrams are clear and well-labelled, although some clearly require additional explanation - the circuit diagrams and schematics, for example. Despite that, and its nature as a training aid, Apollo Training is actually quite a useful reference. Need to know the overall layout of the CM main panel? There is a diagram showing how the controls are grouped into functional areas - flight control, ECS control, electrical power, etc. There's even some humour: on the introductory page to the Crew Equipment section, there are a series of cartoons illustrating the topic - "light and sight", "restraints", "medical", "survival", "waste control", and so on. The diagram for "mission experiments" shows an astronaut in a CM... and a woman dressed only in bra and knickers standing on a table and looking down at him!
A useful quick reference to its topic, Apollo Training deserves to be in any good collection.Apollo Training - Apollo Spacecraft & Systems Familiarization, compiled and edited by Robert Godwin (2007, Apogee Books, ISBN 9781-894959-79-7, 168pp)
There's detail and there's detail. For those interested in the Apollo programme, a book subtitled "A pictorial essay of the engineering and construction of the Apollo Command and Service Modules", featuring full-colour 3-D computer-graphic renderings of the exterior, interior and parts of the CSM, might be way too much information.
It's all in Virtual Apollo - photographs of the CSM under construction, carefully-labelled cutaways, structural detail diagrams, even annotated mock-ups of the control panels. Until I actually bought this book and read it myself, I'd thought it a little too, well, geeky. But it's actually fascinating, and pretty much the next best thing to having a real CSM in front of you. The level of detail is astonishing, and the graphics are extremely well done. My one complaint is that the page numbers on the contents page are wrong. But that's a minor quibble.Some might think Virtual Apollo is only really food for your inner space-geek, but it belongs in every self-respecting collection on or about the Apollo programme. It's another excellent book from Apogee Books. There's a sister-book, Virtual LM, again by Scott Sullivan. It's on my to-buy list.Virtual Apollo: A Pictorial Essay of the Engineering and Construction of the Apollo Command and Service Modules, Scott P Sullivan (2002, Apogee Books, ISBN 978-1-896522-94-7, 128pp)
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)
Pretty much all books about the Apollo programme focus on the astronauts, or the important engineers and administrators. Watkins has instead chosen to interview fourteen unknown people who were in some way involved in NASA's project to put a man on the Moon. These include, among others, the NASA chief of photography, a frogman at the Apollo 11 recovery, an instrumentation controller, and the project director for the Lunar Roving Vehicle.
Given that the book is comprised of interviews, it suffers from something of a folksy tone.
Also by its nature, the book dwells chiefly on somewhat trivial aspects of Apollo. But then, this is Apollo - and Mercury and Gemini - as these people lived and worked it, and they were not in the centre of the action. In illustration, here's an anecdote from suit technician Joe Schmitt: Buzz Aldrin had been unable to find a right glove for his space suit with which he was happy, and ended up taking a glove from another astronaut's space suit. This glove had to be re-qualified for flight status as it was from a training suit. It's a minor detail, but it provides a simple human touch to an undertaking that to many consists solely of the hardware - the Saturn V, the LM, for example - or the Moonwalkers themselves.
By no means a core work for any collection, it's worth having if you're interested in the human side of the Apollo programme.
Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes, Billy Watkins; foreword by Fred Haise (2006, Praeger Publishers, ISBN 0-275-98702-7, 202 pp)
Like many books on this subject, the tone of Into That Silent Sea initially seemed a little too in awe of its subject. Anyone named was the best at what they did, the astronauts were near-superhuman, and nobody ever made any mistakes. However, as the book progressed, the authors seemed to have gained more confidence in their material and Into That Silent Sea became more objective.
