The Moonlandings: An Eyewitness Account [Hardcover]

Reginald Turnill (Author), Buzz Aldrin (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 2002

The Soviet-American race to land the first man on the Moon was a technical challenge unlike anything in modern human history. BBC Aerospace Correspondent Reginald Turnill covered the story, and his reports were heard and seen by millions worldwide. With unparalleled access to the politicians, scientists, and technicians involved in the race to the Moon, Turnill knew all the early astronauts--Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin--as they pioneered the techniques that made the Moon landings possible. He became a friend of Dr. Wernher von Braun, the German rocket pioneer and mastermind behind the technology. Turnill's unique eyewitness account of one of the most thrilling adventures of the twentieth century is clearly written and is packed with action and drama, making this a fascinating read for all those interested in the story of the race to the Moon. Reginald Turnill started work in Fleet Street at the age of 15, and by 19 he was covering the national news as a Press Association staff reporter. After joining the BBC in 1956 he covered the launch of Sputnik 1 and found it so exciting that he made space reporting his speciality. As the BBC Aerospace Correspondent, Turnill spent the rest of his career covering all the manned space missions as well as planetary missions like Mariner, Pioneer, Viking, and Voyager. Since leaving the BBC staff, Turnill has continued to broadcast and write on space, and he created the first spaceflight directory. Turnill is the only non-American to have been presented with NASA's Chroniclers Award for contributions to public understanding of the space program.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Were the Apollo moonlandings an epic of scientific exploration, a safety valve for cold war rivalries or a boondoggle subsidy to the aerospace industry? They were all of these things, according to this idiosyncratic history cum memoir. Longtime BBC aerospace reporter Turnill gives a comprehensive overview of the Apollo program, including its origins in America's post-Sputnik panic, the preliminary Mercury and Gemini programs, the drama of the Apollo 11 landing and the Apollo 13 near-disaster, as well as the program's demise amid waning public interest, rising costs and a general sense that the moonlaunches had accomplished all they could accomplish. Turnill's eyewitness account focuses less on the landings than it does on the news coverage of the landings. On the one hand, this results in some tedious passages devoted to wranglings with his editors and the minutiae of trying to establish telecom links to file his stories, while others are taken up reprinting raw transcripts of impenetrably jargon-filled back-and-forth between Houston and the astronauts, as if there were air-time to kill. On the other hand, Turnill's eye for human interest, flair for punchy narrative and superb expositions of the science and technology of space exploration, honed by decades of reporting for popular audiences, make for an engaging read. Free for the most part of right-stuff mythologizing, and canny about the effects of personal antagonisms, budgetary constraints and political opportunism on the space program, this is a clear-eyed account that still conveys the real excitement and achievement of the race for the moon.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"This is a fine account of the working life of a high-profile journalist...Certainly today's space journalists will never write memoirs to compete with Turnill's epic tale." Times Higher Education Supplement

"The book provides plenty of new information even for veteran space enthusiasts. Recommended." Choice

"This is a unique eyewitness account of one of the most thrilling adventures of the twentieth century, the story of the race to the Moon." Lunar and Planetary Information Bulletin

"...engaging and whimsical narrative." C&RL News

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 476 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (December 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521815959
• ISBN-13: 978-0521815956
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,534,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Replete with errors, August 28, 2006

By 

TJC (Santa Clara, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Moonlandings: An Eyewitness Account (Hardcover)

I've read a lot of books on the US manned space program of the 1960s. I enjoy them as a general rule, and it takes a lot for me to dislike a book on this subject. But this one has somehow done the job. It is not worth the money to buy; and it is not worth the time to read. It is only an artifact of Amazon's rating system, which does not permit a rating of zero stars, that forces me to give it even one star.

My biggest complaint about this book is the number of errors. I was nearly done with the book before I decided to try to make a list of some of them, so I could write this review as a warning. There were others, but here is a sampling of some of the errors that I took note of once I started keeping a list:

- a claim that Aldrin joked that someone had broken the hinges on the LM hatch, made during or after reentering the LM after EVA; the transcript shows no such joke.

- ascribing comments about geology questions to Aldrin when they were in fact made by Armstrong.

- reference to a "retrack cycle" on the Eagle-Columbia docking (it was a "retract cycle").

- In reference to the Apollo 10 call signs "Charlie Brown" and "Snoopy," saying that the astronauts had "once again" taken to using characters from Peanuts as call signs (this was the only time).

- On Apollo 13, referring to the "Main Bus B undervolt" that was the first symptom of the crisis as a "Main Bus B interval."

- The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is renamed to the "Washington Space Museum."

There are many more that I caught, and probably more that I did not. These are just a few of the ones I notice once I started keeping a list.

This book should be avoided if for no other reason than its unreliability. If unreliability is not enough, however, it was, to my reading, annoying in other ways, too. Turnill seems to think he's a mind-reader, able to determine hidden meanings behind the dialog between the astronauts and Mission Control, for example. A transmission is not just set out in the book, it "hints at" something else or is made "embarrassedly," etc.

It's also annoying that Turnill is unable to ever refer to the fuel cells without pointing out that they were British-designed (assuming he's not wrong on that, of course, but given his track record, who knows?). We got it the first time, Reg.

This book is probably okay for someone who does not care about Project Apollo and the spaceflights leading up to it, and is interested only in how the BBC handled a world-wide story like this. I assume his comments about life in the BBC are accurate, if a bit whiny.

But if you want to actually learn something about the space flights, I would suggest any of: "A Man on the Moon," by Andrew Chaiken; "Carrying the Fire" or "Liftoff" by Michael Collins; or "Chariots for Apollo: The Untold Story Behind the Race to the Moon" by Joshua Stoff & Charles R. Pellegrino; and those are just off the top of my head.

Heck, even the kid's book "On the Moon" by Anna Milbourne, which I read to my 18-month-old daughter, will have fewer errors per page.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and different!, August 30, 2003

By 

Saturn V (Bensenville, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Moonlandings: An Eyewitness Account (Hardcover)

I read and collect as many books on the Mercury through Apollo space program that look or sound interesting. Most are very, very good and add some new bit of info that I did not read or know before.
What's always intriguing to me is to read about this subject from another perspective.
This one takes the viewpoint of a reporter covering this area from an international slant.It is a very interesting perspective. You won't find the usual stuff about the technical apects of space flight. What you do find are the problems and solutions reporting on an historic event like this without the aid of computers, e-mail and faxes.
A definite worthwhile read!