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As the only scientist to walk on the Moon, it probably comes as no surprise to discover that Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt's contribution to books about manned space exploration is a somewhat dry text-book setting forth an argument for returning to the Moon.Schmitt's proposal in Return to the Moon
is based entirely on Helium-3 mining, a substance found in relative abundance on the Moon but extremely rare on Earth. This would be used in fusion reactors, and is a cleaner and more efficient method of power generation than nuclear, coal, gas or oil. The small amounts needed to generate sufficient power for a small city for a year make Helium-3 extremely valuable - so much so that 2500 tonnes would give the energy equivalent of some $1.75 trillion of coal (at 2003 prices)!
The chapter headings of Return to the Moon show how Schmitt argues his case - 'Apollo: the Legacy', 'Energy: the Global Future', 'Moon Rocket Economics', 'Helium-3 Power Economics', 'Lunar Helium-3 Economics', 'Helium-3 Production Economics', 'Organizational Options for a Return, 'Management: Lessons from Apollo', 'NASA: Restructuring for Deep Space', 'Investors: the Best Approach', 'Law: Space Resources' and 'Humans: Roles in Space'. As can be seen, Schmitt presents a chiefly economic argument. This makes sense - a new industry on the Moon will involve vast start-up costs.(By comparison, the Apollo programme cost $16 billion in 1969 dollars - around $112 billion at 2005 rates. In 1968 alone, the US spent $88 billion on the Vietnam War. And to date, the war in Iraq has cost the US some $540 billion.)
Schmitt's argument is compelling - as a motive for returning to the Moon, Helium-3 fits the bill nicely. He presents an excellent financial case, and provides a number of alternative methodologies and their associated costings. His prose is clear and concise and, while somewhat impersonal overall, where appropriate his opinions are plainly presented.Where Schmitt's argument begins to stumble for me is in the management models he proposes. In the chapter on 'Organization Options for a Return', he discusses a variety of approaches, from an all-government to an all-private initiative. He plumps squarely for all-private, but I feel he over-sells it. I suspect this is a US perspective - which doesn't travel all that well across the Atlantic. To me, the profit motive, or even revenue maximisation, is a poor control mechanism for such socially, technologically and scientifically important projects. Schmitt gives as an example power generation, and suggests that privately-funded and -run fusion reactors would be put into operation faster, and run more efficiently, than public-run ones. But this argument ignores the fact that a utility such as electricity is a social need. If a privately-run reactor proves uneconomical, then it will be shut down... even if this leaves households without vital electricity. Some form of government control is necessary to ensure vital services are provided.Schmitt also analyses the management systems in use during the Apollo programme. He is scathing about the bureaucracy which built up in NASA after Apollo. To me, US management techniques are often over-reliant on the concept of charismatic leadership. The manager is the one with the vision, and all others must "buy in". If you have the wrong person in that role, your project is doomed. The fact that Apollo put in place management systems to reduce this risk doesn't strike me as remarkable, merely sensible. And common practice in other parts of the world. Schmitt, however, not only gives historical examples of such systems, but is also quick to praise, or condemn, NASA's upper management during Apollo, and both the Challenger and Columbia disasters. In other words, such systems are dependent on the quality of leadership, which strikes me as undermining his argument.
Another aspect of Apollo mentioned in the book is NASA's subsequent graying of its workforce. Apollo was designed, built, operated and maintained by a young workforce. For ten years, they worked 16-hour days and 7-day weeks. They were motivated to do so by the importance of the Apollo programme, by the very nature of the project - to put a man on the Moon. The political backing Apollo received from various presidents and their Administrations only strengthened this. It's true enough that such conditions no longer exist, either in US society or anywhere else in the world. And it's equally true that they're unlikely to occur again. It's not simply the political will first presented by Kennedy, and then by his successors. But - and Schmitt makes no mention of this - those involved were mostly "baby boomers", the first generation born after the war. World War II cast a deep shadow during that time. It no longer does - in fact, the nature of war, and society's response to it, has changed drastically since then. I very much doubt the kind of sustained effort maintained by the Apollo engineers could be repeated, even by a workforce as young as that one was.In essence, I agree with Schmitt's proposal. We should go back to the Moon. And if it's Helium-3 which draws us there, then so be it. Schmitt makes a strong economic argument, but I'm not so convinced on the management and operational approaches he suggests. (By contrast, his suggested reorganisation of NASA makes a great deal of sense.) Return to the Moon is an interesting and informative treatment of its subject, but I suspect its importance exists only in the minds of a small group of like-minded people. Which is a shame. Recommended, nonetheless.Return to the Moon, Harrison H Schmitt (2006, Copernicus Books, ISBN 0-387-24285-6, 328pp)
The News Reference books (there is also one for the Lunar Module) were produced by NASA in the 1960s. They are much sought after by collectors of space memorabilia. In 2006, Apogee Books published facsimile editions, available only from their web site.
This book deals only with the Apollo CSM, and features detailed descriptions of every aspect of it - from construction through to operation. It is copiously illustrated, with artists' renderings and diagrams. There is, for example, a map of the instrument panels in the Command Module, with a description outlining the function of each switch, dial, or readout. Diagrams also explain the workings of various systems, such as the fuel cell system, the reaction control system, the oxygen system.In fact, there is so much detail in the News Reference, you have to wonder exactly who it was written for. I wouldn't have thought the general press would use a fraction of the book's contents. For anyone interested in, or writing specifically about, the Apollo project, however, it's an invaluable reference book. Recommended.Apollo Spacecraft News Reference (NAA Command/Service Module) (2006, Apogee Books, ISBN 1-894959-49-9, 104 pp + appendices)
In 1997, astronaut Jerry Linenger spent 132 days aboard the Mir space station. During that period, he wrote frequent letters to his fourteen-month-old son as a means of keeping a connection with his Earth-bound family. Those letters have now been collected in this book.
Linenger's stay aboard Mir was not without its hazards. At one point there was a fire, which threatened to kill those aboard before being brought under control. The aging station also needed constant maintenance. But each day, Linenger would take the time to write a letter. Sometimes he discussed what had happened that day, other times he would explain something of the station's workings. Or he would describe what he could see of the Earth below; or the hopes and dreams he had - for himself or for his son.In some respects, Letters from Mir reads a little like a diary of Linenger's stay aboard Mir. But mostly it reads exactly as what it is: a series of letters to his son. And that, for me, is what made the book so hard to finish. There are some interesting details about life on the space station, but I found all the "our great nation" and loving fatherhood stuff a little too much for me. Of course, that's what the book is, so I wasn't surprised to find it in there. There's also a sense you're reading someone's private letters, an illusion not really dispelled by the fact that it's a published book you're holding in your hands.Letters from Mir is exactly what its title says. I suspect I would find Linenger's other book about his stay aboard the space station, Off the Planet, a much more interesting read.Letters from Mir, Jerry M Linenger (2003, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-140009-5, 207 pp)
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)
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)
As the only scientist to walk on the Moon, it probably comes as no surprise to discover that Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt's contribution to books about manned space exploration is a somewhat dry text-book setting forth an argument for returning to the Moon.
