Customer Reviews

New Moon Rising: The Making of America's New Space Vision and the Remaking of NASA: Apogee Books Space Series 42

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

 

 

I warily recommend this book as a very interesting and informative read, but one that is pretending to be something other than it is. In the Authors' Note at the beginning of the book the writing duo strenuously claim strict impartiality, saying of their central characters, Bush and O'Keefe, "The authors make no attempt to judge their actions as being good, bad or indifferent to the nation's interest."

This supposed impartiality is quickly shown to be an utter charade. Within a few pages, former NASA Administrator Dan Goldin is described as being in charge of a "nuthouse," a "Machiavelli" who is "dripping with ego and suspicion." Throughout the book he is described as demonic and incompetent in his personal and professional life. Others such as Bill Nelson suffer similar treatment, and even peripheral characters just as John Kerry are hauled into the fray to be swiped at and sniped at.

It is certainly an opinion, and the authors are entitled to it. However, to pretend that this book is not anything but heavily judgmental and biased is, frankly, laughable. A more accurate title for it would have been "Goldin Bad, O'Keefe Good." I am sure Sean O'Keefe loves every word in this book, but even he would not pretend it is impartial and must cringe at some of the more venomous attacks on his predecessor.

It's a great shame, as it is actually a pretty good book. The bureaucratic foibles of the Goldin era are in many cases reported very accurately, once you set aside the poisonous delivery. It's also very well written, in an engaging style that keeps you turning the pages through what could have been some rather dry bureaucratic deliberations. The authors' white knight on a charger, Sean O'Keefe, is thankfully shown to be human also at times. Once the rather fawning justification of his every action is skimmed over, there are some very insightful descriptions of the confusion in his inner circle on the day of the shuttle disaster, and other very illuminating glimpses at some key moments of recent NASA history. It's hard to know what to trust, however, when the book is so heavily slanted, and the authors do not admit their biases.

One of the authors, Keith Cowing, ran a website for many years called 'NASA Watch' which did a very important, in fact a vital job in pointing out many of the sillier bureaucratic decisions during the Goldin era. It appears that, with a change of administration, any critical thinking skills he had vanished, and he has now become the kind of apologist he once criticized. The book supports many of O'Keefe's decisions - such as the writing off of the Space Station when it was almost complete and finally ready to begin what it was designed for, and the ludicrous decision to abandon the Hubble space telescope - decisions that I suspect this book would have spent whole chapters criticizing if another administrator had taken such weak backward steps.

The long-term value of this book will only be known in a year or two. At the present time, it glorifies an event which so far has been a press conference with no real results. I support the aspirations of the authors for a reinvigorated NASA, but I suspect this book will turn out to be no more than a one-sided chronicling of another bureaucratic backwater in history.

What could have been a fascinating insight into White House politics on the space program is marred by the vehement one-sidedness of the authors' point of view. I wouldn't mind if the author had admitted this - but this book advertises itself as a true behind-the-scenes account. Instead, it puffs up the story when it suits the authors, omits crucial details that don't suit the politics of the authors, and demonizes those who hold opposing viewpoints. It's a wasted opportunity and a sadly shallow book compared to what it could have been. I am surprised that Apogee Books, who have an excellent reputation in the field, chose to take on this poisoned chalice.

I find this book to stand in stark contrast to excellent accounts elsewhere - most notably the new epilogue in the paperback edition of Walter Cunningham's "The All-American Boys." Cunningham manages to state in 29 pages a compelling case of the good and bad points of NASA's reaction to the Columbia disaster, something which these two authors fail to do over an entire book. Cunningham is as politically partisan as they come, and yet his account of NASA's inner workings is far more fair, detailed and objectively critical than this extremely blinkered book. I'd recommend saving your money and not buying this book - or, better still, buy a better book, such as Cunningham's.

This book provides some interesting insights into the thinking behind the Bush Administration's new space initiative. Apparently the junior varsity staff at the White House got the ball rolling. That's regretable but reasonable considering the amount of time and energy devoted to the war of terror. The biggest problem with the book is the authors' venom toward former NASA administrator Daniel Goldin. Let's face it, the Shuttle Program was already a disaster before he took over. He's been gone since 2001 and we still can't get the Shuttle into space with any reliability. The book also fails to deal with the enormous obstacles confronting travel within the solar system. It's easy to talk about putting a man on Mars, but it's much more difficult to do it without killing the man. This book is worth your time and money if you're a space nut like me. However, what I would really like to read is a book that focues on future challenges, and doesn't dwell on the mistakes of the past.

I agree with the other reviewers of this book that it is pretending to be something that it is not. On October 14th 2004, book author Frank Sietzen represented George W. Bush in a Washington DC debate on Bush vs Kerry space policy. He has some very interesting points of view which should be heard, but to pretend that this book of his is an impartial look at historic events is laughable. It's a one-sided account of a complex chain of events, and this book ignores what is not convenient to its authors' points of view.

The book also goes out of its way to attack those it does not like. I am no fan of Dan Goldin's tenure as Nasa head, but nevertheless I felt this book crossed the line when it veered off course to begin attacking the man over appointments to university positions he was considered for AFTER he left Nasa. They had nothing to do with the story, or Nasa, and seem to serve only as a mean-minded slur. This book needed a good, honest editor, and for the authors to admit their biases.

At first glance New Moon Rising seems to offer a great look at how NASA responded to the Columbia tragedy, the success of the Mars rover mission and how these events led to the Bush administration's plans for revamping the agency and putting men on Mars.

But by the third chapter it becomes clear this is nothing more than a one-source story masquerading as insightful historic reporting. Maybe there was more than one source, but they are all cheerleaders of NASA boss Sean O'Keefe or Bush or both.

The authors do seem enamoured of O'Keefe with everyone else (previous administrators, non-governmental and government NASA-watchers) being presented as luddites who don't "get it". The backhanded compliments and derision (former chief Dan Goldin gets much of the blame for, well, everything) kind of wears out its welcome after awhile.

The great histories of NASA during the Space Race (A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin is a good example) or Bryan Burrough's Dragonfly make for better, far less biased reading. I think that's the books biggest problem. It's not a history, it's a hastily written press release singing O'Keefe's praises that's main purpose seems to be to tout the Bush Administration's now seemingly dorment space plans during a tough election season. Save your money.

I bought this book primarily because the publisher has in the past printed excellent-quality, informative books on space history, and I was expecting the same here.

Instead, I bought a badly-edited, mean-spirited rant about space politics. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, but don't waste your money on paying for the ones in this book, especially as they are dishonest. The book claims to be an objective look at recent NASA policies, but is anything but. One administrator is portrayed as the devil himself, another as a knight on white charger, with no effort to truly make any objective analysis. A missed opportunity, and a misstep by an otherwise great publisher.

The publisher of this book are known for their high quality, very reliably informative space books.

Keith Cowing is known for his highly opinionated and only occasionally accurate web blogs.

In my opinion, Cowing is better suited for the web, where opinions can be debated, discussed - or ignored. By putting some of his rather extreme and one-sided thoughts into print, they've made highly disputed opinion look like fact. And that, I feel, cheapens their entire publishing line.

Still, the book is now completely out of date, so a quiet deletion from their publishing catalog will probably happen soon anyway - we can hope.

When this book came out in summer 2004 it was clear that it was a rush job, pushed out the door quickly in order to capitalize on the publicity of the new space policy with little attention to quality. Now, one year later, it is not aging well. The book is poorly-written, poorly-edited, lacking objectivity, and surprisingly devoid of details.

In the poor writing category is the fact that the book is filled with many one-sentence paragraphs that often do not flow together very well. This is common on the internet, where single sentence paragraphs are used to ease eye strain. On the printed page it has the opposite effect. It is the reading equivalent of driving over speed bumps, slowing you down and tiring you out. The writing also occasionally seems like stream-of-consciousness, rather than something that was carefully composed and edited.

The poor editing is evident in the overall flow of the narrative and the fact that there are numerous typos and other printing mistakes throughout the book. At one point several paragraphs are repeated in their entirety. In addition, often opinions or descriptions of people are inserted into the text in ways that an astute editor should have flagged and removed because they're unnecessary or counterproductive. They only have the effect of making the authors themselves look mean-spirited. For instance, several people in the book are referred to as "old" as if the authors have a bias against anybody who is over 55. A good editor helps protect authors from their own worst instincts. But that didn't happen here.

Which leads to another issue: adjectives like "old" or "young" or "enthusiastic" are no substitute for important information, like NAMES. The book suffers from a severe lack of detail about _who_ advocated _what_ in the development of the Bush space policy. For instance, at one point we are told that an "aging academic" visited the White House and offered some advice to the President about space. We are not told who that person was, or what he actually said. So why is it important? This happens again and again--we are told that aides met in the White House or discussed the policy, but are not told who said what or how different viewpoints and positions evolved, transformed, were defeated, or emerged victorious.

In fact, it becomes clear upon a close reading that often what is being reported is one person's second-hand account of what happened. So clearly someone told the authors that a group of people held a meeting on subject X, but the source may not have even been at that meeting. Rather than interview the participants themselves, the authors chose to keep everything vague. And they do this even when their source is clearly taking a swipe at an adversary--i.e. when basic fairness should have compelled the authors to call up the subject of the personal attack and get their side of the story. Instead, they were content to allow themselves to be used to settle other peoples' scores. One wonders why.

As a result of this sloppy, hearsay-based approach to reporting, a lot of information has been lost or distorted. What was NASA's institutional position in all of this? Even more importantly, how did administrator O'Keefe transform from saying that NASA was not going to adopt any major new missions to suddenly arguing in favor of a specific exploration goal in his negotiations with the White House? My own sources indicate that NASA officials made a major argument in favor of a human mission to Mars, but were rebuffed by administration officials who instead selected the moon. But that is not reflected here either, and we don't know who the pro-moon people were or who the pro-Mars people were. A good editor would have forced the writers into providing more detail. "Two anonymous men met in an office and discussed something" does not tell us anything, nor is it a compelling story.

Then there is the issue of bias. According to this book, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin was evil and Sean O'Keefe who replaced him was a saint. Many pages are devoted to pointless attacks on Goldin, such as raising eyebrows about the parties thrown for him upon his departure from NASA (as if retirement parties are rare in Washington, or somehow dirty). There is even a section on his post-NASA travails, despite the fact that it has no relevance at all to the subject of the book (here the German word "schadenfruede" comes to mind--taking pleasure in the misery of others, or at least people you don't like). In comparison, O'Keefe is portrayed in glowing terms, although it is far more likely that he will be best remembered for losing a space shuttle, and failing to fix the financial management problems he was sent to the agency to address. There is little discussion of O'Keefe's most unpopular decision at NASA, the decision to sentence the Hubble Space Telescope to an early demise. One is left wondering why O'Keefe suspiciously seems to be the one person that the authors never criticize while they take cheap shots at virtually everyone else. The authors clearly have an axe to grind, but as another reviewer previously noted, they pretend that they don't.

This is not to say that the book has no redeeming qualities at all. The description of Sean O'Keefe's reaction to both the Columbia accident and the report of the accident investigation board is good. And the DVD has some neat, slightly blurry, CGI animations--although we are provided with almost no context explaining what they are or why NASA prepared them. But overall, this book is disappointing. Those who want to know what really happened with the formulation of the Bush space policy will have to wait for a better, more readable book.

A version of my review appeared in the Huntsville (AL) Times in late 2004.

Our president favors bold strokes in dealing with complex public policy issues, severing their Gordian knots seemingly at will. Perhaps his most laudable though not widely acknowledged decision was, in January 2004, to restructure the nation's efforts in human spaceflight.

Sietzen and Cowing's book chronicling this decision uneasily straddles the border between journalism and history. The authors had early access to a number of the key players, and were behind the first comprehensive news accounts of the new "Vision for Space Exploration". The book is only structured historically in the first few and last chapters; the middle chapters hop around throughout the period from early 2003 to early 2004, following several distinct threads.

The need for change was made clear by the Columbia accident, and the resulting public attention, investigation and report. The authors lay blame for the mess with former administrator Dan Goldin, casting a negative light on his character through anecdotes from his last days at NASA. Blaming things on the previous administration (or their holdovers) isn't unheard of. However the authors rather weaken their case by discussing 2001 and 2003 in such detail, while devoting almost no text to 2002, Administrator Sean O'Keefe's first year on the job.

The complexity of public policy for human spaceflight long predates Dan Goldin. The knot grew simply through the self-sustainment of human space activities without a clear purpose in the 3 decades since Apollo, with a variety of conflicting presidential and congressional directives. We mostly knew what we were doing, and did some things beautifully, but why exactly were we doing it? The Columbia investigation report, echoed by Congress and many others, called for a new statement of purpose for human space exploration.

Sietzen and Cowing highlight the White House groups that worked to create the new vision - evolving from a group of mid-level staff who cared about space exploration to agency deputies and heads and later including Sean O'Keefe's direct involvement. The outcome - moving humans beyond Earth orbit again - was almost inevitable. The emphasis on the Moon in the early stages perhaps less so, but some grassroots organizations had been arguing for the Moon for quite some time. The authors describe the wave of grassroots and industry support that followed.

Support from Congress and the general public, however, has been less forthcoming. One strategic and two tactical errors likely account for this. First, Congress was not consulted, and not even informed after asking questions of White House staff, until January 14, 2004. Second, the unveiling was twice delayed and bits and pieces leaked out, to the extent that well before the president spoke headlines blared about the new trillion-dollar mission to Mars, and it became fodder for late-night comedy.

This was doubly damaging because the call for Mars in the president's statement was sufficiently vague that the cost estimates bandied about could not be instantly refuted, but also because Mars was not the real focus of the new vision. The main immediate impact of the new vision in logically forcing a complete replacement of our human spaceflight activities seems to have been little noticed outside of the space community.

The authors discuss much of this - but unfortunately lack some perspective since, through UPI, they had joined in the fray pre-empting Bush's speech. Did their authoritative UPI report mean fewer people actually paid attention when the president spoke?

The other mistake was the leak immediately following on the cancellation of future Hubble servicing missions, provoking an overwhelming outcry that was blamed on but in fact had little to do with the new vision.

The book includes a rather mundane set of color photo plates, and a DVD with video clips surrounding events of January 14, 2004. The DVD also has NASA simulations of Moon and Mars exploration, fun but not terribly informative.

The text is marred by a leaden style; there are also some glaring typos (for example a silly story of O'Keefe on becoming administrator is repeated twice). Some pages seem merely a data dump - do we really need almost four pages of 10-year-old quotes and votes from John Kerry against the space station?

Nevertheless, skim between the anecdotes and data and you will gain a good feel for some of the personalities at work in space policy. The authors communicate well the excitement the new vision brings, and the transformations under way at NASA, including even information following the recommendations of the June 2004 Aldridge commission report, very shortly before the book came out.

This book is certainly not one for the ages, but we'll have the present administration for 3 more years, so it's interesting to gain insight into how they come to decisions like this - particularly when, as in this case, they mostly did the right thing.