Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest [Hardcover]

Gerard Degroot (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2006

A selection of the History, Scientific American, and Quality Paperback Book Clubs

For a very brief moment during the 1960s, America was moonstruck. Boys dreamt of being an astronaut; girls dreamed of marrying one. Americans drank Tang, bought “space pens” that wrote upside down, wore clothes made of space age Mylar, and took imaginary rockets to the moon from theme parks scattered around the country.

But despite the best efforts of a generation of scientists, the almost foolhardy heroics of the astronauts, and 35 billion dollars, the moon turned out to be a place of “magnificent desolation,” to use Buzz Aldrin’s words: a sterile rock of no purpose to anyone. In Dark Side of the Moon, Gerard J. DeGroot reveals how NASA cashed in on the Americans’ thirst for heroes in an age of discontent and became obsessed with putting men in space. The moon mission was sold as a race which America could not afford to lose. Landing on the moon, it was argued, would be good for the economy, for politics, and for the soul. It could even win the Cold War. The great tragedy is that so much effort and expense was devoted to a small step that did virtually nothing for mankind.

Drawing on meticulous archival research, DeGroot cuts through the myths constructed by the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations and sustained by NASA ever since. He finds a gang of cynics, demagogues, scheming politicians, and corporations who amassed enormous power and profits by exploiting the fear of what the Russians might do in space.

Exposing the truth behind one of the most revered fictions of American history, Dark Side of the Moon explains why the American space program has been caught in a state of purposeless wandering ever since Neil Armstrong descended from Apollo 11 and stepped onto the moon. The effort devoted to the space program was indeed magnificent and its cultural impact was profound, but the purpose of the program was as desolate and dry as lunar dust.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When President Kennedy announced that the United States would land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, he forced NASA to assume a "faster, cheaper, better" mindset that continues to bedevil it today, says DeGroot (The Bomb: A History). The space agency quickly came up against the budgetary pressures of the Vietnam War and expanding domestic programs, but as DeGroot writes, Lyndon Johnson insisted the U.S. would meet his predecessor's goal, even as NASA's budget was cut every year. DeGroot reveals that engineers turned a blind eye on slipshod components in order to meet impossible deadlines. NASA's public relations machine portrayed its astronauts as wholesome all-Americans even as many of them behaved like rutting frat boys when off duty. The claim has often been made that consumers benefited from the space program, but the author points out that Tang, Velcro and Teflon were invented long before Sputnik was launched. DeGroot writes with 20-20 hindsight, and his sarcasm may put off some readers, although it makes for entertaining reading. Anyone interested in a corrective view to the official hagiographies of the space program will find this acid-etched history hard to put down. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

If asked to name the greatest technological achievement of the twentieth century, many people would say the 1969 Apollo moon landing. They would be surprised to discover that this superlative achievement had a dark side. How many of us knew that the U.S. government took its initial rocket technology directly from Nazi Germany and absorbed their leading scientists for the purpose of "security"? Perhaps not many, which is why historian Degroot should be commended for shining a light on the lunar quest. Citing American competitiveness, Degroot argues that the moon landing was primarily a stunt of one-upmanship: the Russians getting into space first with Sputnik had a profound affect on Americans, as politicians and citizens alike became obsessed with beating them to the moon. Never mind the "obscenely huge" cost of a lunar mission and consequent risk to defense, or that sending a man into space was perhaps negligible in terms of science. At the present time, when NASA has scheduled another moon shot for 2018, Degroot revisits the question that should have been fully explored the last time around: Why? Jerry Eberle
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: NYU Press; 1St Edition edition (November 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814719953
• ISBN-13: 978-0814719954
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,520,295 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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70 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Seriously Flawed Book., November 11, 2006

By 

Steven Belasco (Greenburgh, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest (Hardcover)

The Dark Side Of The Moon is a highly uneven book written by Gerard DeGroot, a Professor of History and an award winning author. The book adopts the now generally accepted view the America's space program in the 1960s was driven by cold war politics rather than important scientific goals. The book also argues that the Apollo program was a dead end for space exploration rather than a significant event in the ongoing human exploration of space. The author then proceeds from these not unusual ideas to argue that America's manned exploration of space was a massive waste of money, a mere American ego trip and a grossly mismanaged rush to the moon. These are much more debatable propositions.

The shocking aspect of the book is that the author of this "history" relies on an Apollo mission to the moon that never took place as part of his argument that Apollo was an ill conceived rush to the moon. DeGroot believes that Apollo astronauts made three trips to the moon prior to the Apollo 11 moon landing mission, thus making even the Apollo 11 flight to the moon "routine." Showing his lack of knowledge of what actually happened in the Apollo program, DeGroot writes on pages 230-231 -

"For NASA, Apollo 8 provided valuable confirmation that the package which would take Americans to the Moon actually worked. Apollo 9 then took on the original profile of Apollo 8, except for the fact that, given the earlier mission's success, there seemed little point in testing the lunar module in Earth orbit. The crew of James McDivitt, David Scott, and Rust Schweickart therefore went to the Moon. After the command module separated from the spent rocket, the crew turned it around and then docked with the lunar module, which was still enclosed in Saturn's final stage. They then pulled away and headed for the Moon.
Once in the Moon's orbit, McDivitt and Schweickart climbed into the lunar module, separated it from the command module, and flew it for the first time."

This story about Apollo 9 going to the moon is fiction, not history. This is no mere typo or misstatement, but an appalling error in scholarship by this historian. Apollo 9 never went to the moon. Astronauts McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart did not orbit the moon in Apollo 9. Apollo 9 was planned and executed (highly successfully) as an Earth orbit mission. One minute of on on-line research can confirm this. [...]. The difference between an Earth orbit mission and a lunar obit mission is vast. How vast? Well, since the last Apollo flight to the moon in 1972 there have been over a hundred Earth orbit flights and not a single flight to the moon. Since Apollo 11 was only the second time the lunar module went to the moon and only the third time men traveled to the moon, it was not a "routine" event. In erroneously describing the Apollo 9 mission as traveling to the moon and using that as part of his argument for criticizing NASA, the author seriously undercuts his credibility.

Furthermore, continuing factual errors about the Apollo program show that the author does not have any in depth knowledge of what actually occurred on these missions. For example, in writing about what DeGroot describes as the "well known" Apollo 13 mission, he states "An explosion ripped through the outer skin of the Command Module, which quickly lost electric power." P. 250. In fact, the explosion ripped through the skin of the service module, an entirely different part of the space craft. If the explosion had ripped though the skin of the command module, the astronauts would have immediately died from decompression of the command module. An author of a book about the Apollo missions should better understand the design of the Apollo command and service modules that made up the Apollo spacecraft. Especially if it is a book highly critical of the entire program.

The author also shows that he does not have a clear grasp of the events that took place during the Apollo 11 moon landing. DeGroot describes the exciting events taking place as Neil Armstrong pilots the lunar module to a safe landing spot on the moon as it was running out of fuel. Then, in describing the actual landing on the moon (p. 235) he writes, "Armstrong uttered the magical words: `Contact.'" Armstrong did not say that; the NASA transcripts of the flight clearly show that Buzz Aldrin spoke the words "Contact Light" when the lunar module Eagle's probe touched the lunar surface and the contact light flashed on control panel. Putting Aldrin's words in Armstrong's mouth may by itself be viewed as a small error, but in this situation of repeated errors it evidences poor scholarship.

The legacy of the Apollo moon landings may be fairly debated. Was it a milestone of human achievement and one of the most memorable events of the Twentieth Century or and an unnecessary ego trip that wasted many billions of dollars? It is an interesting debate but this book, because of its errors and poor scholarship, does not provide a credible answer to that question.

52 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Superficial, Erroneous, and Embarrassing Book, December 29, 2006

By 

Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest (Hardcover)

A spring 1999 poll of opinion leaders sponsored by leading news organizations in the United States ranked the 100 most significant events of the twentieth century and the Apollo landings on the Moon muscled itself to a very close second to the splitting of the atom. Probably historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. best summarized the position of many opinion leaders polled: "The one thing for which this century will be remembered 500 years from now was...when we began the exploration of space" (Arlene Levinson, "Atomic bombing of Hiroshima tops Journalists' List of Century's News," Associated Press, February 24, 1999). Not surprisingly, both the development of the atomic bomb and the Apollo program has enjoyed enormous attention as a subject of historical research and writing. University of Andrews historian Gerard J. DeGroot, having already tackled the story of the bomb, turns his attention to the Moon landings in "Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest."

He begins with the appropriate concern that Apollo has taken on mythical qualities, and is remembered with nostalgia for a time long gone. Such a situation begs for an antidote, and apparently DeGroot considers himself just the person to deliver it. Questioning the reasons for the Apollo program, as well as the execution and results of it, DeGroot presents a poorly researched book--based almost exclusively on secondary materials, and then even missing many of the most significant of those works--with an excessively over-the-top thesis that is both indemonstrable and ineffectively argued. While I believe it is appropriate to criticize aspects of the history of space age, responsible criticism grounded in the historical record should always inform it. Unfortunately, this work does not warrant serious consideration.

DeGroot takes exception to the reasons for the space race, arguing that a group of space advocates hijacked the national agenda during the Sputnik crisis of 1957-1958, created a federal agency to accomplish their dreams, and pried national treasure from a range of other more worthy causes to fund trips to the Moon. He sets the stage by characterizing German rocketeer Wernher von Braun as a self-righteous traitor and John F. Kennedy as a dupe. He then weaves a conspiracy of bureaucrats, industrialists, and politicians who promoted space exploration as a means of feathering their own nests. The low point in that discussion revolves around convicted felon Bobby Baker, DeGroot claiming that he had the contract to provide candy vending machines at defense plants. His last sentence about this subject is telling: "And you thought Apollo was a story about heroes" (p. 153). How this relates to the Apollo program is never quite clear since there is no indication of any malfeasance from NASA officials whatsoever.

Most of what DeGroot claims in "Dark Side of the Moon" has been argued before by other scholars, and generally those critiques are more innovative and reasoned. Certainly he is not the first scholar to challenge the necessity of the Moon race. Amitai Etzioni in "The Moondoggle: Domestic and International Implications of the Space Race" (Doubleday, 1964) offered an important critique more than forty years earlier. Pulitzer Prize-winner Walter A. McDougall presented a strikingly sophisticated challenge of the necessity of the Moon race in "...The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age" (Basic Books, 1985), arguing that Apollo prompted the space program to become identified almost exclusively with high-profile, expensive, human spaceflight projects of limited value. Others have done so as well. For readers interested in this type of critique of the space program, "...The Heavens and the Earth" is the gold standard.

Other difficulties abound. Ostensibly about the Apollo program, only half of the book actually deals with it. The first seven chapters recite in a not particularly insightful manner the early history of space advocacy, Sputnik, the politics of creating NASA, and the early U.S. efforts to reach space. The rest of the book skips through the unfolding of the Apollo program, and the last chapter carries the human spaceflight story into the post-Apollo era. DeGroot's concluding assertion--"Hubris took Americans to the Moon, a barren, soulless place where humans do not belong and cannot flourish. If the voyage has had any positive benefit at all, it has reminded us that everything that is good resides on Earth" (p. 269)--is the ultimate arm-waving statement in a book filled with them. The issue of hubris in Apollo deserves serious scholarly attention, the apparent barrenness of the Moon has been challenged by scientists, and whether or not humans can survive there for long is very much an unknown. The reference to seeing the Earth anew because of the trips to the Moon is now so obvious as to have become trite. Such assertions, without elaboration and substantiation abound in this embarrassing book. The Apollo epic deserves responsible consideration and reflective analysis, and responsible criticism; unfortunately Gerard DeGroot accomplishes none of this in "Dark Side of the Moon."

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I Wanted to Like This Book, April 27, 2007

By 

tardigrade (Palo Alto, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest (Hardcover)

It grabbed my attention when I first saw it: an overview history of the US space program, written by a foreigner who presumably didn't grow up with NASA propaganda. It started out strong, with a 50,000' survey of the German WWII-era missile program, then shifts to the American reaction to Soviet space efforts. But the author can't resist showing us how utterly cosmopolitan and sophisticated and ironic he is, especially compared to us uncultured Yanks. In his discussion of the National Defense Education Act, which funded science and engineering students, he snarks that Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, received his education under it. So what? So did I, and so did most people I know. Almost no women find space appealing? News to this one. Vending machine suppliers made lots of money selling candy at NASA? So what? NASA employees were as human as the rest of us. DeGroot's main research into everyday life in the US in the 60s seems to come from watching old sitcoms.

Two stars for making me look up some of the early history of the space race, but otherwise you can save your time and money. Wolfe's The Right Stuff covered the fallibility of the astronauts a lot better, and the excellent HBO series From the Earth to the Moon, though extremely pro-NASA, presents varied views, including the effects of the space program on the astronauts' families, with much more impact that DeGroot does.