Skip to main content

Apollo 11 - David Whitehouse *****

The problem with doing a book about the Apollo programme is that it's hard to find something that hasn't been said before - but with the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing just weeks away, the publication of this elegant book is extremely timely, and science-reporting veteran David Whitehouse manages to make the story feel fresh, even if you're one of the just 20 per cent of the world population who were alive on the remarkable day in 1969.

Although he has worked a lot with New Scientist, Whitehouse was for many years a TV journalist, and that comes through in his impressively engaging prose as he takes us back to the origins of the US/USSR space race that would lead to the moon landing. He passes through the wartime aspects relatively quickly, but once the two superpowers are flexing their space technology muscles, Whitehouse achieves a near perfect balance between the far less-heard USSR side of the story and the US. This is probably the best bit of the whole book.

Despite the fact we know exactly what will happen, from the low of the Apollo 1 disaster, through Apollo 11 itself to Apollo 13 and the final missions, Whitehouse keeps the drama going. I had to stop reading just before the first moon landing, and was quite irritated. There are only two slight problems with the later part of the book. Firstly, we've been introduced to a whole lot of people from both sides - whether it's the astronauts, the engineers or the mission control people, and it can become a bit of a blur as to who is who. (It's no surprise, bearing in mind hardly anyone can name the numbers  3 and 4 astronauts to land on the Moon.) And secondly, Whitehouse includes quite lengthy chunks of interview with astronauts and ground controllers. I know why he does it, especially as quite a lot of these are interviews he did himself. But, to be honest, these people can be quite dull. (Dull, on the whole, is what you want from an astronaut.)

This doesn't mean, though, that Whitehouse doesn't capture the whole period and transition from science fiction dream to reality wonderfully. An obvious comparison is Deborah Cadbury's 2005 book Space Race, which gives more details on the precursors to Apollo, but doesn't achieve the same level of engagement, or depth on Apollo. For a reader like me, who is part of the 20 per cent (I still remember building a Gemini capsule plastic kit), there's wonderful nostalgia and great insights into aspects that weren't obvious to the public (for example, how often things went wrong). For someone who wasn't around, the book gives a chance to see what we're missing out on now we aren't travelling outside our own space back yard - and perhaps a hint of what may be possible again in the future.
Paperback:  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - Henry Gee *****

In writing this book, Henry Gee had a lot to live up to. His earlier title  The Accidental Species was a superbly readable and fascinating description of the evolutionary process leading to Homo sapiens . It seemed hard to beat - but he has succeeded with what is inevitably going to be described as a tour-de-force. As is promised on the cover, we are taken through nearly 4.6 billion years of life on Earth (actually rather more, as I'll cover below). It's a mark of Gee's skill that what could have ended up feeling like an interminable list of different organisms comes across instead as something of a pager turner. This is helped by the structuring - within those promised twelve chapters everything is divided up into handy bite-sized chunks. And although there certainly are very many species mentioned as we pass through the years, rather than feeling overwhelming, Gee's friendly prose and careful timing made the approach come across as natural and organic.  There was a w
Post a Comment
Read more

On the Fringe - Michael Gordin *****

This little book is a pleasant surprise. That word 'little', by the way, is not intended as an insult, but a compliment. Kudos to OUP for realising that a book doesn't have to be three inches thick to be interesting. It's just 101 pages before you get to the notes - and that's plenty. The topic is fringe science or pseudoscience: it could be heavy going in a condensed form, but in fact Michael Gordin keeps the tone light and readable. In some ways, the most interesting bit is when Gordin plunges into just what pseudoscience actually is. As he points out, there are elements of subjectivity to this. For example, some would say that string theory is pseudoscience, even though many real scientists have dedicated their careers to it. Gordin also points out that, outside of denial (more on this a moment), many supporters of what most of us label pseudoscience do use the scientific method and see themselves as doing actual science. Gordin breaks pseudoscience down into a n
Post a Comment
Read more

Michael D. Gordin - Four Way Interview

Michael D. Gordin is a historian of modern science and a professor at Princeton University, with particular interests in the physical sciences and in science in Russia and the Soviet Union. He is the author of six books, ranging from the periodic table to early nuclear weapons to the history of scientific languages. His most recent book is On the Fringe: Where Science Meets Pseudoscience (Oxford University Press). Why history of science? The history of science grabbed me long before I knew that there were actual historians of science out there. I entered college committed to becoming a physicist, drawn in by the deep intellectual puzzles of entropy, quantum theory, and relativity. When I started taking courses, I came to understand that what really interested me about those puzzles were not so much their solutions — still replete with paradoxes — but rather the rich debates and even the dead-ends that scientists had taken to trying to resolve them. At first, I thought this fell under
Post a Comment
Read more