Taking Science to the Moon: Lunar Experiments and the Apollo Program (New Series in NASA History) [Hardcover]

Donald A. Beattie (Author)

Book Description

Series: New Series in NASA History | Publication Date: June 5, 2001

How did science get aboard the Apollo rockets, and what did scientists do with the space allotted to them? Taking Science to the Moon describes, from the perspective of NASA headquarters, the struggles that took place to include science payloads and lunar exploration as part of the Apollo program. Donald A. Beattie -- who served at NASA from 1963 to 1973 in several management positions and finally as program manager, Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments -- here supplies a detailed, insider's view of the events leading up to the acceptance of science activities on all the Apollo missions.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Conceived primarily as a political statement, Apollo achieved much more than its original goal," Beattie, a geologist and former project manager of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments, writes in this valuable addition to the literature on America's race for the moon. When President John F. Kennedy issued his mandate in 1961 to put an American on the lunar surface before the end of the decade, the objective was to beat the Soviets, whose space program at the time was two years ahead of our own. Kennedy's mandate did not specify what the astronauts should do once they got there; simply getting there was enough. Beattie gives a first-hand account of efforts by NASA scientists to do more to include science payloads on Apollo missions despite opposition from mission engineers, who envisioned a direct round-trip shot with as much margin for error as possible. The Apollo 11 mission that culminated in Neil Armstrong's historic "giant leap for mankind" was much different; it combined a command module sent from a low earth orbit with a lunar lander carrying a hard-fought minimum payload for collecting seismic and other data. Later missions would carry a full 250 pounds for lunar experiments, the result of years of planning, design and training by NASA project managers, engineers and astronauts. Beattie faithfully chronicles all this in a comprehensive yet thoroughly readable manner. As he shows, the Apollo missions yielded a harvest of data, much of which still has not yet been fully analyzed. Beattie's account helps complete the historical record of the Apollo years; it will hold great appeal for rocket enthusiasts, providing as it does a behind-the-scenes look at one of the greatest adventures in history.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

Taking Science to the Moon transports the reader behind NASAs facade, and into the 1960s' politics, planning sessions, turf battles, camaraderie, and jealousies of the world's major space agency. An absorbing, insightful, and revealing critical history of what eventually turned out to be a hugely successful scientific endeavor.

(David W. Hughes The Observatory January 2005)

Comprehensive yet thoroughly readable, it will hold great appeal for rocket enthusiasts, providing as it does a behind-the-scenes look at one of the greatest adventures in history.

(Publishers Weekly )

We get valuable insights into how committees worked and into the struggles for scientific payload space on lunar landers, and into how geological objectives were devised. We also discover how fears of contamination from lunar organisms led to the creation of an elaborate quarantine facility for the first men on the moon. This is a fascinating book.

(Martin Heath Astronomy Now )

This is a very detailed yet clearly written and interesting account of the tremendous effort involved in getting the greatest science return from the Apollo program, starting with having it included in the first place.

(Steven Simon Journal of Geology )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (June 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801865999
• ISBN-13: 978-0801865992
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,426,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Find Out What the Astronauts Did While on the Moon, January 12, 2002

By 

G. P. Roberts "robbie" (Pinson, AL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Taking Science to the Moon: Lunar Experiments and the Apollo Program (New Series in NASA History) (Hardcover)

I first saw this book while at my local library and after glancing through it I decided it might be worth a quick look. Once I got home and started reading I quickly discovered that this was no dry Science/History book by some old college professor but a great read that tells a part of the Apollo story that is far to often ignored.
The author was a participant in the development of the NASA experiments and the book is written from the view of an insider, not just someone who has done research on the subject. He discusses field training and the development of the moon simulations here on earth. Read about how they duplicated the lunar sites, including how they made craters, in Northern Arizona so that the astronauts felt as though they had already been there when they got to the moon. He discusses cost and weight problems that were worked out and he shares a great story about astronaut Walt Cunningham's field demonstration of an early space suite design. He shares some of the ideas that were developed for post Apollo projects that were regrettably never realized (including the large MOLAB test vehicle that you can still see today at the Space Museum in Huntsville, Alabama). You learn how moon rocks were stored and examined when brought back to earth and he includes several photos and maps that add to the various storys. All of these subjects are told in a highly readable and sometimes humorous way, so don't get the idea that this is some old NASA text reworked, it's not!
If you enjoyed the 10th episode of HBO's "From The Earth To The Moon" titled "Galileo Was Right" then this book is a must read. This book puts meat on that story about Apollo 17 Astronaut Harrison Schmitt and his selection as the only Science astronaut who went to the moon; in much the same way that other books have told the rest of the story about the "Spider" episode from the HBO series.
I give this book very high marks and I hope the author writes a second book about this subject. By the way, I enjoyed the copy from the library so much, I bought a copy for myself!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine Book on the Apollo Scientific Experiment, January 23, 2002

By 

John R. Keller (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Taking Science to the Moon: Lunar Experiments and the Apollo Program (New Series in NASA History) (Hardcover)

While much has been written about the Apollo missions to the Moon, most of these books have focused on either the spacecraft the got us to the Moon (Moon Lander or Stages to Saturn) or the astronauts (autobiographies by Collins, Cernan, Aldrin) and to a lesser degree, Mission control and the flight controllers. Furthermore, thousands upon thousands of scientific and technical papers have been and are still be written from the data collected by the various experiments that were conducted on the lunar surface. The story of how these experiments got to the moon, which ones were chosen and why, the people who developed this experimental packages and the internal NASA struggles to even get these experiments to the Moon has never been documented, at least in much detail. In his book, the author, Donald Beattie who was the program manager for the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments, details all decisions, meetings, NASA in-fighting and the like that got these important, and initially overlooked surface experiments on the flights to the Moon. The author draws upon his extensive library of NASA memos, publications and the like to craft a really fine book.

The book begins with the usual background information of the author's pre-NASA career where he worked for a major US oil company in South America. After hearing about the space program, on a whim he decides to apply for a position and after several unsuccessful attempts, he lands a position at NASA headquarters in Washington D.C helping to plan the missions and experiments that will be used.

After this introductory section, the books covers the conceptual designs for both the Apollo missions and post-Apollo missions that were planned, the inclusion of the United States Geological Survey to plan the missions and analyze the data, and training of the astronauts to perform various scientific tasks. After these sections, a good portion of the book is devoted to the J-series lunar missions (Apollo 15, 16 and 17) and all the training and hardware that was developed to support them. The book even covers the often overlooked Command Module on-orbit photographic survey, which provided some of the most detailed photographic of the Moon's surface.

While each page of this book is loaded with a lot of very interesting and I would say previously unpublished information, I found the parts of the book which examine the working relationships between the NASA centers, the most interesting. I was dumbfounded to find out that several people at the Manned Spacecraft Center felt that they should be designing and developing the experimental packages for the lunar surface operations even though they were engineers and not scientists. Fortunately, the upper NASA management decided that the design of these packages should be left to the scientists.

In final chapter, "The Legacy of Apollo", the author summarizes what was learned from the Apollo mission to the Moon, what it cost and mostly importantly, what it all meant. That is, people working together can solve very difficult problems and reap great rewards, whether they are scientific or philosophic.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Review of Another Dimension of Apollo, January 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Taking Science to the Moon: Lunar Experiments and the Apollo Program (New Series in NASA History) (Hardcover)

The Apollo program was not launched for scientific reasons but plenty of excellent science was carried out during it. This book, written by a NASA insider, gives a good guide to all the planning and development that went into the scientific investigations. In addition, it provides some very interesting material on planned longer duration Apollo and post Apollo missions, including lunar bases. Overall, this book is a great addition to any Apollo enthusiast's library.