How Apollo Flew to the Moon: Springer Praxis Books

To me, amongst books, the gold standard for explaining difficult scientific and technological projects and concepts to non-technical readers is Richard Rhodes's "The Making Of The Atomic Bomb". I've long felt that a similar book was needed to explain for us non-techies the other greatest technological achievement of the 20th century--the Apollo moon project. I think this book fills that void. The tone of this book is different from that of Rhodes's. Rhodes's was conceived as an historical epic, beautifully written and researched, while this book, though just as deeply researched, is less formal, sort of as if someone sat down to talk to you to tell, "Well, son, here's how it happened."My own tech level is about that of Popular Mechanics, and my scientific knowledge is on the level of Popular Science, except in Geology, in which I took a number of college level courses. So I'm no expert on these things, though I came to the book with a knowledge of some terms and concepts. This book is much deeper than that, but the writer works you into the concepts and the jargon slowly enough that you begin to get them page by page. By the end, the only subject I was still having a little difficulty with was the navigation and such things as X, Y and Z axes and Refsmmat. I did get them, but only having to go back and re-read some passages several times. But then I bombed badly in trigonometry in high school, so maybe it's a personal mental block.What I found this book especially useful for is in learning and understanding all of NASA's very arcane jargon. I have a number of Spacecraft Films' Apollo DVD sets, which present video and audio of the Apollo missions in a raw footage format, with no narration or notes to help you get what is being said, all numbers and abbreviations and acronyms, by the crew and controllers during the film and audio sequences. But after reading this book, I found myself able to understand most of it. For example, when you listen to the on-board tape recording of the crew during the re-entry phase of the Apollo 8 mission, and you hear them say, "There's the .05 G indicator" and everything starts getting exciting, after reading this book you know why. This understanding adds a whole lot to the enjoyment of watching the videos.I'll echo one complaint of a previous reviewer. That concerns the use of the metric system rather than the standard measurements used by NASA during the missions. Instead of distances given in miles, we get kilometers; instead of feet per second, we get meters. For weights we get kilograms instead of pounds. This takes away a lot of understanding from many readers. The writer explains this in his introduction, saying something like, "when we write the history of Rome, we no longer use such obsolete measurements as cubits and spans", but the difference is that measurements like pounds and miles are not obsolete. They are still used by hundreds of millions of people, in the very country that acutally landed on the moon and from which country there would seem to be the most interest in a book like this. To me, this wasn't a petty gripe. It took away a lot from this book. When you try to impress us, for instance, with the size and power of a Saturn V rocket, it doesn't help when you tell us "The Saturn V was 100 meters tall" when the reader doesn't know how big 100 meters is. To us it could be ten miles or it could be two feet. The measurements could have been given both as metric and standard units without adding too much bulk to the book. This almost made me reduce my ratings from 5 to 4 stars, but I kept it at 5 because the book is helpful in so many other ways, and because the writer seemed to be so genial.I've noticed that a number of very good books on the Apollo and other US space programs have been written, like this one, by Australians, and find this phenomenon to be very interesting. I wondered how much it had to do with the major NASA radio tracking installation at Carnavon. But I think I got a clue while recently watching an Apollo 12 onboard video beamed to Earth during the powering up & checkout of the LEM after docking. Houston tells the crew that they are "Live on TV in Australia right now". So many of the key parts of these missions happened in the middle of the night here in the US with everyone asleep, but that meant they were being shown in prime viewing hours in Australia. It may be, because of this, that more people were watching Apollo in Australia than in the US. So maybe more Australians than Americans are interested in Apollo now, and that justifies the use of metric instead of standard measurements. But I still would have liked the standard.

I have a casual interest in space. I'm not a professional but am fascinating by processes and decisions, how things work. This book covered the type of details related to pivotal decisions in the Apollo Program which get glossed over by more accessible books. For example, how the Apollo Program reached a decision to use 1) a really big rocket, 2) a earth orbit rendezvous or 3) a lunar orbit rendezvous is presented. That type of detail, the people involved and the thought behind each of the proposals was discussed and provide important and fascinating context to the following chapters.The book has a fantastic (and now dog-eared) abbreviation appendix and while I was more fascinated by the early Apollo missions instead of the final scientific missions, Mr. Woods does a fantastic job of relating the scientific importance of the latter Apollo missions.Mr. Woods also does a fantastic job of adding incremental detail to equipment usage such as the guidance computer. Instead of spending an entire single chapter on what the computer does and then referring to it in another chapter dedicated to periods of flight, he introduces the guidance computer early as a more general overview. Then, at moments when it is being used he walks through the detail of how it is used at that moment. Again, the way he does this is perfect. It is contextually relevant to the stage of flight he is describing and his method helped me understand details in equipment operation which I'm certain I would have glossed over had he approached it any other way.The book is chronological but he uses various Apollo programs and the events that occurred during those flights in a way doesn't feel like he's skipping moments. While the flights were different, large macro-type events in each timebase were somewhat similar and Mr. Woods uses examples in ways which make each timebase stand out.I honestly loved this book.My only issue with the book is the scant photographs and somewhat smallish schematics. To augment his descriptions and some of the books photos, I purchased the Saturn Rocket Haynes Guide and spent time on the internet looking for additional detail. The images in Mr. Woods book were fantastic, to be sure, but I wanted more. I realize a book of this size has limited space and as a result I'm certain there are photos the author and others reluctantly had to discard so this does not detract in any way from his work. The Haynes Guide provided some additional important details about the saturn rockets which helped visualize their immense scale and the internet provide the ability to look at larger schematics of items such as the guidance computers.

Great informative book. Technical.

If you followed the Apollo program during the Moon Landings or are just a Space-a-holic who loves space technology you will enjoy this book. W David Woods descriptions are such that you do not need to be a Engineer to follow the development of the program and how the Apollo systems work .. but if you are you will still learn a lot. It is compiled in text book fashion with each system and flight phase covered in depth .. but the book reads continuous from the start of the Apollo program to the Moon Landing.If you like this book .. David's "Haynes" manual on the Saturn V Rocket is a must read.

I don't normally write reviews, but this book deserves one, because it's simply amazing.It is crammed with detailed information that is technical enough for geeks to appreciate but explained so well that most laymen would have no problem interpreting it.Everything is described in detail, from the architecture, the methods and procedures, preparations, systems, checklists, navigation, launch sequence, rocket science, orbital mechanics, TLI, LOI, TEI, the vehicles, the landing, rendezvous and reentry.His prose is exceptionally clear and concise - it has to be because there's so much info to communicate.I loved the examples, anecdotes and excerpts from the voice track.This book is worth every penny, in fact i'd call it a bargain!Well done Mr Woods, sterling job sir.

This is actually a brilliant book. If you are a geek about the Apollo missions this is the book for you. Do I want to know how the ascent stage rendezvoused with the CMS? And why Apollo 11 was different from Apollo 17? Hell yes I want to know that! He covers everything from design to launch, to travel to the moon, to landing, exploring, return and presumably splash-down (I'm still reading it!). Lots of good pictures and illustrationsHas this curious avoidance of equations. Its quite amusing watching the author explain kinetic energy in words. I'm guessing that dumbs down some of the explanations. I also found it a bit 'jumpy' but it is a big subject. Not only does he describe how they did something, but also how it changed on the different missions.My big disappointment is Its not in a standard kindle format (PDF?). This makes it pretty much unreadable on a small screen. That's the major reason it didn't get a five off me.

If you are (like me) fascinated by the subject of Apollo, you will NOT be disappointed by this book. It's packed with information that I hadn't known about before and is extremely detailed and accurate about how this remarkable event in history was achieved. Not so much why (cold war, politics, Kennedy etc) but how. The methods NASA invented to overcome certain obstacles were often remarkable (and occasionally rather Heath-Robinson) and they are all revealed here in fascinating detail. It's highly technical in parts but don't be put off, Woods is a good explainer. Now I've read it, I shall use it to refer back to, almost like a reference book.Thoroughly recommended.

I grew up with a fascination for the Apollo space programme and remember as a child staring at the moon with wonder and thinking that a man had walked about up there. Despite this early interest, I have never read that much about the history of the race to the moon. Of course I watched the movie Apollo 13 and I also collected the ‘Observers‘ books of manned spaceflight, written by Reginald Turnill, when I was young. My interest was rekindled just over a year ago by an Apollo 11 ‘Haynes’ manual I received as a Christmas gift and this led to a desire to explore the history of this programme in more detail.While there are plenty of books full of great photographs, I found it harder to find the more descriptive book I was looking for. In the end I decided that (despite the awful cover art) the book How Apollo Flew to the Moon by W. David Woods appeared to suit my needs. This is quite a technical book and the diagrams and photographs — although they get the job done — are not great. On the other hand the text is well-written and well researched. This is clearly an author who knows his subject well enough to present it quite simply while omitting little of the essential detail.The book starts conventionally enough with a short history of the space race and each of the Apollo missions. I found it really interesting to learn that, while the later Apollo missions were viewed with public apathy and the budget was cut, NASA was actually quite ambitious with a series of ‘J’ missions that utilised upgraded hardware and software to support extended visits to the moon that could carry far more scientific hardware.What made this book outstanding for me is the step-by-step description of a moon flight given in the section from chapter 3 onwards. The content is rather complex (but still readable), covering principles of inertial navigation, celestial mechanics and the communication systems used. If I have one criticism, it is that the author often re-explains something covered in an earlier chapter as if this were a book for dipping in to. I think this description of a space flight is best read as a single narrative from launch to touch-down.The great achievement of this book is that the insights gained do not diminish any of the sense of awe and wonder at what was the apogee of the manned space exploration programme.

I've been interested in Apollo since I was a kid and have read a number of books on the program over the years. Each one made me long for something else that was just out of reach regarding the subject. I didn't ever expect to find a book that would cover the things that I had questions about. Or even have answers to questions I had never thought of. But - this is that book."How Apollo Flew to the Moon" takes one of the most complex undertakings in the history of civilization and makes it graspable. It explains everything from the types of film in the cameras onboard to the wheels on the lunar rover. With diagrams and hundreds of photos it is an absolute joy to read and has given me an unbelievable amount of new insight on a subject I have read about for years. (Who could wish for more from a book!)The author obviously knows his material but more importantly he knows his audience. He keeps the technical jargon down to a minimum (which is quite an accomplishment considering the subject) and lends a human dimension when explaining very complex ideas and mathematics.This is the nuts and bolts of how the US put men on the moon - from Kennedy's proclamation to splashdown - and as far as I know it is the best book available when it comes to explaining it.Essential reading for anyone interested in the Apollo missions.