Download Novel Over The Moon
Elena Piersanti
Jump through the sections above, or read on for our lists of Apollo retellings; books on the moon, past and future; understanding Apollo; and Apollo photo books. And check back as we approach the anniversary for more!
This autobiography of astronaut Michael Collins, who orbited the moon alone while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the lunar surface, sets the standard for astronaut-authored memoirs and provides a definitive but personal account of Apollo 11. "Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journey" has been rereleased as a 50th anniversary edition.
"Moonbound: Apollo 11 and the Dream of Spaceflight" is a full-color graphic novel that tells the story of Apollo 11, starting way back when the movements of the planets were calculated and speeding through to the development of new technology and science that made the first steps on the moon possible.
"Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11" is a narratively-focused history of the moon landing that Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins called "the best book on Apollo that [he] had ever read." What more is there to say?
"Apollo 11: The Inside Story" weaves together in-depth interviews with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan, David Scott, John Young, Alan Shepard, Charlie Duke, Al Bean, Gordon Cooper, Al Worden, Walt Cunningham, Tom Stafford, Dick Gordon, John Glenn, Pete Conrad, Edgar Mitchel, James Irwin, Stu Roosa, Ron Evans, Deke Slayton, Wally Schirra and more to tell an authoritative story about NASA's mission to land on the moon.
Books for kids will appear in an upcoming list, but we just had to mention this new autobiography by NASA computing legend Katherine Johnson. Johnson's story was publicized by the recent book and movie "Hidden Figures," and through her work with early NASA she had an inside view of the new science and mathematics developed for the epic moonshot. Johnson's work made the Apollo missions possible, and this book will surely inspire children (mathematically-inclined and otherwise) to reach for the stars.
From the moon's formation 4.5 billion years ago to potential lunar colonies, "Moon: An Illustrated History" steps through 100 past (and near-future) milestones for our neighboring world. The moon has fascinated humanity for millennia, prompting ancient cults, scientific developments and much more. With this book, and its rich illustrations, astrobiologist David Warmflash weaves a tale of lunar geology and humanity's relationship to the dusty orb.
Leonard David, a space journalist and Space.com contributor, explores the past and future of the moon and details how private companies, the U.S., and its allies and competitors might get to the moon and harvest potential resources there. Is a new space race imminent? And if so, what might it look like?
In "The Moon: A History for the Future," Oliver Morton poetically explores how human understanding of the moon has shaped our knowledge of Earth, and how it's spurred technological growth and scientific thought as well as flights of science fiction fancy.
Space author (and Space.com contributor) Rod Pyle profiles the pilots, scientists and engineers who worked behind the scenes to make Apollo possible, as well as the people in front of the space race spotlight. Some examples from the promotional material: "Joe Engle was a daring test pilot who set multiple records in the dangerous X-15 rocket plane and later commanded the space shuttle three times. John Houbolt was an engineer who convinced NASA leadership that the most effective way to land on the moon was to use a seemingly risky technique called 'Lunar Orbit Rendezvous,' which worried NASA planners but was the only way to make the landing possible by 1969. Margaret Hamilton was an accomplished mathematician and one of the first female software engineers to design programs for spaceflight software that proved critical to the success of the moon landing. John Casani was a brash young engineer who took over the struggling Voyager program to reconnoiter the outer planets at a time when success was far from certain. And Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to travel into space aboard Soviet spacecraft Vostok 6." Pyle also includes profiles of more well-known figures, such as Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Yuri Gagarin.
How do we understand a transformative event like the Apollo missions to the moon? Many present it as proof of American ingenuity and success, but there's much more to the story. In "Apollo's Legacy: Perspectives on the Moon Landings," space historian Roger Launiuis probes the impacts Apollo had technologically, scientifically and politically, as well as analyzing what we can draw from it to understand the country's modern space program. The slim volume is written as a scholarly text, but it's accessible to anybody with an interest in space history and the circumstances that spawned Apollo.
In the new book "Picturing Apollo 11: Rare Views and Undiscovered Moments," spaceflight historian J.L. Pickering and journalist John Bisney paint an incredible, vivid picture of what it was really like to be a part of the Apollo 11 mission. The book features a wealth of images from 1969, primarily from January through the lunar landing in July, which show lesser-seen scenes from the Apollo program. From difficult training moments to mundane meetings, the images in this book really humanize the larger-than-life Apollo 11 astronauts. It is easy to look back at Apollo 11 through a romanticized lens, but this book makes it clear just how gritty, funny and real the mission really was. Read our coverage of the book here.
Space.com is the premier source of space exploration, innovation and astronomy news, chronicling (and celebrating) humanity's ongoing expansion across the final frontier. Originally founded in 1999, Space.com is, and always has been, the passion of writers and editors who are space fans and also trained journalists. Our current news team consists of Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik; Editor Hanneke Weitering, Senior Space Writer Mike Wall; Senior Writer Meghan Bartels; Senior Writer Chelsea Gohd, Senior Writer Tereza Pultarova and Staff Writer Alexander Cox, focusing on e-commerce. Senior Producer Steve Spaleta oversees our space videos, with Diana Whitcroft as our Social Media Editor.
On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (1930-) became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. As he took his first step, Armstrong famously said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Apollo 17, the final manned moon mission, took place in 1972.
The American effort to send astronauts to the moon had its origins in an appeal President Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth."
Despite the setback, NASA and its thousands of employees forged ahead, and in October 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, orbited Earth and successfully tested many of the sophisticated systems needed to conduct a moon journey and landing.
In December of the same year, Apollo 8 took three astronauts to the far side of the moon and back, and in March 1969 Apollo 9 tested the lunar module for the first time while in Earth orbit. That May, the three astronauts of Apollo 10 took the first complete Apollo spacecraft around the moon in a dry run for the scheduled July landing mission.
Aldrin joined him on the moon's surface 19 minutes later, and together they took photographs of the terrain, planted a U.S. flag, ran a few simple scientific tests and spoke with President Richard Nixon (1913-94) via Houston.
There would be five more successful lunar landing missions, and one unplanned lunar swing-by. Apollo 13 had to abort its lunar landing due to technical difficulties. The last men to walk on the moon, astronauts Eugene Cernan (1934-2017) and Harrison Schmitt (1935-) of the Apollo 17 mission, left the lunar surface on December 14, 1972.
The Apollo program was a costly and labor-intensive endeavor, involving an estimated 400,000 engineers, technicians and scientists, and costing $24 billion (close to $100 billion in today's dollars). The expense was justified by Kennedy's 1961 mandate to beat the Soviets to the moon, and after the feat was accomplished, ongoing missions lost their viability.
The DecisionThe news was bad in the summer of 1968. A nation reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy now confronted more images of violence in its living rooms: the blood of young soldiers in Vietnam, the blood of demonstrators outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. And even within NASA's world, where these events were overshadowed by the race with the decade, there was bad news. The second unmanned test of the Saturn V moon rocket had been a near disaster. Minutes into the launch the booster began to vibrate badly. Then two of the second-stage engines shut down prematurely. Later, a third engine refused to reignite in space. And if that weren't enough, there were ongoing headaches with the Apollo spacecraft. The redesigned command module was coming along well at North American, and the craft slated for Apollo 7, the command module's manned, earth-orbit debut, was already at the Cape being readied for an October launch. But the lunar module was facing one technical problem after another. From the beginning, engineers at the Grumman Corporation in Bethpage, Long Island, had struggled to keep the lander's weight from exceeding forbidden limits. And there were other woes: faulty wiring, corroded metal, and most serious of all, troubles with the LM's ascent rocket. And when the first manned lunar module was shipped to the Cape in June, quality control inspectors found 100 separate defects. At NASA, no one who heard the reports on the lander was happy with the situation. Apollo 8, the LM's first manned flight, would almost certainly be delayed beyond the end of the year, throwing the whole sequence of Apollo missions into jeopardy. The end-of-the-decade deadline for the lunar landing was slipping out of reach.All that began to change in early August. A plan emerged, elegant in its simplicity, astounding in its boldness, that altered the course of the moon program. It was the brainchild of George Low, the quiet engineering genius who oversaw the development of the Apollo spacecraft from Houston. If Apollo 7 went well in October, Low reasoned, why keep Apollo 8 in earth orbit? Even if the LM wasn't going to be ready for its debut, the second command ship could go to the moon by itself in December. Already, during the spring, Low had quietly raised the possibility of a circumlunar flight in which the joined command module/lunar module pair would execute a figure 8 loop around the moon and then come home. His new plan was even more ambitious. Low wanted to send the command module to the moon by itself, not to fly a figure 8 loop, but to go into lunar orbit. Even without a lunar module, that would let NASA practice the elements of a basic lunar mission: navigating across the vast translunar gulf, executing the precise rocket firings to get into and out of lunar orbit, communicating across a quarter-million miles, and the critical reentry into the earth's atmosphere at hypersonic speeds. Then, by the time the LM was ready -- estimates said February -- Apollo would have taken a giant step forward.But there was another reason for urgency. Reports from the Central Intelligence Agency said the Soviet Union was about to resume flying its new Soyuz spacecraft -- after the first Soyuz crashed, killing its lone cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, in April 1967 -- and were on the verge of sending one around the moon. Most experts doubted the Soviets had the capability to land on the moon before the end of the decade; for one thing, they had yet to test a rocket, like the Saturn V, powerful enough to propel the necessary payload to the lunar surface. Even a lunar orbit flight was probably beyond them. But with the booster they already had, they could fire a Soyuz, with one or two cosmonauts aboard, on a trip around the moon.From the beginning, without warning, the Soviets had upstaged the United States in space with their own spectacular firsts. In 1957 it had been the first earth satellite, Sputnik I. More than three years later it was Yuri Gagarin's one-orbit flight that stunned the world and sparked John Kennedy's decision to go to the moon. Then came the first woman in space, the first multiperson space crew, the first spacewalk. If the Soviets got to the moon first -- even if they did nothing more than loop around it -- the world would hardly notice the difference between that accomplishment and NASA's more difficult lunar orbit mission.There is no way of knowing what would have happened to Low's plan if NASA Administrator James Webb had been in Washington, but the fact was he was not; he and his deputy George Mueller were in Vienna attending a conference. In their absence Associate Administrator Thomas Paine, a bright, young engineer with a penchant for the visionary, was in charge. When Paine's deputy, Apollo program director Sam Phillips, told him about Low's idea Paine immediately saw the logic in it. But it remained to convince Webb, and that might not be easy.Webb was not an engineer. He was, however, a canny bulldog of a politician. When Kennedy said "Go to the moon" it was up to Webb to keep Congress from having second thoughts, which he did by any means of persuasion he found necessary -- including a knack for knowing where congressional skeletons were hidden. Year after year, he was Apollo's champion on the Hill, where it counted most. He had persevered even as the war in Vietnam claimed more and more of Lyndon Johnson's attention and Apollo became a target of congressional opposition. If Americans reached the moon by the end of the decade, it would be due in large measure to Jim Webb. But Webb would not be at NASA to see it; he already knew his tenure would end when Johnson left office.Webb took Paine's call at the American embassy, where there was a secure phone, and then Sam Phillips got on the line. Webb wasn't ready for what he heard. He yelled over the transatlantic phone line, "Are you out of your mind?" Webb reviewed what was apparent to any sane person: They hadn't even flown a manned Apollo spacecraft, and here they were with a scheme to send the second flight to the moon. And with no lunar module! All along, the LM had been thought of as a measure of safety, a lifeboat in case something happened to disable the command ship's rocket engines. Sending the command module by itself only increased the risk of what was already a risky mission. With the Fire still fresh in the memory of the public and the Congress, Webb could only imagine the effect of another space tragedy. He warned his two deputies, "You're putting the agency and the whole program at risk."Webb was right. For all its logic, Low's plan was audacious. Many would look back on it as the boldest decision NASA ever made. Still, by the time Paine and Phillips hung up the phone to Vienna, Webb had agreed to give the idea a chance.In Houston, they were already working on it. Low had asked Chris Kraft, director of Flight Operations, to find out whether his people could be ready to send Apollo 8 to the moon in December. They went ahead with their study in secret. When their office mates asked -- "What's all this lunar stuff you're working on?" -- they replied coolly, "Oh, it's just a what-if type of study..."Within a week Kraft's team had an answer. By the summer of 1968, after years of intensive effort, the basics of sending a manned spacecraft to the moon were all but perfected. The biggest hurdle: finishing the computer software that mission control would need to help Apollo 8 navigate to and from the moon. Making the December launch date would be tight, but Kraft's people were confident they could do it. Meanwhile, at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Wernher von Braun's rocket team reported the problems with the Saturn V were being ironed out. It remained for the Apollo spacecraft to prove itself. If all went well on Apollo 7, slated for October, there wouldn't be anything to stand in the way.
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