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| How Apollo Flew to the Moon (Springer Praxis Books: Space Exploration) (Springer Praxis Books - Space Exploration) (Springer Praxis Books - Space Exploration) | 
 enlarge | Author: W. David Woods
Publisher: Praxis
Category: Book
List Price: £20.00
Buy New: £19.00
You Save: £1.00 (5%)
New (15) from £12.87
Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 33823
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.6 x 1
ISBN: 0387716750
Dewey Decimal Number: 629.454
EAN: 9780387716756
ASIN: 0387716750
Publication Date: December 12, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 9 to 12 days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
Beautifully written tour de force November 14, 2008
It takes real talent to explain something intricate without confusing or losing your reader in the process. David Woods has pitched the delivery of this masterpiece perfectly.
David gives the book a logical flow from start to finish, citing facts from each mission as appropriate to illustrate the issues. The explanations of hardware design and operation hit just the right level of detail to enlighten, but also end up inspiring awe. Until reading this book I had never realised just how superb the design of the Saturn/Apollo machine was.
Furthermore the significance of mission timings and trajectory calculations is explained, demystifying what for me has been a very grey area for the last 4 decades!
I would recommend this book for anyone already interested in the Apollo missions, but open to finding out more. It's a gem.
Fascinating November 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There are plenty of great books, films, TV shows and internet resources telling you who the Apollo astronauts were and what they said and did. There is surprisingly little telling you how they did it. Even the astronauts' and controllers' own memoirs seem to shy away from this, as if afraid that technical details are boring.
So how would you navigate to a pinpoint landing on a distant body? Why were the spaceships the size and shape they were, and what were the alternatives? What did all the bits do? How did they deal with things that went wrong? What was the astronauts' role in all of this? What were all those people in Mission Control doing? In the Apollo 13 movie, what on earth does "FIDO" or "Main Bus B Undervolt" mean?
This book explains it all, and somehow manages to do it in a way that is engaging and fairly easy to follow. I found it endlessly fascinating. Really excellent stuff that really fills a major gap, and I suspect future historians will love him for it.
Some bits work better than others; my mind wandered a little when reading about the scanning instruments in the SIM bay, but he rightly wants to explain every part of it and he structures it in a way that you can skip some bits but easily know where you are.
It is also great to see the attention he gives to all of the missions, not just the big-name ones, and explains really well how the build-up missions (not just Gemini but also Ranger and Surveyor and so on) contributed. And having once met the late Ron Evans of Apollo 17, I was chuffed to see his exploits described in some detail, especially as other books (especially Chaikin) tend to portray him as a bit of an amiable simpleton.
The only questions I would have are extremely minor; he seems to downplay Jim Irwin's health problems, which Chris Kraft's book described as practically a full-blown heart attack. He also downplays the design changes caused by Apollo 13, which again Chris Kraft complains were enforced by political rather than engineering reasons. But given his attention to detail in the rest of it he may well be correct.
So warmly recommended.
From pre-launch to splashdown May 27, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I have just finished reading this excellent book and I would certainly recommend it to anyone interested in the Apollo project, or space flight in general.
Without getting bogged down in equations, this book explains how the space craft of the Apollo era worked and where flown. Following the journey from the launch pad to splash down, every stage of this grand adventure are explained in detail. Each section contains examples from the real missions to show how a staggering series of procedures allowed the first humans to walk on the Moon.
Well worth reading!
Deserves 10 Stars! May 13, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is a book that I've been waiting for all my life! I've read so many books about Project Apollo, many of which naturally focus on the human side of the adventures-this is after all, what the general public wants to know about. But as a reasonably intelligent and educated person I have often been left wondering how they actually did everything they needed to get to the Moon and back safely. This book fills that gap and in a way that the person with an average level of education will fully comprehend and enjoy. Mr Woods's explanations on navigation procedures are so lucid as to make it sound simple and after a few minutes reading I found I could confidently bandy phrases around such as 'state vector' at dinner parties, even though I have to take my shoes and socks off to count up to 23!
After many years of falling into the trap of thinking the Moon landings were a great but, only moderately hard task to achieve, Mr Woods superb book has reinstated my feelings of awe for what humans can achieve if they put their minds to it and polished my absolute admiration for the astronauts who put themselves into the hands of their ground-based colleagues.
I cannot praise Mr Woods efforts enough, however I worry that since the bar has been set so high by the author, every subsequent book I read on Project Apollo will compare unfavourably to 'How Apollo Flew to the Moon'.
Text book for lunar rocket scientists April 23, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
When we go back to the Moon, just about everything we learnt from apollo will have to be relearnt. If that is the case, then this book is the one that should be the starter for ten. It is one of the best technical books on Apollo I have ever read, and I've read quite a few, keeping the cut and paste jobs of some books to a minimum and actually writing for a readership for once. All in all, a very good book, beautifully presented, laced with anecdotes and engineering details but never too heavy. For those that doubt anyone ever went there, this at least tells you how - other books will tell you why and give you all the whens. Recommended.
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