Customer Reviews

Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar Exploration Mission

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"Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar Exploration Missions" is a clearly-written account of the lunar surface activities of the Apollo astronauts. It traces the ways in which scientists with interests in the Moon and engineers concerned with landing people on the Earth's satellite resolved their differences of approach and carried out a set of missions that made major contributions to science. The author argues that "When scientific requirements began to be imposed on manned space flight operations, hardly any aspect was unaffected. The choice of landing sites, the amount of scientific equipment that could be carried, and the weight of lunar material that could be brought back all depended on the capabilities of the spacecraft and mission operations. These considerations limited the earliest missions and constituted the challenge of the later ones" (p. iii). Roughly half of the volume is devoted to preparations for the lunar landings, with Compton providing a blow-by-blow of the debates over how to maximize scientific return. The remainder of the book details the lunar explorations that followed Apollo 11, in which twelve astronauts visited the Moon and brought back lunar samples for scientists to investigate.

A major feature of Compton's work is a recitation of the controversies between scientists and engineers for primacy in the lunar science program. As reviewer Norriss Hetherington commented ("Isis" 82 (June 1991): 400-401), the conflict is between "engineers interested in landing people on the moon and returning them safely versus scientists seeking to add scientific requirements to manned space flight." The differences were never resolved during Apollo, and they remain a critical aspect of space exploration's internecine warfare to the present.

For those who do not need a physical copy of this, the NASA History Division has placed the text on-line at http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4214/cover.html and it is available for all to use at any time. This is a very fine book. Enjoy.