Customer Reviews

Apollo in Perspective: Spaceflight Then and Now

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"Apollo in Perspective" is a very interesting and inspiring book. I was a star struck kid who avidly followed the space program, spent many happy hours running through simulated Apollo missions with my Saturn V/Apollo model, and watched the moon landing and walk as a 10 year old. This certainly contributed to my desire to eventually become a scientist. The author has a similar background, and it shows in this book - he does a good job of expressing the wonder and joy in the details that those of us who were kids then felt. It's a shame my own kids don't have anything like the moon program to fixate on.

As the title suggests, the Apollo program is covered superbly, with detailed chapters on all the major systems (rockets, command and service modules, and lunar module), and shorter discussions of things like space suits and the computers used on Gemini and Apollo. There is even a short chapter on "The Politics of Apollo".

There is more to this book than simply the Apollo program, however. The physics of how a rocket works and orbital mechanics are intuitively described, with equations presented at a high school algebra level. Calculus derivations of some of the more important equations are presented in an appendix. I've been hearing values quoted for specific impulse at conferences for years, and never had a clear physical understanding of what it meant until reading the author's discussion of it. Additional chapters describe the Space Shuttle, plans and dreams about Mars exploration, and a very down-to-earth discussion of the technology available and required for interstellar travel.

This book is very well researched. I was able to find only a small number of inconsequential errors. URLs are given for useful resources on the web. There is an interesting "Where are they now?" section that gives a short post-Apollo bio of the crews of Apollo 11-17. Good summaries of the Apollo 1 fire and the Challenger disaster are presented.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the space program.

I have read most common (and many uncommon) books on the Apollo program. "Apollo in Perspective" is totally unique among all those books. The book is written with a historical perspective on the Apollo program that not only discusses the technology, missions, and hardware of Apollo, it also discusses the political underpinnings of Apollo as well. That is all relatively common, though; the thing that sets this book apart is that it also covers the physics of rockets, orbital mechanics, and trajectories in a comprehensible manner that most casual readers have not been exposed to. He also gives excellent summaries of the Apollo 1 fire and the Challenger accident, as well as observations on the shuttle, future planetary exploration, and John Glenn's shuttle ride.

The book is interesting for both aerospace professionals and newly interested readers as well. In the body of the book, for instance, he discusses the basic math behind Newton's laws and required thrust (which accompanies an especially well written section on staging) without resorting to extravagant mathematical proofs, however for the more avid reader he defines the calculus based proofs in the appendix. This writing technique makes the book an excellent choice for an intelligent non-expert to read as an introduction to the Apollo program.

I found this book to be quite accurate, and found his conclusions to be generally very sound. I don't universally agree with every opinion he shares in the concluding part of the book (he essentially contends, for instance, that John Glenn's shuttle flight was apolitical, an opinion I don't share, and in which he is definitely in a tiny minority), but I find his reasoning to be excellent overall. My one critique of the book would be that the last third or so of the book dwells on the shuttle, Mars missions, and other future programs (some of which are very far out.) I am sure that Mr. Allday would say that past is prologue, and that those programs form part of the perspective mentioned in his title. I don't dislike the information; I just found some of it less than germane to the Apollo program.

This is an excellent, accurate, and interesting book, which I highly recommend to any space enthusiast.

Subtitled "Spaceflight Then and Now", this hardcover book weighs in at 320 pages. And what a surprise. An internet friend suggested I buy this book just to read chapters 5 (The Apollo Command and Service Modules) and 6 (The Lunar Module) but I decided to read the whole thing because it is a treasure trove of information. Here are the chapter names with a few comments thrown in:
1) Apollo in Outline
2) The Best Driver in Physics (Momentum, Rocket Motor Physics, etc.)
x) Intermission 1: The Saturn V booster rocket
3) Rocketry (Thrust, Impulse, Real Rocket Engines, etc.)
x) Intermission 2: From Mercury to Gemini
4) Orbits and Trajectories (Centripetal Forces, Gravity and Orbits, Elliptical Orbits, Circularization Burns and when to do them, Hohmann transfers), Flying to the Moon, Trajectories to Mars (includes why a lower delta-V is required to get to Mars than than to the Moon), Space Stations)
5) The Apollo Command and Service Modules
x) Intermission 3: Inertial Guidance and Computers
6) The Lunar Module
x) Intermission 4: The Three 'ings' (Eating, Sleeping, Excreting)
7) The Shuttle and its Followers
x) Intermission 5: The Politics of Apollo
8) Mars
x) Intermission 6: Godspeed John Glenn
9) Journeys to the Stars (Orion and project Daedalus, Laser propulsion, Ramjet, Antimatter Drive, Colony ships, Wormholes, etc.)
x) Appendix 1: Glossary
x) Appendix 2: Apollo Mission Summary
x) Appendix 3: Development of Boosters
x) Appendix 4: Deriving Some of the Maths
x) Appendix 5: Further Information
x) Index