Customer Reviews

Apollo 8 : The NASA Mission Reports With CDRom

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Reading these Apogee books is like leafing through a thick stack of mimeographs. Robert Godwin's decision to leave the documents essentially "as-is" (leaving spelling and punctuation errors, for example) and to publish as much relevant material as he could find in the archives (similar, but not identical reports) allows you, the reader, to process the information yourself, as if you had gone to the archives to do research. If as a reader you are uncomfortable with the idea of developing the narrative on your own out of this raw material, these books may not be for you.

The APOLLO 8 MISSION REPORT ... published by Apogee Books, are an excellent source for Space History buffs. The book includes a press kit from the flight, pre and post mission summaries, and a fabulous bonus CDROM which has the official NASA mission report movie lasting about 17 minutes or so. The CD also has some GREAT color and black and white photographs.

All in all, these books are a must. I recently got the mission reports for Apollo 8,9 and 10 (10 has TWO movies and some stunning moon photography). I just found out that the Apollo 11 Mission report has just been released and is a TWO volume set (with Volume 2 released next week).

I wholeheartedly recommend it!

Back in the thrilling days when we were about to see science fiction dreams come true [and foolishly believed that we were taking the "first steps out of the cosmic cradle", who could have believed that we would simply drop the ability once we acieved the goal] the news people would have all sorts of information at their finger tips, which would [often inaccurately] be distilled in newspapers and magazines. This book [and the available books on Apollo 9 and 10] contain the press kits and other material which the general public didn't have. The are full of technical information which you simply can't get anywhere else, and if you are a real space fan, they are absolutely invaluable. While general readers would find this material "dry" and "overly technical" [to say the least- e.g. did you wonder about the function of each of those "service arms" which retracted from the Saturn V at launch? you'll find that kind of thing here] space fans will find this a treasure trove. Sure the formatting is sloppy, no slick presentations here, but this is a reproduction of the actual material NASA produced, and I don't think the quality of the pictures [which have an early xerox look to them] was ever better in the press materials. If you want great pictures get "Full Moon," if you want the personal stories of the astronauts, get Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon, this material is different and valuable in a different way [and if you're a space nut you'll want all of these and more.

The CD ROMs in each of these books are the "official" NASA films on the missions and have the pompous feel of such material, [they're shown endlessly in off times on the NASA channel, incidentally]. They are a good companion to the technical material in the books. Incidentally the books say the CD ROMs only play on Windows machines, but if you have a Mac with up to date web browser, and Quick Time you can play these as well.

The thing which really gets me about these is that they place you back in those days, most of the posts are pre-launch material talking about the missions in future tense. If you think these missions were routine, just check out the material on the different aborts and "alternate missions" which might have taken place if something had gone wrong.

Reading these Apogee books is like leafing through a thick stack of mimeographs. Robert Godwin's decision to leave the documents essentially "as-is" (leaving spelling and punctuation errors, for example) and to publish as much relevant material as he could find in the archives (similar, but not identical reports) allows you, the reader, to process the information yourself, as if you had gone to the archives to do research. If as a reader you are uncomfortable with the idea of developing the narrative on your own out of this raw material, these books may not be for you.

If you're a space enthusiast, then the NASA Mission Reports being collected by Robert Godwin and printed by Apogee Press are for you. Each book essentially consists of a number of NASA documents printed for the media that describe details of the flight (e.g., the Press Kit). Separately, the original documents contained in these books would cost hundreds of dollars. Reprints of individual press kits alone would cost as much as the price of this book. The only problem is the poor reproduction of many of the black and white figures. They were obviously scanned--and often at low resolution. The important information is still there, however, and it shouldn't detract from their value as a reference.

"Apollo 8: The NASA Mission Reports" is a great addition to the available literature about the Apollo space program. While other books focused more on the human aspects (the best I consider: "A man on the Moon" by Chaikin, and "Apollo: The Race to the Moon" by Murray and Cox), this publication is purely technical. The book (it looks somewhat like a fat National Geographic issue) contains a goldmine of information that will appeal to the technically oriented space enthousiast. The contents can be rated excellent. Much of the information has never been seen by the public. They consist of: 1. Press Kit, 2. Pre-flight Mission Report, 3. Pre-flight Supplemental Report and 4. Post-flight Mission Objectives Report. If you want to know more about count-down events, launch complex 39, flight controller responsibilities, mission abort scenarios, go/no-go rules, contingency plans, tracking facilities, fuel tank structures, electrical systems, it is all there.

However, the presentation leaves to be desired. Most of the information is in text form, roughly formatted. Layout is non-existent. Copies of NASA documents (great content) are fair to poor. Running these images through a black&white image sharpener would have improved the quality substantially. Black & White photographs vary from poor to very poor quality; Color photos (8 page insert) are fair.

While the mission reports are very factual, they have an air of incredible understatement. Consider the line in a memorandum written after the flight from the Apollo Program Director to the Acting Administrator: "that the Apollo 8 mission be adjudged as having achieved agency preset primary objectives and considered a success." Yes, indeed. The audacity of the decision to go to the moon with Apollo 8, and the flawless execution of the mission will stand as a beacon in the world of management and engineering . To this day I clearly remember the flight of Apollo 8 (I was an 11-year old at the time) and through the years my admiration for the people that made Apollo possible has been growing steadily. As an engineer, I have come to appreciate the complexity of engineering projects, where we labor for a year or longer to get a single circuit card or a silicon chip working as intended. It boggles my mind how they pulled off Apollo in an insanely short time period. Granted, NASA was given a blank cheque, but money alone will not make a project (and what a project Apollo was!) a success. You, all the engineers and the technicians who will remain anonymous forever, we salute you! This book is indirectly about you!

A great bonus (which alone is worth the cost) is the CDROM that comes with the book. Although PC movie technology is not quite up-to-snuff, fhe footage (22 min.) is beautiful. Great launch scenes, especially the staging. The accompanying sound track gives all the important moments while you peek over the shoulders of the flight controllers. "Apollo, this is Houston, you are go for TLI". To this day, listening to the sound of Mission Control gives me goosebumps. It will remain with me forever.

While I was playing the video om my PC, my 9-year old son was watching over my shoulders, curiously asking me questions about "the olden days when they went to the moon.". I felt sad that he cannot experience the exhiliration that I did. I do not know if I will see the day when man will return to the moon or go to Mars, but if I will not (heaven forbid) I hope my son will. We all have a responsibility to the younger generation to keep dreams alive. "Apollo 8; The NASA Mission Reports" helps us do that.

The good point about this book is the technical detail. For example, a big cut-away diagram of the first stage rocket showing fuel delivery system and nozzles. Also, complete launch sequence. The biggest disappointment was the fact that the whole book consists of pre-mission reports, and only the very briefest post-mission report. Where are the post-mission reports? Also disappointing is the fact that one report is almost identical to another! Some of the reports were scanned in, and so contain frequent spelling errors. Overall, worth it for the detailed technical stuff.

Excellent book, however it is filled with typos!!! It looks like the "editor" simply scanned the NASA source documents, ran an OCR program and published the book, lots of letter substitutions and mispunctuations. If you are familiar with Apollo this is just an annoyance however the uninformed will be confused at times, launch pod (vs. pad) equipment boy (vs. bay) etc.

That said I'd recommend the book to the serious student of Apollo history. It's filled with lots of detail that you probably won't find anywhere else.

The CD is excellent, it alone is worth the cost of the book.

Much of this material is available for the researcher in libraries. Also, the publisher is reaping a profit using public domain material, repackaging it, throwing in a CD-ROM,etc. Easy profit margin--you don't have to generate the material at your expense (the tax payer paid for it, the publisher repackages it, and sells it back to the tax payer). Well, I at least give 'em credit for being smart marketers.