Customer Reviews

NASA Apollo 11: An Insight into the Hardware from the First Manned Mission to Land on the Moon

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After the seemingly endless delays, I finally got this book. And was immediately disappointed. As an 'Apollo Junkie(tm)' I expected what the title promised - an owners' workshop manual. No, I didn't expect a set of blueprints and plans, but I DID expect a more detailed look at the hardware. Everything in this book is a rehash of hundreds of previous Apollo books. I found no serious discussions about engineering, dimensions, etc.

I'm STILL searching for a book with a good, solid set of dimensions on the LM. Maybe tomorrow.

However, as a standalone book about Apollo, this was a good one. I'll give it three stars for that.

I got my manual and found it very impressive. The pictures are great and it looks at the whole mission, the hardware, and spacecraft. The detailed drawings are detailed but a little blurry at times. They could have used a little digital enhancement, not a turn off for me. Since the original drawings were done by hand they are true depictions of what was available at the time. I have looked at the book casually the last few days and like it a lot. I went to Johnson space center and saw the Saturn V and now know a lot more about what it was that I saw. Neat book, I recommend it. Not overly engineered but not dumbed down either. It's Technician level. It is not a personal narrative but a look at the engineering and design needed to achieve the goal. I recommend this, I liked it, and will put it into my personal collection on "The Shelf".
If you would like to see historical technical drawings go to [...]

I think this is *THE* book to have if you want the history and technology of the Apollo Space Program. It really does cover it all, from the sci-fi drawings of how a possible space mission would work, to the early planning, all of the versions of the Apollo rockets and missions, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Very well done. You get a ton of diagrams showing how it all fit together, the limits of the technology at the time, and how they amazingly got it all working perfectly.

Worth the price for the pictures of the consoles alone.

An unrealized concept. However, this is another nice Apollo Mission book in a new wrapper.The authors mention their own failure to live up to the possibilities of this workshop manual idea by stating that there are simply too many plans and pieces for the all the hardware, and some parts were changed and created without much documentation. I would have liked the chance to see the content of the book beforehand to make a more informed choice.

I bought this book because of the layout of the cover. I have owned quite a few Haynes manuals through the years and I couldn't help but chuckle when I saw it. The inside is filled with enough detail to keep any space fan reading. The only thing that would have made this better would have been if, like the other Haynes manuals, it would have been "based on a complete teardown and rebuild."

As an avid backyard mechanic and lifelong space buff, the thought of an Apollo owners manual was something I couldn't pass up. It's great for the coffee table novelty value. Glossy hardcover with lots of nice pictures, many of which are relatively unseen.
The down side is that for a "shop manual" you'd expect lots of equipment diagrams and dissections of the actual hardware. There are diagrams and descriptions of the various machines, but that takes up maybe half a dozen pages at most throughout the book. Not enough to even begin to satisfy the space tech geek.
If you buy this, do so for the novelty value. If you want to go in depth on the technology, go online because you won't find much to satisfy you here.

Don't believe the cover. I bought this book because I'm a sucker for Haynes manuals. I've been using their books to repair my cars for almost two decades and I expected that this book would be like the car manuals, technical and comprehensive. It's not. If you've watched "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Moon Machines" and read the Apollo Wikipedia page then you already know everything that's in this book and then some. It's more of a history book than anything. If you took a good print encyclopedia article and fleshed it out this is what you'd get. No engineering level technical drawings or documentation, no assembly or operational guides, in short, a dearth of the kind of information that a true geek is looking for. It will look good on your bookshelf next to the greasy fingerprint covered car manuals but that's it.

As a lifelong Apollo freak, I appreciate this book. It is technical and but not complicated. There are a lot of great pictures I haven't seen before.

This is a very well done book with plenty of nice colors pictures and diagrams. plus it's a great source of information. I loved it, I read it 2 times cover to cover! I highly recommend this book

I liked it, for the average joe an above average book. Of course its not as you would expect from a Haynes manual, How could it be at 196 pages?
But what you do get is a well produced and illustrated overview of the LV and Apollo stack. Its true we've seen a lot of the material here, but some is a little more obscure and entertaining for browsing (space suits etc). Its a good companion as stated in other reviews here to watching the videos (In the Apollo 13 movie they got the S1C paint scheme wrong. see page 34 and compare )or looking at the real thing in the USA. It Brings a lot of different elements together and presents them to you in an attractive way. If you want more details get Stages to Saturn or the flight Manuals, failing that there are still the microfilm blueprints with NASA.
Still it may help with the right answers to entertaining pub quiz questions (i actually heard these answers given): first man on the moon , Lance Armstrong, capt of 13 , Tom Hanks !