Moonshot The Game

I was given Moonshot The Game as a birthday present back in the late 1990s. It cropped up in conversation recently with a friend, but I couldn't find anything on the Internet to illustrate the conversation. So I decided to put up some information myself. And it is relevant to this blog in a manner of speaking. I later discovered that the game was renamed Tranquillity Base, and is available from History in Action Game at The Galactic Attic.

I have a limited edition of the game, signed by the its designer, Van Overbay. The box contains a board, four LM playing pieces, 28 NASA mission patches, and 180 cards of various types. The object of the game is to be the first to complete six missions - Mercury, Gemini or Apollo - and land on the Moon.

The box.

The board - plus playing pieces, some mission patches and some cards.

A few of of the 180 cards.

The designer's signature.

Light This Candle, Neal Thompson

Of all the Mercury Seven astronauts, Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr always struck me as the most interesting. And not simply because he was the first American into space. Nor because he was the only Mercury astronaut to walk on the Moon. Shepard seemed to have the most interesting personality, switching unpredictably from the "Icy Commander" to the joker who loved mimicking Bill Dana's hapless Hispanic astronaut, José Jimenez. After being diagnosed with Ménière's Disease and subsequently grounded, he hung in there at NASA until a new surgical technique allowed him to fly again. That suggests either a foolish optimism, a frighteningly grim level of determination, or an inhumanly stubborn inability to accept failure. The truth is probably a combination of all three, although heavily weighted in favour of the last.

Admittedly, Shepard does not fare particularly well in Philip Kaufman's film of The Right Stuff. Played by Scott Glenn, he comes across chiefly as an arrogant joker - and his jokes, his impressions of José Jimenez, seem pretty crude stuff to a modern viewer. Clearly there was more to Shepard than the movie showed. The same is true of the HBO mini-series From the Earth to the Moon (Shepard is played by Ted Levine, better known as Lieutenant Stottlemeyer in Monk). Strangely, there are few books about Alan Shepard - in fact, in the prologue to Light This Candle Neal Thompson writes, "A quick Internet search told me that, except for a thin 1962 young-adult book, no biography existed on America's first astronaut". Happily, Thompson decided to rectify this oversight himself.

Light This Candle, subtitled "The Life and Times of Alan Shepard, America's First Spaceman", opens with Shepard's childhood in rural New Hampshire. If there's a common factor becoming apparent in the biographies of astronauts, it's that they all exhibited an early interest in aeroplanes. An early pivotal event for most seems to have been a ride in an aircraft as a child, followed by spending time at the local aerodrome and then taking flying lessons. This is certainly what led Shepard to become a naval aviator. His career in the US Navy did not start spectacularly - he was initially an ordinary student at Annapolis, and nearly flunked. But he appeared to undergo some sort of sea-change, and from that moment on was almost fanatically driven - in sport, in his career, even in his pursuit of the woman who became his wife.

Throughout the book, Shepard is repeatedly quoted as saying that his ambition was always "to be first". It characterised his time in the Navy - mastering a skill such as landing on a carrier at night at a much younger age than his contemporaries, for example. It was his driving need to be first that led Shepard to Project Mercury and, ultimately, put him in the capsule of Freedom 7 on May 5 1961. It's not that Shepard was the best at everything, as Thompson makes clear, but that he used every weapon in his considerable armoury to make sure he got what he wanted. He was known as a charmer, a ladies' man, a back-stabber, a consummate politician, fierce in training, and definitely at the top of his profession (as all the Mercury astronauts were). If he was not the best, he certainly made sure that those who counted thought he was. That's one aspect of the man that The Right Stuff movie doesn't really get across. In the film, his choice as the first American into space seems more the result of luck than hard work and careful politicking.

Shepard's ambition is clear in every incident recounted in Light This Candle. The time, for example, when he almost had Gordon Cooper bumped from his Mercury flight, Faith 7, and the flight assigned to himself... But then Shepard was diagnosed with Ménière's Disease, a condition where fluid builds up in the inner ear, and so grounded. His astronaut career was over. His Gemini flight with Tom Stafford was given to Gus Grissom and John Young. Most people, having the career for which they had fought so hard come crashing down about their ears, would have tried to put as much distance between it and themselves. Not so Shepard. He became the Chief of the Astronaut Office, responsible for astronaut training, availability, readiness; and supplying pilot evaluations of equipment. I can't imagine what that would have been like. It might well have been the hardest thing Shepard ever did. And he did it for five years.

Happily, a new surgical technique corrected Shepard's Ménière's Disease, and he was returned to full flight status. He promptly politicked himself into command of Apollo 13. If Shepard had been unpopular before as the "Icy Commander" of the Astronaut Office, he was even less so after that. But he and his crew - Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa - needed more time to train and so were bumped to Apollo 14. Did Shepard deserve an Apollo mission? He was the oldest of the Apollo astronauts, and had not flown at all during Gemini. In fact, his only flight had been a 15-minute sub-orbital hop. Thompson doesn't really get to grips with this question, although he does recount how Cooper was furious - especially since Shepard's Apollo career happened at Cooper's expense.

Thompson is a journalist and Light This Candle is written in a journalistic style with simple, assertive prose. Thompson does give direct quotes, and even thoughts, by those who feature in his book, but each of these is referenced by an endnote. He has clearly done his homework. Light This Candle is an easy and informative read. Thompson is not afraid to describe Shepard's faults and flaws - this is no hagiography, but a book which attempts to understand its subject. And once Thompson has dealt with Shepard's childhood and his pre-NASA career, he really begins to get a grip on Shepard. But perhaps that's only a reflection of the amount of information available on those respective parts of Shepard's life.

Shepard was clearly a complex man, and probably not a very nice one. Thompson has written an honest biography of Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. And of the few astronaut biographies I have read so far, Light This Candle is easily the best. Recommended.

Light This Candle, Neal Thompson (2004, Crown Publishers, ISBN 0-609-61001-5, 399 pp)

Into That Silent Sea, Francis French and Colin Burgess

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)

The Lunar Exploration Scrapbook, Robert Godwin

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)

Apollo Training - Apollo Spacecraft & Systems Familiarization

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 Power
4 - Environment Control
5 - Guidance and Control
6 - Propulsion
7 - Communications
8 - Sequencing
9 - 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)

Virtual Apollo, Scott P Sullivan

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)

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)