ROCKET MEN
Craig Nelson
John Murray, $39.99, pbk
Published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, Craig Nelson's Rocket Men is actually a far, far better book than this might suggest.
For starters, it is a great deal more than merely a recap of the Apollo 11 voyage and the landing by Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin.
Included, for instance, is an account of the parallel efforts by the old Soviet Union to beat the United States to the Moon.
Rocket Men ranges over the whole postwar history of space exploration up to the end of the Apollo series and, in a concluding chapter, discusses the great failure of the space race - the continuation of inter-planetary exploration - and the great risks involved for the future of the human race in not progressing beyond the frontiers reached all those years ago.
It also discusses the geopolitical forces influential on the project and especially the determination and indeed the success of the military, in the aftermath of the Apollo programme, to secure space for its own purposes, a frightening prospect for the future of mankind.
One feature that stood out for me was Nelson's very obvious recognition that the moon landing represented an astounding engineering effort, from von Braun's work on the rocket needed to carry the heavy payload into zero gravity, to the primitive computerware that kept the moon landing vehicle functioning (remember, Apple Computers introduced the Apple II, the first widely distributed personal computer, only in 1977) when Armstrong stepped on to the Moon in 1969.
Some 400,000 individuals worked on all aspects of the Apollo programme, which in eight or so years went from virtually nothing to success - a tribute to both the creativity of the human mind when marshalled for a collective purpose and to America's extraordinary financial resources.
Nelson's account is unlike any other I have read and certainly bears no comparison with the imaginative efforts of fiction writers like Tom Wolfe or Norman Mailer.
It is one of those classic America histories, packed with facts - and I mean packed - sandwiched between the personal recollections of the relevant participants.
As to the latter, the author had ready access to Nasa's oral archives, so these recollections have not been "modified", as it were, for public consumption.
Cynics will say the moon landing was an extremely expensive public relations stunt to ensure US dominance in the Cold War after the USSR's early space flight successes.
Certainly, there seems to have been little attempt from the start to make science the goal, and without the planned but abandoned follow-up voyages (including to Mars) and the creation of a permanent base on the Moon, there has been relatively meagre science added to our knowledge about the Moon.
Of all the astronauts who were involved in the Apollo programme, I think the man who did not land on the Moon with Apollo 11 but who piloted the spacecraft to its lunar orbit - Michael Collins - had the most interesting things to say to Nelson and is quoted extensively.
His most telling comment in this context is this: "I think it is premature to make a judgement on the manned space programme and its possible value to mankind.
We simply don't yet know what it might mean to us."
Throughout this story there are plenty of instances of great personal courage, incredible risk-taking - in many areas those involved simply did not know what might happen and could not predict outcomes with reliability - and fantastic engineering feats.
There was a high human cost, too, both during the space race and in its aftermath, when America (and the USSR) turned attention to Earth and away from the stars.
Rocket Men is a substantial and very rewarding read for anyone interested in the factual history of how it all came about, why, and what happened.
It is supported by an excellent bibliography, a full index, but a rather mundane selection of photographs.
- Bryan James is the Books Editor.
