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)

A New Year

It was my intention when I started this blog to read a book each month about the space race, and then post a review of it to this blog. Unfortunately, I've not managed to keep to that schedule, and there have been a couple of months when nothing has appeared here. Apologies. I'm hoping I'll be better organised this year, and manage to post more regularly.

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)

Update Coming Soon

I've been a bit too busy the last couple of months to read and review a book from my collection. While that situation hasn't really changed, I am currently reading We Have Capture by Tom Stafford. So there will be a new review going up soon.

Journey to the Moon, Eldon C Hall

There are a large number of books about the Apollo programme. There are also many books about specific aspects of the Apollo programme - the missions, the people, the hardware, the science... Eldon C Hall's Journey to the Moon, however, focuses on one very narrow element of NASA's project to put a man on the Moon: the development of the Apollo Guidance Computer.

The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) did exactly what its name suggestions - it controlled the navigation functions of the Apollo spacecraft. There was one in the Command Module, and another in the Lunar Module. Designed and built in the early 1960s, it was one of the first production computers to use integrated circuits. It was developed by MIT Instrument Laboratory, but built by Raytheon.

By modern standards, the AGC was crude and not at all powerful. This hardly surprising - computing was still its late infancy, and integrated circuits were so new they were both unreliable and expensive. Happily, advances in IC manufacture during the AGC's development period improved both these factors. Reliability, of course, was paramount - astronauts could not afford for the AGC to crash or malfunction while en route to the Moon.

As someone who works in information technology, I was expecting Journey to the Moon to be a technical read, perhaps similar to books such as CJ Date's Database in Depth or Andrew Tanenbaum's Operating Systems: Design and Implementation. Computing, however, was a very different field during the 1960s - Journey to the Moon is more electronics engineering than it is computing.

Hall is an engineer by trade, and it shows in his prose. The writing in Journey to the Moon is at best plain, and at worst a bizarre engineering-speak which considers subjects or verbs superfluous. Despite this, the book is still readable - although I will confess that much of the maths was over my head.

Much of Journey to the Moon describes the project management aspects of the AGC's development. The manufacture and specification of its various modules is also described in depth. I found this less interesting than I would have done of, say, its operating system. More information on programming the AGC might well have been given in the appendices, but I'll never know - while the text referred to appendices, the copy of the book I purchased had none.

If you're interested specifically in the AGC, then you'll probably find Journey to the Moon a useful addition to your library. Otherwise, it's probably too arcane for most enthusiasts of Apollo. For those interested in further reading, here are a couple of useful links: Virtual AGC Page, MIT's site on the AGC, AGC schematics.

Journey to the Moon, Eldon C Hall (1996, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, ISBN 1-56347-185-X, 226pp)

Apollo EECOM: Journey of a Lifetime, Sy Liebergot

EECOM means Electrical, Environmental and Communication systems. The flight controller filling this role operates from the Mission Operations Control Room during manned space flights. Sy Liebergot was EECOM for Apollos 8 - 15, and EGIL (Electrical, General Instrumentation and Life support) during the Skylab missions. This book is his autobiography.

Given that Apollo EECOM was published by Apogee Books, most readers of it are going to be interested first and foremost in Liebergot's career with NASA. The book, however, opens with his childhood - and it was not a pleasant one. His father was a small-time crook, and Liebergot and his siblings spent time in foster homes. After a stint in the Army Weather Observers Corps, Liebergot went to work in the aerospace industry in California, before transferring across to NASA.

Liebergot is unflinchingly honest in Apollo EECOM - about himself, his life, his family, and his colleagues. Many of the latter come across as unpleasant individuals, although to be fair Liebergot admits he was no different. Interestingly - and this ties in with comments I made below in my review of Harrison H Schmitt's Return to the Moon - Liebergot mentions one or two people whose careers which were blighted by flight director Chris Kraft. And simply because those people had disagreed with Kraft. Much as been made of Apollo-era NASA's management systems, and how they were crucial in getting a man on the Moon. And yet, from all that I've read, they still appear to follow the "charismatic leader" model. Kraft is a case in point. His authority was absolute. NASA was not a meritocracy - it was based upon the perception of excellence by those in authority. And that perception - as seems clear from Apollo EECOM - was often based upon personality.

Liebergot himself came close to suffering the same fate but, as he appears to be fond of saying (and writes repeatedly throughout Apollo EECOM), he "dodged the bullet".

Another telling incident which demonstrates this occurred during Apollo 10 when a fellow member of Mission Operations Control threatened to violence against Liebergot because he had not been "personally briefed". Yes, different times then- but no matter how competent someone is, that sort of behaviour should be seen as unacceptable.

Apollo EECOM is very good on technical detail and personalities, and there's no doubt Liebergot followed an interesting career. He not only discusses Apollo 13 in depth, but also mentions his peripheral involvement in Ron Howard's film. Unfortunately, Liebergot's writing style leaves much to be desired. While his tone is honest and friendly, the book often seems to be written more like a memo or report - especially its strange tendency throughout to punctuate sections with italicised concluding sentences. For example,

"... What a beautiful sight it was to see the Command Module on the main chutes and then splashing down in view of the recovery carrier. We were all so relieved and so very proud.

For us flight controllers, the mission was a success."

There are no great insights in Apollo EECOM, but despite the clumsy writing it's an entertaining read. Liebergot's role in the Apollo programme means those chapters detailing his career as flight controller are the most interesting to a reader such as myself. He not only describes his job in great detail (and most especially during Apollo 13), but also relates many interesting anecdotes from his time at NASA. There's also a CD-ROM with the book, containing audio of the EECOM loop during Apollos 13 and 15, a Quicktime panorama of Mission Control, and 55-minute video presentation by Liebergot about the Apollo 13 explosion.

Liebergot's honesty - a book like Apollo EECOM could all too easy have become self-aggrandising - outweighs, I think, any deficiencies in his prose. You could do a lot worse if you were interested in reading about life in Mission Control during Apollo.

Apollo EECOM:Journey of a Lifetime, Sy Liebergot, with David M Harland (2003, Apogee Books, ISBN 1-896522-96-3, 199pp + appendices and CD-ROM)

Note: Liebergot has a webpage at http://www.apolloeecom.com/

Return to the Moon, Harrison H Schmitt

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)