Customer Reviews

Apollo 7: The NASA Mission Reports: Apogee Books Space Series 11

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Robb Godwin's exciting presentation of the original documents from the Apollo program takes a quick jump back to catch the Apollo 7 flight. A quick review of the depth of the documentation, when compared to the Apollo 13 and subsequent documentation, shows the real growth and maturation of NASA and their presentation of information to the interested public. What caught my interest the most was the recorded interviews with Wally Schirra and especially Walt Cunningham presented in the CD-ROM that comes with the volume. Most of us only vaguely recognize Walt Cunningham's name whereas everybody remembers Wally Schirra from the TV commentaries on later Apollo flights. Walt Cunningham's experiences are therefore much more interesting to hear. He is, more or less, the "unknown" astronaut and has a more unique and different perspective of the program and history. I fully agree on his views that the Golden Age of Space Flight was the Apollo era. Like all of other volumes in this series they are a must for those who live through the Apollo age and for those who wished they had.

Once again, Robert Godwin managed to compile a rich source for space buffs - as usual. To read the book is very exciting - as usual. And to explore the enclosed CD is very informative - as usual. I'm looking forward for the next volume of the NASA Mission Reports - as usual.

If you are looking for information on the CSM (heavily the CM) then this is the NASA Mission Report for you! Since this mission was the shakedown flight for the Apollo CSM, a majority of the material is related to that. There is also a good summary of the changes made from the Apollo 1 Block I module to Apollo 7's Block II Command Module. There is also a lot of information about life support, including the "Waste Management System" and such.

The first flight of Apollo was key: it was the first American manned mission since the Apollo 1 disaster, and it was the first test of the hardware designed to get human beings to the moon.

This book contains the press kit, the prelaunch report, the postlaunch report, and the postmission crew debriefing. The latter is the most interesting part. Though technical at times, it shows that there were quite a few problems encountered with the new systems of Apollo and hints at the truculence and frustration experienced by the crew (that incidentally resulted in the effective grounding of astronauts Eisele and Cunningham).

I haven't checked out the CD yet, though it is supposed to contain the usual official NASA movie about the mission, interviews with crew members Wally Schirra and Walter Cunningham, and footage of the launch.

Yet another must-have for the space-ophile completist.

I am late in finding these gems, and am very glad I did. All books are a great historical capture of the offical NASA-released information for each Apollo mission. Each answers most the technical hows and whys of all the spacecraft equipment. Each has it's own unique bit of information that adds to all of the mission reports. In other words, if a bit of information is missing for a dial or switch in one, then chances are you can find it in another mission report.

Such is the case for Apollo 7 Mission Reports. Since the mission was Earth-orbital, and did not travel with a Lunar Module to report anything about, it is cover-to-cover Command and Service Module. Details are included about these two awesome machines that is not mentioned in subsequent mission reports because some other aspect would be focused on instead. Really, this series bulds on itself and I plan to collect the entire set.

Beyond the technical reports, the real treat of these books is the post-flight de-briefings. It is within these pages that one gets the sense of how it was to actually live with these complex machines, not just the clinical description of how they work. It begins to bring the human aspect to each flight. Great stuff!

Lastly, the CD-ROM (DVD-ROM in others of the series) provides a very nice supplement to the text with lots of color pictures and the NASA short movie produced for each Apollo mission. For Apollo 7, included are interesting 30+ year later interviews with Shirra and Cunningham, also adding the human element to the experience.

This series is definitely for the space machine geek. If one is looking for the human drama side of space flight, these will be dry reading. If a copy of the NASA documentation of these milestone flights sound like a cool thing to study and have for reference, these will not disappoint.

In January 1967, NASA suffered the loss of its first crew to a fire during the ground testing of Apollo 1. As a result, the entire Apollo program was grounded until October 11, 1968 when Apollo 7 the first manned Apollo flight launched from Cape Kennedy. The mission was commanded by Walter M. Schirra, Jr., with Donn F. Eisele as the Command Module Pilot, and R. Walter Cunningham as the Lunar Module Pilot. The primary object of this shakedown mission was to evaluate the Apollo Command and Service Modules (CSM) to ensure that the vehicle functioned properly after the project was modified due to the findings of the Apollo 1 fire investigation.

The book opens with the typical NASA mission press kit. Unlike many later Apollo mission press kits, this is quite long and very detailed, containing descriptions on everything from orbit and reentry profiles to the crew biographies. The next section contains the preflight and postflight operation reports which provide an enormous amount of information on the operation of the Saturn IB, the Command Module and numerous orbital mechanics testing scenarios.

The debrief section, which is about two-thirds of the book, contains the crew comments and feelings about various parts of the mission and is especially long and detailed because not only was this the first mission after the Apollo 1 fire, but it was also the first manned flight of the Apollo CSM. The crew debrief contains crew comments from the lift-off to the landings and discusses many of the technical aspects of the mission, such a telemetry, photography, communications, etc. I always like this section of these reports, because it provides an insight to the crew's feelings on the operation of the space vehicle and the mission in general.

The CD Rom that accompanies the book is divided into three sections. The first section contains a half hour interview with both Wally Schirra and Walt Cunningham. The second section contains a 15 minute NASA produced movie called "The Flight of Apollo 7" which presents highlights from the mission and is very informative. The CD also includes a silent film showing the launch. The final section contains over 800 of the mission photos taken by the crew.

Some general information that might be useful.

1) This report contains scanned-in documents from previously released NASA documents. In order to preserve the spirit of the original reports, all typographical and grammatical errors have NOT been fixed.

2) Proceeds from the book goes to "The Watch" an asteroid impact research project of the Space Frontier Foundation. In other words, Apogee Books is making very little off the sale of US government produced books and documents.

The "NASA Mission Reports" series, compiled by Robert Godwin, offers collections of essentially unedited original documents from the flights of the golden age of space exploration: press kits, operation reports, crew debriefings, the works. Since there is only a brief introduction to get things going, the casual reader will certainly be overwhelmed by the technical and operational detail. The decision not to "polish" these sometimes rather plain-looking documents in any way, or even edit out spelling errors from the original sources, gives the books a slightly "messy" quality. However, for these very reasons the series is a dream come true for the serious space enthusiast or historian: this is the real thing, a wealth of unaltered, unabridged information directly from the NASA archives. Holding history in your hands.

Apollo 7 was the first manned launch in the lunar landing program, essentially an engineering shakedown flight. In most accounts, the crew would become notorious because they, suffering from head colds and boredom, managed to annoy pretty much everybody in the space program. However, it's easy to forget what an enormous task Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham had on their hands: the longest first flight of any spacecraft in history, and a highly complicated one at that. This is the mission that paved the way for the triumph of Apollos 8 and 11.

This particular volume of the series includes the official Press Kit, Pre Launch and Post Launch Mission Operation Reports, the Technical Debriefing of the crew, and a CD-ROM with video and picture material. Since Apollo 7 would test the Command and Service Module in Earth orbit (not carrying the LM), and was also the first manned launch of a Saturn I-B rocket, this is the book to have for information on the CSM and booster. The documents describe all the spacecraft systems in great detail, and the changes made since the Apollo 1 fire. The crew debriefing, naturally, is full of technical jargon and the acronyms which NASA so dearly loves, but offers unique insights into all aspects of the mission. Hundreds of diagrams, tables, drawings and photographs (some colour) round out the book.

The CD features the official 15-minute NASA mission video, some launch footage, recent interviews with Wally Schirra (who still loves to make people laugh) and Walt Cunningham, and several hundred orbital photographs taken by the crew. While Apollo 7 might not have been the most spectacular flight ever, Robert Godwin's treatment leaves nothing to be desired: as usual, the "NASA Mission Reports" offer a prime collection of excellent material.