

Find my personal ‘Quote of the Book’ on pg.319::

“Pete Conrad used to defuse the question [of what was it like to stand on the Moon] by answering “Super! Really enjoyed it!”.”



Then place a bookmark on pg 32 where a crew list for the Apollo missions (11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17) which reached the surface of the Moon can be found. Further detailed information is to be found in the Appendix at the back of Michael Collins’ superb 1974 book “Carrying The Fire”.



If you’re reading either of the 2006 or 2009



Find my personal ‘Quote of the Book’ on pg.319::

“Pete Conrad used to defuse the question [of what was it like to stand on the Moon] by answering “Super! Really enjoyed it!”.”



Then place a bookmark on pg 32 where a crew list for the Apollo missions (11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17) which reached the surface of the Moon can be found. Further detailed information is to be found in the Appendix at the back of Michael Collins’ superb 1974 book “Carrying The Fire”.



If you’re reading either of the 2006 or 2009 Bloomsbury paperbacks; the pagination is identical.



Right, now let’s go …



It is firstly important to grasp is a sense of perspective. The Space Shuttle patrolled a mere 200 miles above earth. Project Apollo was of a different order of magnitude entirely; travelling 240,000 miles into deep space to reach our planet’s Moon. It was only from Apollo that the entirety of our round, blue, world was seen, hanging there without a picture hook, in Space. By contrast, the Space Shuttle has, alas, though importantly, been but an interesting earth-tethered experiment in the feasibility of generating commercial interest in Space.



To me, the strength of Andrew Smith’s book lies in the clear and shining proof of his structured, gentle, but insatiable, curiosity. But I so nearly didn’t get there. This book begins with his childhood memories, living in California, of the day that Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. I have both heard and read to saturation point too many individual memories of the genre “Where I was, and what I was doing, when X happened”: admittedly where X is most commonly the death of John Lennon, or of Diana, Princess of Wales, or of JR Ewing; or of ….. NO MORE. PLEEEESE!!!



I was also less than enthusiastic when, by now feeling thoroughly uncomfortably unsettled, I sensed that the direction of this book just might be heading off towards nothing much more than a predictable series of trite interviews with a gaggle of astronauts.



How wrong could I have been? And what IS the collective noun for astronauts?



Smith’s writing developed and began to stalk me. Here I found a man who seemed almost as interested in the tech of Project Apollo (and mention of Mercury & Gemini) as in the makeup of the astronauts. I smiled at his description of Dick Gordon [Command Module Pilot (CMP), Apollo 12]) on pg 82: “He talks about space the way your neighbour might discuss aphids over the garden fence.” he discusses the engineers, and other staff at NASA; and the politics of it all (Moon first, safety (almost) last: pg 150: “The Lunar Module [LM] has been compared to a Stradivarius violin in the artfulness of its design and construction, but its fuel oxidiser was one of the most corrosive substances on Earth. A miniscule leak and the ‘Eagle’ [Apollo 11] would eat itself.”).



Smith has a certain way with words. At the end of his book, returning to a discussion of the politics of Project Mercury, he portrays that extraordinary time with an example of wonderful clarity and insight, pg.336:: “… the pilots couldn’t believe it when this steady approach [Boeing’s X-20 orbital plane] was sacrificed to the idea of farting a man into the sky, then scooping him up from the sea as he bobbed about like a helpless infant in his turkey-foil romper suit.” How I laughed! Then on pg.220: the seemingly rhetorical question ‘will man return [to the Moon] today?’ is posed. Smith thinks not; justifying his assertion that taxpayers in a democracy will refuse to pay the prohibitive costs for, amongst other things, considerably improved safety.



Smith’s observations on 1960s bathtub technology continue. Between the covers of this book is a visit to those peak Meccano days which I thoroughly enjoyed. Choice delights (a delight is one where tragedy did not result) are laid out; such as that on pg 48: where I learnt of the significant extent of reliance placed on physical, as opposed to modern digital, technologies. As events later proved that was no bad thing. During the return of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module [LM] Eagle to the Command Module [CM] Columbia, Buzz Aldrin inadvertently broke the key which armed the ascent engine. Only quick thinking, and a pen jammed into the lock, saved the mission. But there again, it should not be overlooked that on pg.195: the reader is informed that the computer on board the ‘Eagle’ had a memory of just 36KB. That’s a fraction of the 1 GB RAM contained in an Apple i-phone 5 today (2013).



Timbre changes through this book. I fell quiet as I absorbed the consequences from pg. 143: a lesson from a British Royal Air Force pilot flying with the Red Arrows: “ He also taught me about the constant calculation that goes on in the mind of a pilot in relation to speeds and heights and angles, noting that it’s perfectly possible to reach the top of a low-level loop and suddenly apprehend that an unfortunate miscalculation moments ago makes it a mathematical certainty that you will be hitting the runway in 4.3 seconds, at a speed of 358 nautical miles per hour. In fact, one of the Red Arrows had done this just the previous year.” Similar happened a couple of summers ago above Bournemouth (England). I shared Smith’s sadness of the prospect that men of John Young’s (LMP, Apollo 12) calibre will pg.220: now certainly fall foul of the present-day obsession of a society that believes in thinking ever more homogenously, where commercialisation and brand identity are all that matter. Smith is genuinely angry that Young, a man exceptionally short on the unappealing qualities of vanity and narcissism, would never be selected today.



I chortled at pgs.247-249: the ‘toilet’ humour and physical challenges of urinating and poo-ing on Apollo are so charmingly and eloquently described. Funny, of course, to the reader; but of VERY real concern to the astronaut and his companions, in what was physically an extremely restricted space. Michael Collins’ description of those same procedures in his book, “Carrying The Fire” should likewise not be missed. Back to “Moondust”, and pg 86: entertained me as to how Michael Collins once speculated on the unmentioned question of travel expenses (The NASA rate of 8c per mile would have yielded a very useful $80,000). He understandably lets it drop when he discovers that another person had already tested this; only to be presented with a bill of $185 million for one launch-ready Saturn V rocket!



Smith largely downplays what must have been his most significant challenge; that of persuading as many as possible of the surviving Moonwalkers to open up and grant him one, or in some cases more than one, interview. He won through by respecting their personal schedules, and politely working around them. The best thing about these interviews is how Smith keeps his reader fully, or what feels like pretty comprehensively, informed on what he’s thinking as each encounter takes place, and each interview progresses. Suddenly I became aware that here was a remarkably astute interviewer; one who is gracious enough to seek the best from his subject, but at the same time not to betray the relationship of trust, let alone to betray. He clearly relates well to his subjects; even the notoriously self-contained & publicity shy Neil Armstrong eventually warms and unwinds a little. I thought Smith pin-sharp in his analysis that: p.156: “Old fashioned fame was acquired, but celebrity is bestowed: it only exists in relationship with the audience-jury we supply and comprise.” and his sighting of how pg.184: Alan Bean’s conscience knew that it would be all too easy to change actual memories from life into memories that he wished he had. Pg.169: explores how that ‘magic’ never left the lunar astronauts is made manifest when watching Al Reinart’s Oscar-winning film For All Mankind. I’ve seen that film. It is jaw-droppingly amazing & pin-sharp.



The pressure must have been, and continue to be (for those alive still) considerable. On pg.305: Gene Cernan (LMP, Apollo 17) bewails: “But we didn’t put ourselves in front of the public, which is what celebrities tend to do. We just got thrust there.” I really felt for him (I have never been a fan of celebrity). It is Smith who endeavours to unravel the puzzle: pg.289: “… our fascination is not about them; it’s about us.” Smith concludes that there is a significant difference between the Apollo Commanders, who were tasked with piloting the lunar modules: Armstrong, Conrad, Shepard, Scott, Young, and Cernan; and their crews. On pg.332 he rationalises Deke Slayton’s choice of Apollo LMPs as picked: “ … for their rarefied focus and tightly reined imaginations, for their relative immunity to doubt, ambivalence, and vacillation …” In one word, ‘impregnability’. I wonder how many employers today select their staff by applying quite such a thorough analytical methodology?



4.5 stars. I finished this book really enjoying it. But Michael Collins’ “Carrying The Fire” beats it.

