Customer Reviews

Apollo 8: The NASA Mission Reports: Apogee Books Space Series 1

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This is the original book in the series, now revised and including the crew debriefing (my favorite part, as I keep saying) and other materials, including a Jim Lovell interview on the accompanying CD. I don't know what I can say about this volume that I haven't said about others in this series. Apollo 8 was a key step on the way to the moon and probably the riskiest mission in NASA history. This provides a valuable technical background to the mission and a useful accompaniment to more human-oriented books such as Jim Lovell's Lost Moon or Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon.

If you're really into the history of space flight (as I am), then this is the first entry in a series that you will love. These aren't really for someone with a casual interest in the subject, but are primarily intended for the dedicated enthusiast who wants to learn more about the missions than can be obtained from more ordinary references.

The various volumes in the Apogee Mission Reports series (covering Apollo, Gemini, Mercury and Shuttle flights) reprint a lot of difficult to find NASA documentation for the various flights. For each flight, there are reprints of the original press kits, with biographical details of the prime and backup crews, the planned schedule for the flight, information on the flight plan, etc. One of the things that I find most interesting is that the press kit lists some of the options for the flight in the event that things didn't go entirely to plan. It's interesting to see the advance preparations that were made for in flight emergencies, or for possible alternative missions.

Other things featured in the mission reports are the original debriefings of the crews after the flights, where the details of the mission just ended are discussed with the crews and their opinions on how the mission went (and suggestions for future improvements) are solicited.

Each book also includes a CD-Rom, with extra material. In the case of the Apollo 8 disk, it includes a copy of the official NASA film on Apollo 8, an interview with Apollo 8 Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and scans of lots of pictures from the flight. Similar extras are on the CD-ROMS (or DVDs) on other books in the series.

Some of the information in the press kits is slightly repetitive from one flight to the next, but there is plenty of really good stuff here for the enthusiast. Given that the original NASA documents are hard to find (and generally very expensive when they are available), the availability of this range of reprinted versions is a godsend - having a set is like having the NASA archives on your bookshelf! Hopefully, this series will eventually cover the entire history of American Manned Spaceflight. These reprints (together with the availability of the complete film/video from the missions on DVD from Spacecraft Films) are the best thing that ever happened for Space enthusiasts!

This volume is the one that started the Apogee Books series on the Apollo Program. It contains reproductions of the mission reports, a press kit and many other very important documents detailing man's first journey to another world. A great CD ROM is also included containing videos of the flight. A wonderful volume overall!

During the last ten days of 1968, NASA launched the Apollo 8 mission to the moon, in what has been deemed as one of the agencies boldest and most daring adventures. In addition to being the first manned launch of the Saturn V rocket; this mission is much more famous and important as it was the first manned mission that left Earth orbit and the first manned mission to orbit the moon. This mission made such an impact on the world politics of the day that the crew was named as Time's Men of the Year. This mission was commanded by Frank Borman who was accompanied by Jim Lovell, of Apollo 13 fame, and Bill Anders.

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 two preflight operation reports which provide an enormous amount of information on the operation of the Saturn V and the Command Module.

The debrief section, which is about 15% of the book, contains the crew comments and feelings about various parts of the mission and for the most part avoids the technical language that many of the NASA documents include, but it does contain many undefined acronyms. 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 Jim Lovell. The second section contains a 15 minute NASA produced movie called "Go for TLI" which presents highlights from the mission, but it unfortunately does not contain the Christmas reading of Genesis. The final section contains 850 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.

3) Many people have asked why the post mission science reports are not included. Since NASA has published several books with hundred of pages each, the NASA Special Publications Series, it would be difficult to include this voluminous amount of data.

4) Make sure you buy the second edition, because it contains more documentation in the text and more features on the enclosed CD.

One more important thing to note: This book was the first book of Apogee books space series.