bendingunit23

"You reckon she's playing the matress to his Quilt?"- Bernard Cornwell, author of 'the bloody ground'


So many weeks ago I read this book,


I found it very interesting and have been meaning to write a book review on it. So here goes.

It covers the Gemini and early Apollo missions right up to Apollo 10 getting 9 miles from the surface of the moon. One small step for Armstrong indeed. It also covers the Russian space program at the same times, switching back and forth as needed. There is quiet indepth coverage of the Soyuz 1 failures and the Apollo 1 fire. I had always thought that the Apollo 1 astronaughts had burned to death but they didn't. They were wearing space suits for the test as they would have been for launch, many cold insolation layers. They were burnt but could have survived those injuries. What killed them was the toxic fumes produced in cockpit, something that has killed many airline accident victims.

The book also covers the process of deciding who flew when and some of the astronaughts thoughts on why this flight was more important than that one, Apollo's 8, 9 and 12 being the most interesting. Apollo 8 was the first flight to leave Earth's gravity, they were the first human eyes to see the 'darkside' of the moon. Apollo 9 tested the lunar lander in earth orbit. The thought was that Apollo 11 would have some sort of technical problem (which they did) and it would prevent Armstrong and Aldrin from landing on the moon Apollo 12 could have been the first.

All in all a good book, that I would recomend reading.