Customer Reviews

Destination Moon (Smithsonian)

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Like clockwork celebratory books like "Destination Moon" appear in print just in time for the holiday shopping season. These books on the space program always take advantage of the stunning imagery of the Apollo missions to the Moon to capture the impressive nature of that undertaking. "Destination Moon" does this exceptionally well, and prints both iconic images burned into the public memory as well as less well-known photographs of the Apollo adventure. Compiler Rod Pyle couples striking visuals with excerpts from the voice communications between the astronauts and Mission Control in Houston. It is important to note that transcripts of those communications are also readily available on-line at NASA Johnson Space Center's history portal: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/mission_trans/mission_transcripts.htm. For each of the missions, which are listed chronologically, there are usually several different transcripts.

"Destination Moon" is a capable book and one that will be helpful to those unfamiliar with the Apollo program; it provides an accessible introduction to the Apollo Moon landings. It is, unfortunately, quite cursory as a work of history. Individuals who already understand the Apollo story will not learn much new here. If you want to understand the history of the program two other books are much better: Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts (Viking, 1994), and Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox's "Apollo: The Race to the Moon" (Simon and Schuster, 1989), both of which have been reprinted several times and are readily available. Even so, the imagery is worth the price of the book.

The years from 1961 to 1969 seem like almost magical years. The country had a purpose that united and excited the interests of an almost overwhelming percentage of the the people. As President Kennedy said, 'landing a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth.'

To be sure there were other problems during those years, the ongoing sore of Viet Nam, and the civil right issues that were just beginning to disrupt the south, and of course Kennedy's trip to Dallas. But perhaps we can overlook those issues and look with pride on what we did accomplish with the Apollo program.

This book is the Apollo story. Everything from the Apollo 1 and the Grisson/Chaffee/White fire to the splash down of Apollo 17. Most of the text of the story comes from the words of the astronaut's words. The absolutely beautiful pictures are mostly taken in space or on the surface of the moon.

Whatever happens with the new NASA program to return to the moon, Apollo was the forerunner. From here we began.

Combining both famous and virtually unknown photographs from the Apollo missions with selected portions of the transcripts from the Apollo moon missions and informational text, the author attempts to recreate that magical time in history when mankind first walked on the surface of the moon. And he does a great job of doing just that.

The book opens with the tragedy of the Apollo 1 fire and then moves quickly to the early test flights of Apollo 7 through Apollo 10. After this brief introductory section, a chapter is devoted to each of the moon landing missions, including the failed Apollo 13 mission. Each chapter presents some of the best photographs obtained from each moon landing using what appears to be the same technique used by Michael Light in his book Full Moon thereby producing some very stunning pictures. Since the transcripts are the words of the astronauts and the photographs were taken on the moon by same individuals (probably while speaking these words), the reader gets a glimpse of what the astronaut must have seen and felt as they explored the moon.

While the serious collector of Apollo books and memorabilia may not find or learn much that is new, this is an excellent overview book with great photographs for anyone interested in the moon landings.

This synthesis gives an excellent overview of the US efforts to explore the Moon in the 60's. A good basic work to understand the return of mankind to the lunar surface.