Apollo 11 – 1969 (Including Saturn V, CM-107, SM-107, LM-5)

Citation

(2009), "Apollo 11 – 1969 (Including Saturn V, CM-107, SM-107, LM-5)", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 81 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2009.12781fae.003

Apollo 11 – 1969 (Including Saturn V, CM-107, SM-107, LM-5)

Article Type: Book reviews From: Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology: An International Journal, Volume 81, Issue 6

Christopher Riley and Phil Dolling

On 20 July 1969, US Astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon. But, it had taken 400,000 men and women across the USA to put him and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin there. Achieving technical miracles and overcoming bureaucratic battles, daunting setbacks and tragedies, Apollo's engineers and scientists worked out how to transport human beings and their home comforts across a quarter of a million miles of hostile space, to live and work on the surface of an unexplored alien world.

The fact that all this was achieved before the age of micro-computers, mobile phones and the internet, when slide rules were still in every engineer's top pocket, is even more exceptional. The seven million engineered parts invented to fly a single mission all had to work perfectly.

Forty years on, the reality of just how difficult it was to achieve a lunar landing in the mid-twentieth century is recounted in this book. Presented in the successful Haynes Manual format with original NASA technical illustrations and stunning archive photographs – some previously unpublished, the down-to-earth text takes the reader behind the scenes to look at every aspect of the Apollo 11 mission, from the raw fire-breathing power of the Saturn V rocket to the development of the astronauts' space suits. Unique “how it works” and “how you fly it” guides give an insight into launch procedures, “flying” and landing the Lunar Module, walking on the Moon, and the Earth re-entry procedure. This fascinating book chronicles the audacity of the engineers who dared to dream that such a voyage was possible and then made it happen.

Dr Christopher Riley is a Writer, Broadcaster and Film Maker. He was just old enough to remember the tail end of the Apollo moon shots in 1972. Since then he has made up for the lack of Moon landings by presenting, directing, producing or consulting on almost 30 films and TV documentaries about Apollo, including the multi-award-winning In the Shadow of the Moon, which won the world cinema audience award at the 2007 Sundance film festival. During his career, he has floated weightless on board both Russian and European Space Agency parabolic flights, and has ridden on two of NASA's astrobiology missions, chasing the Leonid meteor showers around the world for BBC News.

Phil Dolling is an award-winning Executive Producer. He has worked for the BBC on many television programmes including Tomorrow's World, Space, Human Instinct, James May's 20th Century and Earth: The Power of the Planet. He was also in charge of the coverage of the Total Eclipse in 1999. As well as producing programmes, Phil has written books and articles on the science and technology of the twentieth century. He was lucky enough to be a small boy in the 1960s when his keen interest in the Apollo missions began.

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