Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon |  | Author: Craig Nelson
Publisher: Viking Adult
List Price: $27.95
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Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 14625
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition, First Printing
Pages: 416
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0670021032
Dewey Decimal Number: 629.4540973
EAN: 9780670021031
ASIN: 0670021032
Publication Date: June 25, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A richly detailed and dramatic account of one of the greatest achievements of humankind
At 9:32 A.M. on July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 rocket launched in the presence of more than a million spectators who had gathered to witness a truly historic event. It carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins to the last frontier of human imagination: the moon.
Rocket Men is the thrilling story of the moon mission, and it restores the mystery and majesty to an event that may have become too familiar for most people to realize what a stunning achievement it represented in planning, technology, and execution.
Through interviews, twenty-three thousand pages of NASA oral histories, and declassified CIA documents on the space race, Craig Nelson re-creates a vivid and detailed account of the Apollo 11 mission. From the quotidian to the scientific to the magical, readers are taken right into the cockpit with Aldrin and Armstrong and behind the scenes at Mission Control.
Rocket Men is the story of a twentieth-century pilgrimage; a voyage into the unknown motivated by politics, faith, science, and wonder that changed the course of history.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 34
For Want of a Better Editor October 25, 2009
Richard Stachurski (Bellevue, WA USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Mr. Nelson apparently has no technical background. If his editors at Viking had considered that circumstance they might have arranged for a technical review that could have corrected multiple errors. I could cite several, but one will be sufficient to make my point--on page 229 Mr. Nelson writes that the surface temperature of the Moon in darkness is "minus one hundred kelvins." Minus kelvins? I rest my case.
 Great entertaining read October 25, 2009
N. Gurnagul (Somewhere in Quebec)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
A large number of books on the Apollo space program are technically accurate but are quite dry. I found this book to be quite entertaining and a quick read. Although the pacing was not linear this did not bother me as I am quite familiar with the Apollo program. I found the book's strength was not so much on the technical details but more so on how the author placed the U.S. space program in context with the geopolitical factors operating during the 1960's. The discussions on the impact of the cold war on the U.S. space program were quite illuminating as were the quotes from the astronauts as well as others involved in the space program.
 Fascinating September 25, 2009
Mike Birdsall
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
The book started out slowly. I really enjoyed when they described the minute by minute sequence to the launch. The description of what they felt and saw on the moon was awesome. I was let down though on the return to Earth. They didn't give me the details as to how that felt? How fast did they go? What did splashdown feel like?
Beyond that missing link, it was a great read.
 Terrible book, but great info in the negative reviews September 15, 2009
M. Gleason (Astoria, OR)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
While the book is absolutely terrible, I did learn a lot by reading the corrections of fact listed in the other reviews!
Bad, Bad, Bad--A new "perigee" in Apollo history reporting September 10, 2009
Terry Sunday (El Paso, Texas United States)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Let me begin this review by first mentioning a different book on the same subject--Harry Hurt's 1988 "For All Mankind." In the 20-plus years since its publication (timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing), "For All Mankind" has reigned supreme as the most technically inept attempt at a spaceflight book ever. Filled with gross misconceptions, major factual errors and incorrect "explanations" of spaceflight technology, "For All Mankind" is so bad that it is hard to imagine that a book about the Apollo program could be any worse. Well, Craig Nelson's "Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon," is worse. Far worse. Mind-numbingly worse. "Rocket Men" forges such a huge lead in the race for the worst spaceflight book ever written that even "For All Mankind" is left behind in the dust, a distant also-ran. "Rocket Men" is so bad, and so filled with breathtaking, jaw-dropping, forehead-striking technical errors, that you may momentarily find yourself wondering if it is really intended to be a satire on space "geekdom." But, sadly, it isn't, And if you have the misfortune to buy this book without realizing what you're getting, you will be very, very disappointed.
Don't take my word for it. Consider the following examples, as well as those provided by many other science-trained people who have posted reviews here. Then imagine a book filled to the brim with similar errors, inconsistencies, misstatements and graphic examples of Mr. Nelson's utter lack of knowledge of science, history, technology, aviation and spaceflight:
-- The X-15 had "...only 600,000 horsepower---one-fourth the velocity needed for orbit..." (Page 52)
-- The Apollo Command Module was "...a copper, silver and white cone made from iron reinforced with porcelain..." (79)
-- The Saturn V's F-1 engines produced "...a thrust that was four times the speed of sound..." (83)
-- Max Q, the period of maximum dynamic pressure on a rocket during ascent, is "...the outermost combination of gravity fighting speed..." (133)
-- On chimpanzee Ham's Mercury-Redstone flight: "...An abort call was made, which yanked the retro rockets, but Mission Control could not slow the capsule for reentry..." (149)
-- On Apollo 4: "...Two F-1 rockets abruptly quit during liftoff, at which point the stack pulled a U-turn and headed screaming back at the ground..." (194)
-- Fixing a J-2 engine involved "...repairing a flexible bellows-joint in the liquid hydrogen plumbing that kept cracking when it hit the ceiling of Earth's atmosphere..." (198)
-- During ascent, "...the astronauts were gradually and insistently pressed down further by the weight of their rocket's velocity..." (207)
-- What the Lunar Orbit Insertion burn did was "...slow the craft to 2,917 feet per second, allowing it to fall into the pull of the Moon's gravity. The gravitational warp in space-time then threw it like a slingshot to the dark side..." (225)
-- At Johnson Space Center, "...the Trench got its name from the fact that the floors of Mission Control were linked by pneumatic tubes of compressed air through which memoranda-stuffed aluminum cylinders shot back and forth--a technology from the Space Age of 1806..." (240)
And finally, in perhaps the most bizarre statement ever made in a purportedly non-fiction book:
-- The reason the astronauts' space suits had gold-plated visors was so that "...in the unlikely event of a hostile encounter, its reflection would keep aliens from being able to peer into a human face..." (268)
Some reviewers call technical errors such as these "nits," and say that the rest of "Rocket Men" is so well-written that they can be ignored. I don't see it that way. To anyone with the slightest knowledge of science and technology, these errors simply prove that Mr. Nelson is totally ignorant of these subjects and has no qualifications whatsoever to write a book about spaceflight. These "nits" show that Mr. Nelson lacks an understanding of the Apollo program on its most fundamental level--how it worked. Science and technology were the heart and soul of Apollo, and by getting those parts of the story wrong, "Rocket Men" loses all credibility and value. Other than to capitalize financially on the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing, I have to wonder why any author would try to write a book about a subject he knows so little about. I could do as well writing a book about, for example, contract bridge, about which I know absolutely nothing, and I would expect it to be equally disastrous and equally useless. There's a reason why so many knowledgeable reviewers recommend Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts." It is the best Apollo program history so far written. "Rocket Men" is the worst.
Bottom line: give "Rocket Men" a wide berth. Don't buy it. Don't even check it out of a library. Any time you spend between the covers of "Rocket Men" is time you'd be much better off spending doing something else.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 34
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