Neil Armstrong

Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Apollo Moon Landings

by Jay Barbree, Howard Benedict, Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton and Neil Armstrong  · 1 Jan 1994  · 469pp  · 124,784 words

MOON SHOT The Inside Story of America’s Apollo Moon Landings Alan Shepard AND Deke Slayton WITH Jay Barbree INTRODUCTION BY Neil Armstrong Moon Shot is for the quintessential space journalist Howard Benedict, the senior aerospace writer for the Associated Press and a perennial winner of spaceflight’s

…

talents to herd the facts and details for the original Moon Shot. He was simply the best and we miss him. CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION by Neil Armstrong CHAPTER ONE: 2011 CHAPTER TWO: The Beginning CHAPTER THREE: The Pilots CHAPTER FOUR: The Astronauts CHAPTER FIVE: Training CHAPTER SIX: The Selection CHAPTER SEVEN: The

…

before or since. As the captain said, fasten your seat belt. We’re going to the moon, the damnedest trip you’ll ever make. INTRODUCTION Neil Armstrong’s Moon LUNA INCOGNITA. THE UNKNOWN MOON. A silent sentinel. For all of man’s history it had hung overhead, remote, unreachable, unknowable. Marching across

…

lunar highlands. Silent ramparts guard vast territories never yet visited by man. Unseen vistas await the return of explorers from Earth. And they will return. —Neil Armstrong CHAPTER ONE 2011 DURING THE FIVE DECADES FOLLOWING Alan Shepard’s first launch in 1961, NASA’s enormous accomplishments were respected and admired the world

…

of astronaut. They would help the Mercury Seven fly the new Gemini two-man spacecraft. Some would become legends. Others would give their lives. Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Charles “Pete” Conrad, James Lovell, James McDivitt, Elliott See, Tom Stafford, Ed White, and John Young came aboard Slayton now had fifteen astronauts

…

highway to the moon. But linking two ships in orbit still had to be proven. That job now fell to the Gemini 8 crew of Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott. Their Agena target satellite, boosted by an Atlas rocket and its own engine, shot into orbit on March 16, 1966, and they

…

up as high as 550 degrees per second. That’s about the rate at which you begin to lose consciousness or the capability to operate. Neil Armstrong realized they were in very serious trouble, and he took all the power off the Gemini to try to stop the spin, and then he

…

to fly the third flight after that.” Thus, Deke and Alan called the backup crew that had supported the moon-orbiting flight of Apollo 8. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins and were told they were it. They would fly Apollo 11. They would get the first chance to land on

…

the moon. But NASA had yet to fly that bug-eyed spidery creature it called the lunar module, which would take Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin down to lunar soil. It must be flown, and successfully, on Apollo 9. That meant firing the entire Apollo assembly of command

…

toe or came down with the flu at the last moment, if, if, if, then the first landing assignment would go to the crew of Neil Armstrong, who had pulled Gemini 8 out of its deadly spin; Buzz Aldrin, who had solved the problems of space-walking on the very last Gemini

…

lunar landscape in their landing craft—the first of their kind to descend on the moon. Their ship was named Eagle. Within its cramped cabin Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stood with their booted feet flat against its flight deck. Each was sealed within the protective layers of a pressurized spacesuit, and

…

gravity field. Their arms sagged. Legs settled within their suits. Their feet pressed downward in their boots as they yielded to their down-rushing speed. Neil Armstrong smiled. His eyes were tired but warm with anticipation, immersed in the reality of their incredible adventure. He saw Buzz Aldrin grinning like a kid

…

the Eagle’s computer so all the key functions were performed in the time allotted. His computer was working, and that’s what mattered. But Neil Armstrong’s voice demanded a response. “Give usthe reading on that twelve-oh-two program alarm.” “GUIDO?” Gene Kranz shouted the question into the loop of

…

. Hang tight, we’re GO. . . . ” Thirteen hundred feet above the moon’s surface, Eagle began its final descent. Flames gushed downward as the craft slowed. Neil Armstrong had flown his mission right along the edge of the razor. He and Buzz functioned as one mind. Now they were doing more than falling

…

dead weight in vacuum. There also was no opportunity to orbit again for another try at landing. Their only chance to succeed was to land. Neil Armstrong gripped the hand controller in his fist, firm and strong, with a touch honed by years of flight in jets and rockets. He knew the

…

21, dammit even ejecting from the lunar lander trainer before it crashed—all of it, everything came to this one moment. The Ohio farm boy, Neil Armstrong came from the same soil as Orville and Wilbur. This was his Kitty Hawk and he needed to hand-fly man’s first landing on

…

would burn out. The tanks would be empty. An abort would need to be initiated seconds before that happened if Eagle was not to crash. Neil Armstrong calmly aimed for his new landing site. The Eagle’s commander kept one thought uppermost in his mind. Fly. Eagle swayed gently from side to

…

Buzz. Deke Slayton knew they had to leave it to the pilots on the final approach. As Eagle skittered over boulders and across craters, only Neil Armstrong’s judgment counted. He was there. He was flying. The clock was ticking away precious fuel. Charlie Duke looked at Deke and held up both

…

, and throughout the vast halls of NASA, everyone anywhere who knew what was happening just above the moon was hoping, praying, straining. Fuel flashed away. Neil Armstrong flew Eagle with the smooth touch of a naval aviator landing a jet on a tossing carrier. Millions of hearts pounded madly. Then, Buzz spoke

…

-up. There would be time later to celebrate. The words flashed across space to Houston. “That may have seemed like a very long final phase.” Neil Armstrong was all business again. “The auto targeting was taking us into a football-field-sized crater, with a large number of big boulders and rocks

…

on the moon as they studied the lunar landscape. No birds. No wind. No clouds. A black sky instead of blue. Two days from Earth Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had landed on a ghost world—a land that had never known the caress of seas. Never felt life stirring in its

…

and a Mars-size planetoid. Its infancy was one of boiling lava and shattering space collisions before it died geologically. Today, in the year 2011, Neil Armstrong and those who walked the lunar surface will tell you if humankind is to survive a finite Earth, it must colonize the moon. Humans must

…

TWENTY Boots on the Moon ON JULY 20, 1969, EIGHT years after President John F. Kennedy had promised to put a man on the moon, Neil Armstrong stepped from Apollo 11’s lunar module and climbed down Eagle’s ladder to the moon’s surface. There was no hurry. Moving into the

…

(who died in a plane crash in 1968). They unsheathed a metal disc on the descent stage with engraved messages to future moon visitors. As Neil Armstrong read the plaque’s words, his voice carried throughout the world. “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969

…

, AD. We came in peace for all mankind.” There was yet another small cargo—private and precious—carried by Neil Armstrong to the moon. It was not divulged at the time, but he carried the diamond-studded astronaut pin made especially for Deke Slayton by the

…

its launch platform—the bottom half of the lunar module. Insulation material torn free by the rocket blast scattered widely in a shower of debris. Neil Armstrong, watching the surface, saw the first American flag deployed on the moon yield to the whoosh of dust and debris and fall slowly over on

…

ship is folly. It could leave Americans stranded on the International Space Station with only a Russian spacecraft, if working, to get them off.” And Neil Armstrong testified before the Senate’s Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee that “With regard to President Obama’s 2010 plan, I have yet to find a person

…

intense heat. Investigators said the fire was caused by defective electrical wiring. The Apollo 11 crew: Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Mike Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin. On July 16, 1969, Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins, and Buzz Aldrin rocketed away from earth and four days later Armstrong and Aldrin rode

…

Armstrong were on the moon more than 21 hours and spent two hours exploring outside their lander. President Richard M. Nixon greeted Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins, and Buzz Aldrin aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet in the Pacific Ocean following the spacemen’s return from man’s first moon

A Man on the Moon

by Andrew Chaikin  · 1 Jan 1994  · 816pp  · 242,405 words

war, the environment, and unrest at home, NASA was expanding the reach of human beings on another world. On Apollo 11, the first lunar landing, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had spent little more than a day on a bland acre of moonscape. In their single moonwalk—which lasted a bit longer

…

until Collins could get there. Wally Schirra's wife, Jo, and Chuck Berry, the space center's chief physician, would go to Betty Grissom's. Neil Armstrong's wife, Jan, would go to her next-door neighbor Pat White's, and Bill Anders, another member of the third group, and like Bean

…

was only a matter of time. Gemini had had its share of close calls, none worse than when Gemini 8 began tumbling out of control: Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott had narrowly escaped with their lives. And the Gemini pilots had taken some calculated risks. For example, everyone knew that the Gemini

…

, the first one. He felt sure the other men in this room, especially the mission commanders—Wally Schirra, Jim McDivitt, Frank Borman, Tom Stafford, and Neil Armstrong—shared his ambition. But no one could predict who might make that first landing, not even Slayton, and that was part of his message on

…

Air Force Base. There were those, like John Young, who had set a record or two. And there was even a rocket pilot among them: Neil Armstrong, a NASA man out of Edwards, who had flown the X-15 rocket plane to the edge of space. In short, the Nine were ready

…

to getting on a crew. On the first day of the mission, March 3, 1966, Anders walked into the Mission Control Center just minutes after Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott had successfully docked with their unmanned Agena target. The craft was out of radio contact, somewhere over China. Jim Lovell was just

…

spring as one of a handful of astronauts who were learning how to fly the dangerous and unwieldy trainer called the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle. Neil Armstrong was flying it too, and he and Anders had a friendly competition to see who could make the better simulated lunar touchdown. No one had

…

their last meal on earth, the traditional astronaut’s breakfast of steak and eggs. Deke Slayton was there, and Al Shepard, along with backup crewmen Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, scientist-astronaut Jack Schmitt, and the man who had envisioned this mission, George Low. Years later Anders would remember the conversation as

…

1968, when Frank Borman's crew swapped places with Jim McDivitt's, so did their backup teams, and Conrad's place in line went to Neil Armstrong. Now it looked as though Armstrong's team, a crew with hardly any lunar module experience, was about to be assigned to the landing. That

…

wayside in the fall of 1968 when Borman turned down the offer. Many years later, the myth would endure that somehow NASA had hand-picked Neil Armstrong to command the first lunar landing mission. In one version it was because he was the best test pilot among the astronauts; in another, because

…

pilot. It wouldn't be official for a few days, but assuming it was approved, they would be in line for the first lunar landing. Neil Armstrong had gone to work that Monday morning with only a suspicion, not an assurance, of what might come his way. Looking back, he would say

…

Young. Thirty-one hours after that, early in the morning of May 24, the second team of moon voyagers headed back to earth. In Houston, Neil Armstrong and his crew were into their final months of preparation. When Tom Stafford's crew came back from the moon, only the landing remained. Everything

…

past his canopy. From the ground, you might have seen him, wafting on the thermal currents, circling in wide arcs. Whenever he got the chance, Neil Armstrong took time out from the pressure of his life as an astronaut to go soaring. He loved this kind of flying—unpowered, pure, mentally demanding

…

in existence. Somehow, the primitive beauty of Edwards was the perfect backdrop to the unfolding of the future. And it was the perfect place for Neil Armstrong. NACA’s High Speed Flight Station was perched on the edge of Rogers Dry Lake. The NACA fliers epitomized a new breed of test pilot

…

to about that, but space is the frontier, and that's where I intend to go." June 1969 Flight Crew Training Building, Kennedy Space Center Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stood side by side in the Lunar Module Simulator. A soft green light filled the enclosure, emanating from dozens of electroluminescent dials

…

they had done many times over the past few months, Armstrong and Aldrin were about to confront Apollo’s greatest unknown. “Space is the frontier,” Neil Armstrong had said seven years earlier, and with the lunar landing he had found a piloting task at the frontier of spaceflight. Nothing like it had

…

and hovered in midair for an instant, then flew slowly over the concrete apron. This was the moment that made NASA managers chew their fingernails. Neil Armstrong was piloting the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle, one of the most unforgiving flying machines ever built. For Armstrong, it was also one of the most

…

would be assigned to the very next mission to try again. For Collins, Paine’s promise took some of the pressure off, but not for Neil Armstrong. He was only too aware that the nation’s prestige was riding on this mission. It was impossible not to be aware, in the fishbowl

…

welcome, or, perhaps, warning. 7:25 P.M., Houston time 3 days, 10 hours, 53 minutes Mission Elapsed Time Even before Apollo 11 left earth, Neil Armstrong knew the approach to his landing site as well as he had known the desert towns along the approach to Edwards. He’d spent some

…

Gene Cernan. Charlie Duke knew more about the lunar module than any astronaut who wasn’t already on an Apollo crew; that expertise had prompted Neil Armstrong to ask him to serve as Capcom for the landing. A short time ago Kranz had ordered Security to lock the doors to the MOCR

…

communications dropped out. “They’ve lost you,” Collins radioed to his crewmates. A moment later, after Aldrin switched to a different antenna, communications returned. Now Neil Armstrong turned his attention to the moon. Eagle was facedown, and through his small, triangular window Armstrong could see landmarks he recognized. Each checkpoint was appearing

…

and some of the computer experts from MIT, studying each type of alarm and what to do if it came up. So when Kranz heard Neil Armstrong call “twelve-oh-two,” he knew it was serious. Whether they could continue or not was up to Steve Bales. But the complexities of the

…

but dissolved, that the “center of gravity of the decision-making process" was no longer some point midway between himself and the moon. It was Neil Armstrong. Charlie Duke knew it too, and he said over the loop to Kranz, “I think we'd better be quiet." There was nothing to do

…

mission that he had missed its significance—but now she realized she had been wrong. If Aldrin’s Communion marked a very personal observance, then Neil Armstrong had his own ceremony to think about. Almost from the moment the world learned that he would be the first human being to set foot

…

. The front leg of the lunar module slanted across a tableau of black sky and bright ground, and at the top, the shadowy form of Neil Armstrong descended, one rung at a time, toward the moon. When Armstrong reached the bottom rung he paused. The legs were designed to compress with the

…

opened, fuel would flow into the combustion chamber, and the engine would fire. That would have to happen two minutes from now. Before the flight Neil Armstrong had worried about those valves, and he'd suggested to the engineers that they consider replacing the electrical actuating system with a mechanical one that

…

. Conrad and Gordon told Bean, “Hang on!” THE NEW ASTRONAUTS Heirs to the Original 7: The “New 9” on desert survival training, 1963. (From left) Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, Jim McDivitt, Elliot See, Torn Stafford, Ed White, and John Young. Eight of them would fly on Gemini; Elliot

…

unforgiving flying machines ever built, the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle was essential to learning how to land on the moon. APOLLO 11 above: April 1969: Neil Armstrong (right) and Buzz Aldrin clamber through a suited run-through of their moonwalk. right: July 20, 1969: An hour into history's first moonwalk, Buzz

…

plenty of NASA people, at the Cape and in Houston, who were surprised when he didn’t get it. He was in mission control when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. And he was there when everyone, from the NASA managers in the control center to the geologists in

…

Paine for his kind offer and said good-bye. He was halfway up the stairs when he realized Paine had made the same promise to Neil Armstrong. II: Shore Leave Monday, November 17 11:45 P.M., Houston time 3 days, 13 hours, 23 minutes Mission Elapsed Time “Twenty-four hours from

…

t deny it; this was the big day. “Oh, you noticed?" Conrad said wryly, as the two men ate breakfast over the lunar far side. Neil Armstrong had never said a word about anxiety, but Conrad wasn't Armstrong. “I just hope we find the old Snowman! Then I hope we find

…

never had any trouble speaking her mind, especially when it came to bureaucracy. And that afternoon she was convinced that NASA’s bureaucrats had told Neil Armstrong what to say when he stepped on the moon. Conrad tried to convince her otherwise, but she was certain of it. Conrad persisted; he couldn

…

footpad with a gentle bump. “Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but it's a long one for me.” As Neil Armstrong had done, Conrad held on with his right hand and placed his left boot on the moon. He swirled his foot in the dust. “Ooh

…

, Conrad ran out ahead of him, scouting a good area to lay out the experiments. In their 2l/z hours on the Sea of Tranquillity, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had never ventured more than a couple of hundred feet from their lander. Now, 1 hour and 48 minutes into this first

…

had been the commander on Apollo 8. If Lovell had any disappointment about his commander’s decision, it vanished when Slayton assigned him to lead Neil Armstrong’s backup crew. Within weeks after Armstrong’s team came back from the moon, Lovell and his crew were training for their own landing. By

…

the spring of 1970, most of Lovell’s colleagues from the second astronaut group had moved on to other things. Neil Armstrong had disappeared into the world of postflight P.R. that greeted him on his return from Apollo 11; it seemed unlikely he would fly again

…

water about 5 hours before reentry. That would have been an ominous prediction if not for an important bit of data from Apollo 11. Before Neil Armstrong and his crew cast off Eagle’s ascent stage in lunar orbit, they began an experiment: they left everything inside the lander operating, but deliberately

…

the moon in a command module without power, or an engine, or oxygen. Lovell realized it couldn’t have happened at a better time. Unlike Neil Armstrong and Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell had not received any pre-flight promise from Tom Paine about letting him and his crew fly the next mission

…

could settle a few lunar mysteries, it wouldn’t hurt. Unfortunately, Stafford’s crew didn’t have much time for science; of course, neither did Neil Armstrong’s. Schmitt understood that on the first landing science had to take a back seat—a fact that Shoemaker and some of his colleagues didn

…

first and a scientist second. And in his more realistic moments, Schmitt had to agree. More importantly, some of the scientists had underestimated the astronauts; Neil Armstrong’s work on Apollo 11 made that clear. For years, the geologists had the feeling that Armstrong was genuinely interested, and that he was picking

…

now. Don’t take any chances out there; just get home alive.” Understandable though it was, this kind of talk rankled Cernan. He sensed, as Neil Armstrong had in the months before Apollo 11, the damage that failure would cause the program and the national image. And as a mission commander, he

…

a long-running stage play. Some of the stars of that production—several of the men who had crossed the translunar gulf, including Jim Lovell, Neil Armstrong, and, with special irony, Dick Gordon—were on hand to see the last of their comrades leave the earth. Nearby, more than a thousand newspeople

…

the Mercury 7 Foundation, created by the Original 7 to give scholarships to college students studying space and engineering. None of the moon voyagers save Neil Armstrong has as much name recognition, and Shepard is able to use his fame to raise money for the foundation. Though he is more often identified

…

likes to point out a pair of photographs that share a frame on his office wall: one of himself at Taurus-Littrow, the other of Neil Armstrong at Tranquillity Base. The last man to walk on the moon and the first. They could not be more different in the way they have

…

moon. He is facing the camera, standing at the edge of a small crater; in his mirrored visor is a tiny image of the photographer, Neil Armstrong, and the Sea of Tranquillity. If Armstrong’s journey since that photograph was taken has been one of the most private, then Aldrin’s has

…

main room of the house, the one where Bean spends most mornings, is the painting studio. Displayed around his easel are images Bean has created: Neil Armstrong, his gold visor reflecting the Sea of Tranquillity, unfurling an American flag in the vacuum; Ed Mitchell in midstride, map in hand, on his way

…

the whole, his theory seems to hold up. Jim Irwin was a religious man before he went. Ed Mitchell was already interested in psychic phenomena. Neil Armstrong's retreat from the media spotlight, and Gene Cernan's acceptance of it, are entirely consistent with the people they were before Apollo. From Borman

…

first LM capable of making a landing, but in the wake of the delays that prompted the Apollo 8 decision, his lightweight LM went to Neil Armstrong, and Stafford took over Frank Borman’s lander, which had been built before Grumman’s super-weight-saving program took effect. 153 Vibrations during Apollo

…

not know how to use a camera, and as Hillary said, “Everest was no place to teach him." Coincidentally, there are no good pictures of Neil Armstrong on the moon. The only clear Hasselblad photo shows Armstrong with his back to the camera, working at Eagle s equipment storage tray. He also

…

of Experimental Test Pilots never recognized him and his crew for their performances. And when Congress awarded the Space Medal of Honor to Pete Conrad, Neil Armstrong, and a handful of other astronauts, Lovell was disappointed once more. A medal of honor, he points out, is given for action above and beyond

…

him absolutely blown away! ... I never thought Gene had that in him. Let alone the willingness to say anything about it.” 568 The photograph of Neil Armstrong at Tranquillity Base: There are only a handful of still photographs of Armstrong on the moon; these were taken by Aldrin as part of documentary

In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965-1969

by Francis French, Colin Burgess and Walter Cunningham  · 1 Jun 2010  · 628pp  · 170,668 words

’m this one!” Today, the same situation elicits “Did you fly in space?” and “What was your mission?” This happens because, except for John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, and one or two others, the public sees us as generic heroes—a Mark IV, Mod 3 Astronaut. The media made us heroes at a

…

that seeing Scott picked first reassured him that nasa knew what it was doing. Commanding the mission would be another space rookie—Group 2 astronaut Neil Armstrong. Armstrong was the last of his selection group to be given a prime crew flight assignment. He had in fact been waiting so long that

…

of some of his colleagues, it is possible that he would have been waiting for a second flight for quite some time. As it was, Neil Armstrong would ultimately do very well with his next, and last, prime crew flight assignment. 3. The Ballet of Weightlessness No man’s knowledge here can

…

there was not enough money in the family to send him to the best school, mit. Instead, he attended Purdue University, in the year behind Neil Armstrong, from which he received a degree in electrical engineering in 1956. He was only able to attend because the navy gave him a partial scholarship

…

had allowed him to get one Gemini flight under his belt. Without it, Aldrin might not have been considered experienced enough to be assigned to Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 crew. “A lot of fate determines where you fit into the puzzle,” he later reflected. There would only be one other American

…

largest gatherings of former astronauts ever. Three Mercury astronauts, nine Gemini astronauts, and many other Apollo and Skylab astronauts paid their respects to their colleague. Neil Armstrong, struggling to fight back tears, gave an emotional farewell. “I’m not sure what he’s doing right now, but I suspect he’s telling

…

the Activities of State in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space—more readily known as “The Space Treaty.” He was there with fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong, Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, and Jim Lovell. When Dick Gordon finally got back to his hotel room in the Georgetown Inn, the red message light

…

the bottom, but didn’t have much to offer. They solved the problem basically on their own.” Perhaps it was because that mission’s commander, Neil Armstrong, was so impressed with his work that Anders soon found himself with his first placement on a crew—as the backup pilot for Gemini 11

…

this ungainly vehicle, and Anders had enjoyed the brief but challenging flights, which reminded him of flying helicopters. He takes pleasure in noting that, while Neil Armstrong crashed the llrv, he never did. Not only was the training preparing Anders to test the lm in the first high-orbit Apollo mission, it

…

assigned to do the lunar module checklist, and we conspired to make sure that the lunar module pilot got out first before the commander. But Neil [Armstrong] got in there later and changed it!” Mike Collins felt that the procedural, hardware, and safety changes resulting from the Apollo 1 fire had made

…

the first time humans escaped Earth’s gravity and traveled to a new destination. Jim Lovell was glad he flew 8 rather than 11, and Neil Armstrong considers 8 to have embodied the true spirit of Apollo. Today Anders sees both flights as about the same in importance; one being the first

…

agrees: “Two months after we went down in that heavyweight lunar module and picked out the landing site, with the radar map and photo map, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin repeated the trajectory we’d flown.” Other than his Gemini rendezvous mission, Stafford considers Apollo 10 his greatest contribution to the space

…

-and-a-half-minute journey, and an insignificant distance compared to the enormous journey the astronauts had already taken. But if it was piloted successfully, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would achieve what the entire American space program had been working toward for eight years; they would land on the moon. The

…

fever pitch, reporters were hoping for a commander who could meet their preconceptions of the first person to walk on another world. Instead, they got Neil Armstrong. Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Norman Mailer, very much an outsider to the world of the space program, decided to write a book about Apollo 11

…

only to be met with such diffidence was maddeningly frustrating. They gravitated instead to Mike Collins, who Stevens says “was as open and breezy as Neil Armstrong was reserved; . . . he sat down, threw a leg over a chair arm, and talked animatedly.” Armstrong is, of course, a far more interesting person than

…

’ names. The mission, not the people, was the important thing. In the end, Armstrong’s quiet nature has mostlyworked in his favor over the decades. “Neil Armstrong today is a lovely guy, a very nice man, but pretty much a recluse,” Wally Schirra told the authors. “Neil has handled the fame very

…

been a natural choice. He was the CapCom for Apollo 10’s flight over the lunar landing zone at the special request of Tom Stafford. Neil Armstrong also wanted Duke as the voice of Mission Control for landing as he had more experience with the lm activation procedures than anyone, other than

…

landing, it was a sentiment that Armstrong had shared and knew how to respond to. Less than a year after he landed on the moon, Neil Armstrong visited Star City, and described the Apollo 11 landing to a packed audience in the auditorium. He told them how he had left medals commemorating

Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight

by David A. Mindell  · 3 Apr 2008  · 377pp  · 21,687 words

Collins alone in the capsule. ‘‘Listen, babe,’’ Collins reported to ground controllers at NASA in Houston, ‘‘everything’s going just swimmingly. Beautiful.’’ His two colleagues Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘‘Buzz’’ Aldrin had just separated the other spacecraft, the fragile, spidery lunar module (LM, pronounced ‘‘lem’’), nicknamed Eagle, from the command module. This

…

. Throughout the mission the astronauts punched in numbers, ran programs, and read the displays. Much of the landing was under direct control of these programs. Neil Armstrong, when he did fly, did not command the spacecraft directly, but rather used two control sticks to command the computer, whose programs fired the thrusters

…

Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) and a variety of federal research groups, and chapter 4 follows pilots into the space age. X-15 test pilots like Neil Armstrong proclaimed that human operators could manually fly the huge new rockets directly off the launch pad and on toward the moon. The powerful Wernher von

…

account, Chuck Yeager belonged to an older breed, neither college-educated nor engineering-trained. ‘‘He was very good at flying aircraft and doing aerobatics,’’ recalled Neil Armstrong, ‘‘but he seemed to have less interest in precision and getting information and drawing conclusions from that.’’ By contrast, one Ames engineer described test pilot

…

, a young pilot who had just begun flying for NACA at its High Speed Research Station, located at Edwards Air Force Base. His name was Neil Armstrong. Pilots’ Opinions One way to distinguish the SETP as a professional society and not an ‘‘advocacy group’’ was through publication, and it began publishing a

…

SETP paper, Blackburn acknowledged that artificial stability augmentation was ‘‘changing from a desirable appendage to an absolute necessity.’’ Not all agreed with Blackburn’s assessment. Neil Armstrong remembers, ‘‘Some pilots were wary of control surfaces moving without pilot input,’’ because a short circuit or other failure could spin an aircraft out of

…

engineer, aerodynamicist, and designer by training,’’ Crossfield stated, to explain leaving the exciting atmosphere of Edwards flight testing to manage the X-15 project.9 Neil Armstrong, the youngest of the X-15 group by more than five years, joined NACA’s High Speed Flight Station as soon as he got his

…

test at NASA Dryden, and would become a prolific and articulate chronicler of the X-15 piloting experience.11 50 Chapter 3 Figure 3.3 Neil Armstrong with the X-15. Armstrong was the first to fly the craft with its novel adaptive control system. (NASA Dryden photo E60-6286.) Breaking the

…

and its systems to make the task easy? Both types of skills were required for reentry—those of the operators and those of the designers. Neil Armstrong remains uncertain that an X-15 reentry required a great deal of skill, but ‘‘it did require a good deal of practice on the simulator

…

to extend the airmen’s manual skills to the vacuum of space. In 1961, with this system installed aboard the third and reconstructed X-15, Neil Armstrong, who among the active test pilots had come to be something of a specialist in control systems, flew the first three flights. On the first

…

the X-15 constantly justifying themselves. X-15 publications, from technical papers to statistical analyses and breathless PR, consistently emphasized the role of the human. Neil Armstrong was typical when he published his conclusion that ‘‘electronic equipment figures prominently in the X-15 flight and ground systems, but this hypersonic vehicle is

…

novel simulator to conceive and advocate a role for themselves in manned rocket flight. In 1959, just a few months before von Braun’s speech, Neil Armstrong and a team of X-15 pilots and engineers went to the Naval Aviation Medical Laboratory in Johnsville, Pennsylvania, which had the country’s most

…

X-15 pilots went to Johnsville to practice controlling a vehicle under high g-force conditions; all agreed Airmen in Space 71 Figure 4.3 Neil Armstrong in the Johnsville centrifuge for testing piloted boost control, 1958. (NASA Dryden photo E-5040.) the experience improved their confidence about going into the X

…

4 Just a few weeks after von Braun’s speech, the SETP held its 1959 annual meeting. The conference opened with a session chaired by Neil Armstrong on the human operator in spaceflight. A paper by Scott Crossfield, as well as the other presentations, argued for the importance of the pilot. Irritated

…

spontaneously violated an erroneous mission rule.60 On Gemini VIII, when docked with the Agena target vehicle, the spacecraft started spinning out of control. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott immediately undocked from the Agena, only to find that the problem was with their own spacecraft and not the target, and they

…

necessary feature since the computer programs had grown in size with the increasing sophistication of the missions and could no longer fit into the memory. Neil Armstrong and David Scott first used this procedure while their spacecraft was spinning, reading in the reentry program for their emergency landing.66 Heroic action now

…

-gimbal platform came to be one of IL’s regrets, an institutional victory but a loss for the project. Returning from the lunar surface, when Neil Armstrong was docking the LM to the command module, ‘‘I flew it right into gimbal lock.’’ Gimbal lock loomed as a constant fear on Apollo 13

…

their lives on. Lickly remembered his first lecture to the ‘‘new nine’’ on automatic control of reentry: ‘‘I was just overwhelmed by the smart questions. Neil Armstrong was all over it. . . . They knew the right questions to ask. They weren’t Luddites.’’41 Eventually, the word came down from NASA that the

…

engineering, software, and human abilities. This focus necessarily excludes a great deal of the Apollo flights, but the landings represented critical moments of each mission. Neil Armstrong described them as ‘‘the hardest for the system and hardest for the crews.’’ On a scale of one to ten, Armstrong rated walking around on

…

Houston at Ellington Air Force Base, not far from the Manned Spacecraft Center. Coordinating the conversion between NASA and Grumman was a committee that included Neil Armstrong and lunar landing designer Donald Cheatham. The LLTV was a pilot’s dream—a craft that was difficult to fly, that showed how much skill

…

things. I didn’t have to consciously program myself to do things. I was automatic. . . . Hell of a challenge. A tough thing to fly.’’49 Neil Armstrong noted at the time, ‘‘It is such a cotton picking unusual environment, so different from anything you’ve been in before, that you are continually

…

Apollo 12, in January 1970, Robert Gilruth brought together a flight-readiness review board that included the two commanders who had landed on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Pete Conrad, and a variety of Apollo engineers and astronauts, including Chris Kraft, Max Faget, and Jim McDivitt. There had been two crashes so

…

, preparing for the critical descent. Then the LM initiated its DOI burn, for ‘‘descent orbit insertion’’ around the far side of the moon, to bring Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin down from a circular sixty-mile orbit to an elliptical one, sixty by ten miles. The crew carefully monitored the burn—ready

…

redesignate to a different area. Only below that level would ‘‘manual’’ takeover be required. Consider the comments of each of the commanders on their interventions: Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11: ‘‘The LPD was pointing . . . just short (and slightly north) a large rocky crater surrounded with the large boulder field with very large rocks

…

at Edwards Air Force Base) began building on their experience with the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) and its analog fly-by-wire control system. Neil Armstrong suggested they use a digital computer, an Apollo computer in fact, which had proven its reliability. The cancellation of the later Apollo flights meant extra

…

. 8. Armstrong interview with Ambrose and Brinkley, 21. For Armstrong’s account, also see Hansen, First Man, 465. 9. Neil Armstrong, ‘‘Apollo 11 Postflight Crew Press Conference,’’ August 12, 1969, Houston, Tex., 21. 10. Neil Armstrong, ‘‘Apollo: Past, Present, and Future,’’ Proceedings of the 13th SETP Symposium, Beverly Hills, Calif., September, 1969. 11. Inadvertent

…

1960): 42–43, 76–78. Armstrong, Neil, Michael Collins, Edwin E. Aldrin, Gene Farmer, and Dora Jane Hamblin. First on the Moon. A Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., 1st ed. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1970. Armstrong, W. T. ‘‘Where Do We Go from Here?’’ Cockpit (May

…

on the Robotic versus Human Issue in Spaceflight.’’ In Dick and Launius, eds., Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, 77–106. McDivitt, James, and Neil Armstrong. ‘‘Gemini Manned Flight Program to Date.’’ SETP Proceedings (1965): 134–156. McDonnell Corporation. NASA Project Gemini Familiarization Manual, 1965. At ftp://sf.gds.tuwien .ac

…

, 55, 58, 60 Yeager, Chuck, 17, 29, 44, 49, 74 Young, John, 86, 255, 260–261, 264 359 About the Cover Image Computer reconstruction of Neil Armstrong’s view out the Lunar Module on Apollo 11, 520 feet above the lunar surface just as he transferred from automatic control to semi-manual

Moonshot: The Inside Story of Mankind's Greatest Adventure

by Dan Parry  · 22 Jun 2009  · 370pp  · 100,856 words

. Some were completed before the Moonshot project was conceived, but during their production I was enormously privileged to discuss NASA's work with Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, Charlie Duke, Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz, Glynn Lunney, George Mueller and others. Humanity possesses the knowledge and experience to leave our planet at

…

to say that 'Ubba's boop' is finally finished. PROLOGUE What would the Moon be like? While this question fascinated those back on Earth, for Neil Armstrong the Moon was playing no more than a supporting role. Here was a chance for man to achieve something beyond comparison. If it were successful

…

on conventional control surfaces, forcing the pilot to rely on the small rocket boosters and the prototype hand controller that were tested by, among others, Neil Armstrong, one of only 12 men ever to fly the X-15.2 For Neil, it was not so much a love of flying that took

…

who reported to the Launch Control Center, an enormous blockhouse built beside the VAB, from where the overnight preparations were directed.4 At 4.15am, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin were woken by the Director of Flight Crew Operations, Deke Slayton. Deke had originally been selected as one of the

…

launch vehicle. When a fire broke out during tests the complicated hatch left them unable to escape. The crew of Apollo 11. From left: Commander, Neil Armstrong; Command Module Pilot, Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot, Buzz Aldrin. The crews of Apollo 10 and Apollo 11 in a debriefing session. Armstrong in

…

flight would be commanded by Frank Borman, who had helped investigate the fire. Borman's crew included Michael Collins, while the backup crew consisted of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell. After Borman's flight, the F mission would stage a full dress rehearsal of the landing, while the G crew

…

The two remaining seats went to Bill Anders and Jim Lovell (who had replaced Collins). Borman's backup crew was also pulled forward, so that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Lovell's replacement Fred Haise found themselves supporting Apollo 8 instead of 9. This meant they now had an unexpected shot at

…

.23 Overnight they would become, in Kraft's words, 'an American hero ... beyond any soldier or politician or inventor'. Kraft was clear: 'It should be Neil Armstrong.'24 While Aldrin's talents were admired, the managers were not so much concerned with technical ability as with who would best serve as a

…

after arriving in orbit, the crew's faces filled with blood until their bodies adjusted to weightlessness. Buzz Aldrin in the lunar module, photographed by Neil Armstrong during the long journey to the moon. The lunar module, Eagle, after undocking from the command module. The long rods under the landing pads are

…

't care about orbital mechanics and P52 platform alignments, they wanted to know what astronauts had for breakfast. Some liked the attention. Others, among them Neil Armstrong, enjoyed press adulation as much as engine failure and considered this aspect of the job a necessary evil. There was a feeling within NASA that

…

11... but I'm an integral part of the operation and happy to be going in any capacity.'5 For the rest of the world, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were just names in a newspaper – in Russia, Pravda had taken to calling Neil 'the Czar of the Ship' – but for Michael

…

home. Mission Control: 'Eagle, Houston. We see you on the steerable [antenna]. Over.' Armstrong: 'Roger. Eagle is undocked.' Mission Control: 'Roger. How does it look, Neil?' Armstrong: 'The Eagle has wings.' Mission Control: 'Roger.' With the two spacecraft flying in formation, 60 feet apart, Collins took a careful look out of the

…

of the work that went into America's race to reach the Moon. Eagle was not the only lunar module NASA built, any more than Neil Armstrong was the only man able to fly it. While the crew were training for their mission, other astronauts were preparing for subsequent flights, and these

…

proving we are capable of leaving our home planet. This will permanently be a defining characteristic of our capabilities – which is why, 40 years on, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin remain household names. In landing their gold and silver spacecraft on the surface of the Moon, Neil and Buzz proved something new

…

Cape Kennedy in 1963, in 1973 the area reverted to its original name of Cape Canaveral. 2 Dr James Hansen, First Man, The Life of Neil Armstrong (Simon & Schuster, 2005). 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid

…

. cit. 20 Buzz Aldrin and Wayne Warga, Return to Earth; and Hansen, op. cit. 21 Hansen, op. cit.; and personal conversation between the author and Neil Armstrong, Barcelona, 12/4/08. 22 Hansen, op. cit. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins, with Gene Farmer and Dora

…

/space/article2582966.ece; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin 13 Buzz Aldrin, roll 382, 22:13:01:17. 14 Harland, op. cit. 15 Neil Armstrong in conversation with Eric Jones, at NASA's Lunar Surface Journal http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.html 16 BBC News, at http

…

Richard P. Hallion and Tom D. Crouch (eds), Apollo: Ten Years Since Tranquility Base, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979 Dr James Hansen, FirstMan, The Life of Neil Armstrong, Simon & Schuster, 2005 David Harland, The First Men on the Moon, Praxis Publishing, 2007 Edwin P. Hoyt, The Space Dealers: A Hard Look at the

…

-Apollo 11 childhood Gemini flights landing on the moon launch, Apollo 11 launch preparation, Apollo 11 MIT moon, on appearance of moon walk, NASA, joins Neil Armstrong and position in Apollo program PR duties, Apollo 11 quarantine, Apollo 11 re-entry and landing, Apollo 11 rendezvous expert return to Eagle, Apollo 11

…

preparation, Apollo 11 lunar orbit insertion (LOI), Apollo 11 LOI-2, Apollo 11 meals on Apollo 11 moon, on appearance of moon orbit, Apollo 11 Neil Armstrong and pictures, TV and camera, Apollo 11 pressure suits, hatred of quarantine, Apollo 11 re-entry and landing, Apollo 11 return to earth, Apollo 11

Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth

by Andrew Smith  · 3 Apr 2006  · 409pp  · 138,088 words

our first and only embrace of another world felt, if anything, more distant than it does now. Even the man who led that hazardous trip, Neil Armstrong, offered nothing that might clarify, angering townsfolk in his home town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, by failing to turn up at a party thrown in his

…

was difficult. I traced the others and found that they’d reacted to their experience in wildly different ways. The First Man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong, became a teacher and retreated from public view, “getting back to the fundamentals of the planet,” while his partner Buzz Aldrin spent years mired in

…

evidence was there in the coded monotone exchanges if you knew how to read them. The crew NASA chose for this landmark mission consists of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins, and they’re a peculiar trio. The flight plan called for Collins to orbit the Moon in exalted frustration, tending

…

spaceships on them, just drinking the sight in. They’re up there. Up there. There. We’ve been watching the screen for an hour, because Neil Armstrong was due out at 7:00 PM, after he told NASA that he couldn’t bear to hang around until midnight, much less sleep. The

…

his home for only twenty-one hours. Now, what do you say as you become the first human being to set foot on the Moon? Neil Armstrong is an astronaut, not a poet, and certainly not a PR man. He wouldn’t have bothered about it much, but people have been writing

…

craft I picture hovering above the Moon in a sheen of magic dust … well, I can’t have seen that. No one saw anything until Neil Armstrong pulled a cord which activated a camera on his way out of the Lunar Module. Then he jumped down to one of the lander’s

…

group which became informally known as the “Next Nine” included such impressive and Luna-bound figures as Charles “Pete” Conrad, James Lovell, John Young and Neil Armstrong – who’d been trained by the military, but was by this time a crack civilian test pilot working for NASA. Then, a year later, a

…

crew home. Thus, only six ships reached the surface, between July 1969 and December 1972, each with two astronauts aboard. Those astronauts were: APOLLO 11 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (CM pilot Michael Collins) APOLLO 12 Pete Conrad and Alan Bean (CM pilot Richard Gordon) APOLLO 14 Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell

…

it with a screwdriver, and when Buzz Aldrin accidentally snapped a key used to arm the Apollo 11 ascent engine, so apparently condemning himself and Neil Armstrong to a whimsical death 240,000 miles from home, the day was saved by jamming a pen into the lock (Aldrin still has the pen

…

orbital astronaut experiences the planet as huge and majestic, while from afar it is tiny, beautiful, and shockingly alone. In a rare instance of candor, Neil Armstrong once remarked that while on the Moon, he became aware that he could blot out the Earth with his thumb and when someone asked whether

…

pension-fund managers, and I wonder if that’s why some of the CM pilots have since fallen into a silence more deafening even than Neil Armstrong’s. I ask what’s the most important thing Gordon has learned up to now and the question throws him. “Hm. I’ve never been

…

died during riots in nearby Watts. Frank Zappa, who called his daughter Moon and had a father who worked on missile systems at Edwards while Neil Armstrong was flying rocket planes there (and used to bring home mercury and the pesticide DDT for his son to play with), wrote about the same

…

of that era did significant things in 1962. First, Marilyn Monroe, actress and assumed lover of JFK, committed maybe-suicide; then the crack test pilot Neil Armstrong, having spurned an invitation to apply for the Mercury project, joined the second group of astronauts and his own idiosyncratic contribution to the mythology of

…

without warning, in less than the time it takes to deal a hand of blackjack, then how on Earth do we explain the fact that Neil Armstrong is still with us? We know about his near misses in Korea. Now add to them the time his X-15 rocket plane’s engine

…

really big deal for him, because you don’t often get the chance to see Apollo astronauts, and you never get within snapping distance of Neil Armstrong. He adds that Armstrong has a reputation for not showing up, so we shouldn’t count our chickens, and we gossip space on the single

…

. Gene Cernan is erect. There are others I don’t immediately recognize – not Moonwalkers – and some who flew Skylab rather than Apollo. But no greensleeved Neil Armstrong. The room is full now. So we hit the bar. And that’s where I am, waiting my turn, when I hear a voice rear

…

gratuitous award. Each member of the corps is called individually, in reverse alphabetical order, rising to a peal of applause. Second to last, the name “Neil Armstrong” soars through the whiskey-sour yonder, followed by a brief salvo of clapping, then … nothing. He appears not to be with us. The MC coughs

…

politicians who themselves look and behave more like celebrities every day (perhaps in an effort to revive our waning interest in their show). Of course, Neil Armstrong is not a celebrity in the strict sense; because he did something to earn his status, his fame has a hinterland, but the boundaries between

…

guests inspect and make written bids in a charity memorabilia auction, it doesn’t take long for me to find what I’m looking for. Neil Armstrong stands, surrounded like Custer at Little Big Horn, patiently explaining some aspect of his thirty-three-year-old adventure for the four hundredth time this

…

as part of the Cold War, so they started pushing exploration as the motive – and soon I think they started believing their own PR. When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted the American flag on the Moon, the programme was over and NASA didn’t realize it. Ever since, they’ve been

…

thought it would be Ed White, America’s first space-walker, who unfortunately perished alongside Grissom. Collins also mused: “It is interesting to note that Neil Armstrong was the last in his group to fly. Were they saving the best for last, or was his selection as the first human to walk

…

one, for the job. It just happened that way. And the thought hits me – and I’m astonished to find myself associating Monty Python with Neil Armstrong for a second time – that he must feel a little like the reluctant saviour Brian in The Life of Brian. A repository for the rest

…

patches, signed by the astronauts on those missions. There are old is sues of Life, also signed, and heroic signed etchings. A signed snap of Neil Armstrong is particularly prized (“’cos those are tough to come by”), even though his favourite Apollo guy is John Young from Apollo 16, who’s almost

…

respective fathers of German and American rocketry, Hermann Oberth and Robert Goddard, were both obsessed with Verne’s tale as children (and not just them: Neil Armstrong named his Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia after Verne’s “Columbiad”). Oberth, in turn, acted as adviser to one of early cinema’s great directors

…

a chance to just be there for a few minutes, to register the feelings, but time was tight and there was work to be done. “Neil Armstrong’s first thoughts might have been ‘This is one small step for a man …’” he says, “but I remember vividly that after climbing down the

…

amazing that we did this’ – the same feeling that all the people on the planet had at that time.” Bean tells us that he called Neil Armstrong on the phone when he started to paint the Apollo 11 commander planting the first flag, and that Armstrong had declared this to be the

…

on to NASA, where he became the first member of the second group of astronauts to fly (and was thus chosen over peers who included Neil Armstrong and Pete Conrad). Indeed, by the time he commanded the shuttle’s first space flight in 1981, he was the most experienced astronaut in the

…

, saying, “I don’t have any idea what flying in space has meant, or will mean, to him” (and lest we forget, Collins flew with Neil Armstrong). At the same time, Apollo 16 Command Module pilot Ken Mattingly described him as one of the best-read people he’d ever met, while

…

let go. There’s Alan Bean with his equally compulsive efforts to capture what he saw and felt, make it somehow solid and communicable; and Neil Armstrong, who wants to live quietly with whatever it was he experienced or didn’t experience, but can’t because we won’t let him; who

…

end of the table, the aged and much admired Pad Führer, Guenter Wendt. Before long, I am trying on the black-faced Omega watch that Neil Armstrong gave the German prior to boarding Apollo 11 and hearing about the transformation of the Apollo-struck Godwin brothers – who turn out to be from

…

time, I’m struggling to find a gap between him and this vast reservoir of facts – I find that I like him, but feel, as Neil Armstrong did when landing the Eagle, somewhat behind the airplane. A comment on that extraordinary CV draws a smile. “I’ve been fortunate. Lots of opportunity

…

on the Moon, when we never actually did? From this point on, I see a fresh continuity in the story of Apollo. Sibrel claims that “Neil Armstrong started shaking like a leaf when I asked him to swear on the Bible,” but I’m not sure whether to believe this. I absolutely

…

in LA really did hurt. When all other argument is exhausted, conspiracy believers inevitably draw your attention to one thing: the sullen, peevish withdrawal of Neil Armstrong from public life. It seems doubly strange to me, then, that only days after finally chasing down Sibrel, I find myself en route to Portugal

…

Armstrong Clause, a stiffly worded paragraph beginning, “Mr. Armstrong values his privacy …” and climaxing with a command “not to report anything that is said by Neil Armstrong and not to publish any pictures of him.” But it didn’t end there, because once the Armstrong Clause had been signed by anyone capable

…

the Moon, then nothing is cool …” If I’m not mistaken, Michael Stipe is saying that he doesn’t believe in the landings, either. Being Neil Armstrong can’t be easy. And as for Dave Scott, well, where to start? David Randolf Scott, the lantern-jawed, six foot, brick-built Right Stuff

…

journey. There was another, bigger, surprise waiting for me when I got back from Portugal. Before I went, I’d finally made myself write to Neil Armstrong, expecting no more than a polite brushoff. Now, trawling through my e-mails, I came across a message from an unfamiliar address which suggested another

…

. The name at the bottom hit me first, sitting solid and square, as if carved on a tablet of stone, avatar of an alien world. Neil Armstrong. He told me that he received lots of requests from people writing books and making films, but he could see that this was a different

…

are not the most efficient way of getting information across.” The implication for me was that if I wanted to sit down and speak with Neil Armstrong, the best bet would be to persuade him of my interest in the X-15’s landing gear. I’d done this kind of thing

…

is not so surprising. But that’s not all. Jack Schmitt set off the next train of thought when he reminded me that “people like Neil Armstrong and the test pilots who flew the X-15 rocket plane were, in a sense, already astronauts.” And they were! Alan Shepard was not the

…

anything. And in Apollo’s case, it’s clear that the answer had nothing to do with engineering or technology, that what it did, via Neil Armstrong’s upstretched thumb, was afford us the enormous privilege of seeing ourselves for the first time as small. It’s no coincidence that when I

…

, Lillian D. U.S. Space Gear . Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994. Kraft, Chris. Flight: My Life in Mission Control . New York: Dutton, 2001. Kramer, Barbara. Neil Armstrong: The First Man on the Moon . Berkeley Heights: Enslow Publishers Inc., 1997. Kranz, Gene. Failure Is Not an Option . New York: Berkley, 2001. Kurlansky, Mark

Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11

by James Donovan  · 12 Mar 2019

could make or break their careers. He was scrupulously fair in his choices—for the most part. The men behind the three doors were astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins. They constituted the crew of the Apollo 11 scheduled for launch that morning. In three hours, they would climb

…

coastline a few miles away and watched intently. They were eight members of the New Nine, as they were known, NASA’s new astronaut trainees: Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, Jim McDivitt, Tom Stafford, Ed White, and John Young. (Missing was Elliot See, who was clearing up personal business

…

would allow the craft to land on a runway using skids and would grant its pilot some maneuvering capability. Grissom and NASA civilian research pilot Neil Armstrong tested an early trainer version of the wing, but there were too many kinks to work out, and it was canceled after twenty-seven million

…

number-one objective of the ambitious Gemini 8 mission, a three-day flight that would also feature an extended space walk and several important experiments. Neil Armstrong, a quiet former navy aviator and X-15 pilot, would command the mission. His copilot—rather, his pilot, since Deke Slayton had decreed before Gemini

…

he had a job to do, and he would be ready to fly by launch day. Four years earlier, in 1962, thirty-one-year-old Neil Armstrong had been in an enviable position for a test pilot. There was no more exciting or exacting cutting-edge aircraft than the rocket-powered X

…

of equipment problems in the two weeks before the launch, at 10:41 a.m. on March 16, 1966, Gemini 8 and its crew of Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott lifted off smoothly. After reaching orbit, command pilot Armstrong initiated the first of nine thruster maneuvers—burns—to catch the target, an

…

all to get back to Houston. There would be no further testing for a while. Earlier in the day, five astronauts—Gordon Cooper, Scott Carpenter, Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Dick Gordon—had spent the afternoon at the White House with Bob Gilruth, President Johnson, and other dignitaries to witness the signing

…

would wonder how often she thought of that moment. Chapter Ten Recovery We were given the gift of time. We didn’t want that gift. Neil Armstrong On a cold, gusty Tuesday four days after the Apollo 204 fire, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were buried with full military honors

…

9, the first test of the entire package in a high Earth orbit, would be Frank Borman, Mike Collins, and Bill Anders (backed up by Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Buzz Aldrin). Assignments for the flights to the moon—there would be at least three—would come later. Slayton finished with, “Be

…

sooner? If Borman decided to stay with the mission he and his crew had been training for—an Earth-orbital flight—his backup crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Fred Haise would be given the assignment. It took Borman less than a second to say yes. He and his crew would

…

the occasional Astronaut Wives Club get-togethers, their spouses weren’t close either. Six years after he’d become an astronaut, thirty-eight-year-old Neil Armstrong still looked younger than his age. In spite of his soft-faced, youthful appearance, Armstrong had been highly respected from the beginning by both NASA

…

was assigned to fighter operations, which was what he had yearned for. At Edwards, he developed a passing acquaintance with a hotshot test pilot named Neil Armstrong. But these less desirable jobs he was given left him unfulfilled. In 1962, two months after John Glenn’s three-orbit triumph, NASA called for

…

first step on the moon—the man who took it would be another Columbus, thought Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr. He believed that man should be Neil Armstrong, who, unlike Aldrin, had never petitioned for the privilege. Kraft voiced his concerns first to Slayton, then to George Low, who both agreed with him

…

that Buzz had been lobbying for the honor, and no one was critical of him for that. After some discussion, they made a unanimous decision. Neil Armstrong was their choice. He was the right kind of man to be the first to walk on the moon. Next up was the dry run

…

later, as their spacecraft continued to circle the lifeless moon sixty miles below, they were asleep. Chapter Sixteen Descent to Luna The unknowns were rampant. Neil Armstrong “Apollo 11. Apollo 11. Good morning from the Black team.” It was six a.m. Collins, loosely belted and floating over the left seat with

…

. He hadn’t been assigned to a flight yet, but he’d done such a good job in the same role for Apollo 10 that Neil Armstrong had requested him for the descent. Duke knew the LM propulsion systems well, and that wouldn’t hurt. His job was important, and difficult, for

…

members of the Black team left, wishing the White team good luck on their way out. John Hodge, the former flight director who had overseen Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott’s Gemini 8 near catastrophe three years before and then moved into management, stopped to talk to Kranz. Apollo 11 was still

…

the time the crew returned home, they understood that their lives would never be the same. A few years after he walked on the moon, Neil Armstrong agreed to appear in a documentary. The filmmakers shot his scenes one afternoon at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center museum in Huntsville, Alabama

…

U.S. and Soviet space programs, reference was made to “the high roll rate of GT-8, which reached one revolution per 0.8 second.” Neil Armstrong, not one to exaggerate, said in a 2008 Discovery Channel documentary entitled When We Left Earth: “When the roll rate increased to more than four

…

fire.” thought of that moment: Author interview with Chuck Friedlander, May 7, 2017. Ten: Recovery “We were given the gift”: William J. Cromie interview with Neil Armstrong, February 1969, in Armstrong biographical file, Robert Sherrod Apollo Collection, NASA History Office. and nodded to her: E-mail from Chuck Friedlander to the author

…

with John Aaron, Richard Battin, Bob Carlton, Jack Garman, Frank E. Hughes, Christopher Kraft, Gene Kranz, and others; author interviews with John Aaron, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Steve Bales, Bob Carlton, Mike Collins, and Jack Garman; Eric Jones’s superb Apollo 11 Lunar Surface Journal. Seventeen: Moondust “We were lucky”: Vine, “Walking

…

Sherrod Collection, NASA History Office; Hansen, First Man, 488. Armstrong would later express: Hansen, First Man, 494. in front of a TV: Editors of Life, Neil Armstrong, 76. the Apollo 11 crew: Scott et al., Two Sides of the Moon, 245–47. “like being on a sandy athletic field”: Kondratyev et al

…

. New York: Walker, 2011. Dornberger, Walter. V-2. New York: Viking, 1954. Duke, Charlie, and Dotty Duke. Moonwalker. Nashville: Oliver Nelson, 1990. Editors of Life. Neil Armstrong, 1930–2012. New York: Life Books, 2012. Editors of Time-Life Books. Outbound. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1989. Evans, Ben. Escaping the Bonds of

…

Space Travel. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966. Von Ehrenfried, Dutch. The Birth of NASA. Chichester, UK: Springer-Praxis. 2016. Wagener, Leon. One Giant Leap: Neil Armstrong’s Stellar American Journey. New York: Forge, 2004. Ward, Bob. Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005. Ward

…

of the 1st Manned Lunar Landing.” Space.com, July 21, 2014. Reichardt, Tony. “The Luna 1 Hoax Hoax.” Air and Space (January 2013). Sawyer, Kathy. “Neil Armstrong’s Hard Bargain with Fame.” Washington Post Magazine, July 11, 1999. Schanche, Don. “The Astronauts Get Their Prodigious Chariot.” Life, December 14, 1969. Shepard, Alan

…

18, 1965, crewmen Jim Lovell (left) and Frank Borman were no worse for the wear save for some initial weakness after two weeks of inactivity. Neil Armstrong, commander of the Gemini 8, had also flown the experimental X-15 (shown here) seven times. Gemini 8, crewed by Armstrong and Dave Scott, performed

Chasing the Moon: The People, the Politics, and the Promise That Launched America Into the Space Age

by Robert Stone and Alan Andres  · 3 Jun 2019

ASTRONAUT today.” After the secret was guessed correctly following an interrogation by the panel of celebrities, host Garry Moore emphasized that the couple’s son, Neil Armstrong, was a civilian pilot, albeit one who had already flown to the edge of space in NASA’s experimental X-15 rocket plane. Moore then

…

the end of the decade. An hour and forty minutes after an Atlas missile launched an Agena docking vehicle into orbit, two rookie astronauts, commander Neil Armstrong and pilot David Scott, headed into space aboard Gemini 8. Unlike what had happened a few months earlier on Gemini 6, the Agena worked perfectly

…

Group Two, Armstrong was already a famed X-15 rocket pilot, and his unusual status as one of the few civilian astronauts set him apart. Neil Armstrong’s view as he moved Gemini 8 toward the Agena target vehicle above the Pacific Ocean before accomplishing the first successful docking of two spacecraft

…

appeared to prefer the fiction of Lost in Space to the real thing happening live. Hours after their near-death experience on Gemini 8, astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott smile at the press and crowds of onlookers at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. Among those who turned out to catch

…

the home to three sets of astronauts in 1973 and 1974. For the moment, though, the Gemini program was concluding with four more flights. Following Neil Armstrong’s success, three of the Gemini missions also docked with Agena target vehicles, and two ignited the Agena’s engine to boost the docked spacecraft

…

he might have to perform someday. Anders changed his clothes and arrived at the Whites’ house ten minutes later. The Whites lived next door to Neil Armstrong, who was away in Washington for the signing of the Outer Space Treaty. When Anders arrived, Pat White was on the porch, talking with Armstrong

…

’s wife, Jan. Had Neil Armstrong called her from Washington and asked her to be there as well? Anders wasn’t sure, but as he walked up to the house and

…

the last members of the third astronaut group to garner a prime crew assignment. He had served on the backup crew of Gemini 11 with Neil Armstrong and would be the lunar-module pilot on Borman’s Apollo mission. Anders and Armstrong were among the astronaut corps’ lunar-module specialists, each logging

…

wind,” Styron recalled. He looked over at his host “and saw on his face an emotion that was depthless and inexpressible.” In Mission Control, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were seated next to the Maroon Team capcom, Ken Mattingly, as the broadcast proceeded. In the back of the room

…

both successful. All three of the Apollo 11 astronauts were known to those who had covered the space program in recent years. The commander was Neil Armstrong, well remembered from the crisis on Gemini 8; the lunar-module pilot was Gemini 12’s ace spacewalker Buzz Aldrin; and the command-module pilot

…

reassigned by Slayton to Apollo 11’s third couch. The ungainly and dangerous Lunar Landing Research Vehicle was nicknamed the “Flying Bedstead.” In May 1968, Neil Armstrong narrowly escaped an LLRV accident in Houston when his vehicle suddenly became dangerously unstable, causing him to fire his ejection seat when only 200 feet

…

-280 Fahrenheit in the shade. And it had to have a sustainable cooling system that would prevent the person wearing it from overheating. Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins, the “amiable strangers” of Apollo 11, photographed on the deck of a modified landing craft used for spacecraft water recovery training in

…

, both Cronkite and McGee were provided with the full quotation. More than a half billion people around the world watched the live television broadcast as Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. At the time the ghostly black-and-white television pictures from the Westinghouse camera seemed remarkable. Within three years

…

to arrange the Moon’s first communion. A second silent religious observance during the moonwalk may have occurred as well. Filmmaker Theo Kamecke spoke with Neil Armstrong’s grandmother shortly after the moon landing. “Neil made me a promise,” she told him. “He promised the first thing he would do when he

…

of every race, nationality, age and condition were united in praise for an achievement symbolic of the American genius.” During his three weeks in quarantine, Neil Armstrong likely read accounts of the SCLC’s protest at Cape Kennedy and may have seen Nona Smith’s letter in The New York Times confessing

…

surprisingly, all men—included the directors of most of the NASA centers as well as another VIP, the most celebrated space traveler in the world, Neil Armstrong. It was the first time Clarke and Armstrong met each other, a moment that Clarke made certain was captured in a snapshot taken outside of

…

1970. The following year, Pan Am quietly terminated its First Moon Flights Club promotion. * * * — NINE YEARS LATER, the framed photograph of Arthur C. Clarke and Neil Armstrong taken at Wallops Station hung in a place of honor in the author’s study at his home in Sri Lanka, the island nation off

…

, generals, and government bureaucrats. But within months of joining Fairchild, he was diagnosed with cancer and would die four years later. Arthur C. Clarke and Neil Armstrong meet at the NASA long-term planning session held at Wallops Island, Virginia, in June 1970. Although he had stepped on the Moon less than

…

new computer diagnostics system. Frank Borman, now chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Eastern Airlines, became the public face of the company. Neil Armstrong, who had maintained a more private profile than most of his colleagues, surprised many by starring in an ad campaign for Chrysler at a time

…

and billions of galaxies. Are we really that special? I don’t think so.” By the time he died at age eighty-two in 2012, NEIL ARMSTRONG had erroneously acquired a reputation as a recluse. Rather, Armstrong didn’t enjoy giving interviews, having his life scrutinized, or leveraging his fame to enrich

…

6A’s commander Wally Schirra. “I did a fly-around inspection….I could move to within inches of it in perfect confidence.” Gemini 8 astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott wait to board the USS Leonard F. Mason after their emergency return from orbit. The original flight plan called for them to

…

the result of a lucky accident. Known as “Earthrise,” this single photograph was worth the cost of the entire Apollo program, said anthropologist Margaret Mead. Neil Armstrong waves to the press as he leads the crew of Apollo 11 to the van that will transport them on the ten-mile journey to

…

high 80s. Prior to the lunar landing, Buzz Aldrin checks out the lunar module while it is still docked to the command-and-service module. Neil Armstrong photographed in the lunar module after landing on the Moon. Buzz Aldrin descends the lunar module ladder. NASA scientists contemplated the remote possibility that energy

…

nuclear-powered Apollo seismometers, this solar-powered device operated for less than a month. It was so sensitive that it picked up the motions of Neil Armstrong turning over in his sleep within the lunar module following the moonwalk. The iconic image of Aldrin on the lunar surface, with

…

Neil Armstrong reflected in the mirrored visor. Because Aldrin was assigned to take photographs of the landscape and the condition of the lunar module, there are few

…

Armstrong standing on the Moon. For my mother, who awakened her ten-year-old son in the middle of an English midsummer night to watch Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin make history as they walked on the Moon. —R.S. For Charlie, older brother and teenage rocket scientist, who, as the youngest

…

(September–December 2007); Billy Watkins, Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes, (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), p. 57. The journals of Lewis and Clark George Plimpton, “Neil Armstrong’s Famous First Words,” Esquire (December 1983): p. 118; Julian Scheer, letter to George Low (March 12, 1969). “We should dream no small dreams” “3

…

Kranz, Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 283. Armstrong later said Neil Armstrong, quoted in Apollo 11: Technical Crew Debriefing, July 31, 1969 (Houston: Manned Spacecraft Center, 1969), p. 60. “A symbolic act” Lewis Mumford, “No: ‘A Symbolic

…

can anybody” CBS News, “Man on the Moon,” (July 20, 1969). “Old-fashioned humanist” CBS News, “Man on the Moon,” (July 20, 1969). Astronauts deemed Neil Armstrong, “The Moon Had Been Awaiting Us a Long Time,” Life (August 22, 1969): p. 25. Buzz Aldin, interview with Eric M. Jones (1991), https://www

…

. He grinned John Noble Wilford, “Apollo Crew Appears Calm 11 Days Before the Mission,” NYT (July 6, 1969). During a lull Dean Armstrong, interviewed in Neil Armstrong—First Man on the Moon, BBC Two (December 30, 2012). Truman Capote William H. Honan, “Le Mot Juste for the Moon,” Esquire (July 1969). “I

…

need you” George Alexander, interview with Robert Stone (June 2, 2015). “You’re not” George Plimpton, “Neil Armstrong’s Famous First Words,” Esquire (December 1983): pp. 116–118. Lunar scientists theorized Leonard Reiffel, interview with authors (May 12, 2015). “I didn’t hear

Apollo 11: The Inside Story

by David Whitehouse  · 7 Mar 2019  · 308pp  · 87,238 words

INSIDE STORY DAVID WHITEHOUSE To Jill, as well as the Moon and the stars ‘The Moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to’ —NEIL ARMSTRONG ‘We must master the highest technology or be crushed’ —VLADIMIR LENIN Contents Title Page Dedication Epigraph Acknowledgements Prologue The Spoils of War Object D The

…

joined the BBC as science correspondent and soon realized it was a job that opened doors, and that people took my calls. Some astronauts, like Neil Armstrong, treated writers with suspicion. He disliked articles that featured him as a personality. Other astronauts, well, they could talk and talk. Often I would hear

…

book to be written that put the people first and used, as far as possible, the words of those involved. I would like to thank Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan, David Scott, John Young, Alan Shepard, James Lovell, Charlie Duke, Donn Eisele, Alan Bean, Gordon Cooper, Al Worden, Walt Cunningham, Tom

…

do something that has never been done before – we will land an American on the Moon. Less than an hour after those words were spoken, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were 500 metres from the lunar surface in the region of the Sabine complex of small craters on the western shore of

…

saw one another after the mission, outside ceremonies. ‘Amiable strangers’ was how one of them described their relationship. Born near Wapakoneta, Ohio, as a boy Neil Armstrong was fascinated by flying. He was always returning to his bedroom and his model aircraft. Looking back on his childhood many years later, he said

…

Force after West Point in 1952. For a decade or so he was a pilot and instructor and several times came close to working alongside Neil Armstrong. He said: Like most of the early astronauts, I was a test pilot, and it was a sort of step-by-step process. I went

…

meet von Braun; by the time he arrived in Germany, von Braun was already in America. As the war in Europe drew to a close, Neil Armstrong was still dreaming of becoming an aircraft designer. He went to half a dozen schools as his family moved around Ohio. The war ended when

…

the public was not to believe him. That day the Society of Experimental Test Pilots was holding a symposium in the Beverly Hilton Hotel, California. Neil Armstrong, now a young test pilot, was taking part. He was trying to find ways to get the Los Angeles press interested in the various technical

…

for some minor medical issue. Soon Frank Borman and Jim McDivitt arrived as well, and Elliot See, one of two civilians selected. The other was Neil Armstrong. On the morning of 16 September the new recruits travelled to Ellington Air Force Base to meet Deke Slayton and Al Shepard, along with the

…

pressure suits; Jim Lovell got recovery and re-entry matters; Elliot See got electrical systems and mission planning; Pete Conrad would oversee cockpit layout, and Neil Armstrong got trainers and simulators. The Mercury program was gaining momentum with the launch of Walter Schirra in the ‘Sigma 7’ capsule in October 1962. He

…

manned flight, Gemini 7, had been a routine mission, Gemini 8 certainly would not be. It was to be NASA’s first serious space emergency. Neil Armstrong had become a civilian test pilot, flying the advanced X-15 rocket-plane out of Edwards Air Force Base in California. Apollo excited him and

…

the 20-foot swells!’ Robert Seamans, NASA’s Deputy Administrator, was at a dinner when he was told about the problem. The cool-headedness of Neil Armstrong and David Scott in a life-threatening situation did not go unnoticed. Both of them would walk upon the Moon. Afterwards Armstrong described it as

…

away. Susan and I left and drove back to Houston and went over to Ed White’s house, because Susan was close to Pat White. Neil Armstrong was in Washington where the President was signing the Outer Space Treaty with other nations that kept the Moon as the property of all people

…

accident Frank Borman was asked if he thought that NASA would be unable to recover from the disaster. He replied, ‘Never, not for one instant.’ Neil Armstrong said, ‘We were given the gift of time. We didn’t want it.’ Apollo is Faltering On 3 April 1967, NASA 2, a Grumman Gulfstream

…

and explode at any time. Engineers risked their lives dismantling the explosive wreckage. The July and August lunar launch windows were abandoned. On 6 May Neil Armstrong came close to being killed. He was flying the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) at Ellington Air Force Base near Houston. This was basically a

…

Slayton.’ ‘When you added up what we would gain, as opposed to what we would lose, the decision was pretty easy.’ On 24 March 1969 Neil Armstrong was told that his mission, Apollo 11, would be the first to attempt a lunar landing. He said: ‘During the flight of Apollo 8 I

…

lot of talks about who might be available and be right to be on that crew, that sort of thing.’ The crew of Apollo 11 – Neil Armstrong, Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin and Michael Collins – were introduced to the press on 9 January 1969 and immediately the assembled reporters got down to the big

…

and statistics, arguing what he considered to be obvious – that he, the lunar module pilot, and not Neil Armstrong, should be the first down the ladder on Apollo 11. Since I shared an office with Neil Armstrong, who was away training that day, I found Aldrin’s arguments both offensive and ridiculous. Ever since

…

role as Lunar Module commander. The disclosure of Aldrin as the choice comes as a surprise to many who had speculated that the top commander, Neil Armstrong, would be entitled to pull rank and take his place in the history books as the first man to set foot on a satellite of

…

is the eldest at 89. Since then plans to return to the Moon have come and gone and none of them have lasted very long. Neil Armstrong used to draw a diagram at some of his lectures. It consisted of four circles, inside which he wrote ‘Leadership’, ‘Threat’, ‘Good Economy’ and ‘World

…

a more sustained political will and public support there will come a time when there are no moonwalkers among us. After returning from the Moon Neil Armstrong worked for NASA in the Office of Advanced Research and Technology but his work was inevitably interrupted by public appearances and it seems NASA did

…

for a reason. No one, no one but no one, could have accepted the responsibility of his remarkable accomplishment with more dignity and grace than Neil Armstrong. Hearing those words from the large dais near the pulpit was Michael Collins, who read a prayer. Sitting in the front row in the Cathedral

…

when first God dawned on chaos’. Will the conquest of the Moon be a new great morning? When will we go back? After his return, Neil Armstrong wrote, ‘Luna is once again isolated.’ It still is. Sources The majority of the quotations featured in this book are from the author’s personal

…

interviews with Neil Armstrong, Charles Duke, Alan Shepard, Walter Schirra, Gordon Cooper, Walter Cunningham, Eugene Cernan, Pete Conrad, and George Low, or from NASA’s Oral History projects (www

…

manned spacecraft, 15 December 1965. Jim Lovell, capsule communicator (Capcom) for the Gemini 8 mission, 16 March 1966. Neil Armstrong and David Scott had to abort the mission and return to Earth early. Neil Armstrong and David Scott await their recovery craft the USS Leonard F. Mason after splashing down, 16 March 1966. The

…

taken 16 April 1972, during Apollo 16. NASA’s official Apollo 11 crew portrait. From left to right: Neil Armstrong (Commander), Michael Collins (Command Module Pilot) and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin Jr (Lunar Module Pilot). Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin practise landing in a Lunar Module simulator, July 1969. Apollo 11 launch, 16 July 1969

…

Apollo lands on the Moon. NASA Buzz Aldrin starting his descent to the lunar surface, as photographed by Neil Armstrong. NASA Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface. Neil Armstrong can be seen in his visor. NASA Neil Armstrong back in the Lunar Module after the first moonwalk. NASA The ascent stage of the Lunar Module, ‘Eagle

Of a Fire on the Moon

by Norman Mailer  · 2 Jun 2014  · 477pp  · 165,458 words

eyes, red sunburn, red peeling skin on his knotty forearms—he could be an astronaut in another life. He looks like an older version of Neil Armstrong, maybe, he looks like some of them, like Gordon Cooper for sure, or Deke Slayton, or Walt Cunningham of Apollo 7, yeah, the mill worker

…

hands to their outermost limits and in so doing all mankind will benefit. All mankind will reap the harvest.… What we will have attained when Neil Armstrong steps down upon the moon is a completely new step in the evolution of man.” (Which would lead Aquarius days later to wonder at the

…

Control. T minus 61 minutes and counting—T minus 61 minutes on the Apollo 11 countdown, and all elements are GO at this time. Astronaut Neil Armstrong has just completed a series of checks on that big Service Propulsion System engine that sits below him in the stack. We want to assure

…

ourselves before lift-off that that engine can respond to commands from inside the spacecraft. As Neil Armstrong moved his rotational hand controller we assured ourselves that the engine did respond by swiveling or gimbaling. Aquarius felt chopped into fragments. The combination of

…

time. We’ll be coming up on the automatic sequence in about 10 or 15 seconds from this time. All still GO at this time. Neil Armstrong reported back when he received the good wishes, “Thank you very much. We know it will be a good flight.” Firing command coming in now

…

sixty-second mark on the Apollo 11 mission. T minus 60 seconds and counting. We have passed T minus 60. Fifty-five seconds and counting. Neil Armstrong just reported back, “It’s been a real smooth countdown.” We have passed the fifty-second mark. Forty seconds away from the Apollo 11 lift

…

,300 feet per second. ARMSTRONG: We’ve got skirts up. CAPSULE COMMUNICATOR: Roger, we confirm, Skirts up. ARMSTRONG: Tower is gone. CAPCOM: Roger, tower. PAO: Neil Armstrong confirming separation and the launch escape tower separation. ARMSTRONG: Houston be advised the visual is GO today. On the way back to Cocoa Beach there

…

that they could not see the sky for the nose cone of Apollo 11 was covered by a heat shield), as the astronauts lay waiting, Neil Armstrong in the left seat, Buzz Aldrin in the center, and Mike Collins on the right, the view above them was a bank of instruments within

…

. CAPCOM: Roger, we copy your burn status report, and the spacecraft is looking good to us on telemetry. PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER: Burn report was by Neil Armstrong. V If tension had been palpable in the Public Affairs Officer’s voice, one can easily imagine the forty-seven minutes of dread experienced in

…

on TV—no substitute for actually being here.” CAPCOM: Roger. We concur and we surely wish we could see it firsthand also. PAO: That was Neil Armstrong. They passed over the Messier series of craters and a crater called Secchi. Next was Mt. Marilyn, named for the wife of the astronaut Jim

…

Susan, for Dandy, for Betsey and Kate, for Michael and Stephen Mailer The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to First on the Moon by Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., for the field of quotation it offered. By Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead Barbary Shore The

"Live From Cape Canaveral": Covering the Space Race, From Sputnik to Today

by Jay Barbree  · 18 Aug 2008  · 386pp  · 92,778 words

Go, Flight!: The Unsung Heroes of Mission Control, 1965-1992

by Rick Houston and J. Milt Heflin  · 27 Sep 2015  · 472pp  · 141,591 words

Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon, the Untold Story

by Jeffrey Kluger  · 11 Nov 2025  · 305pp  · 98,394 words

The Race: The Complete True Story of How America Beat Russia to the Moon

by James Schefter  · 2 Jan 2000  · 366pp  · 119,981 words

Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

by Allan J McDonald and James R. Hansen  · 25 Apr 2009  · 787pp  · 249,157 words

Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond

by Gene Kranz  · 7 Jan 2000  · 549pp  · 162,164 words

After Apollo?: Richard Nixon and the American Space Program

by John M. Logsdon  · 5 Mar 2015

Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys: 50th Anniversary Edition

by Michael Collins and Charles A. Lindbergh  · 15 Apr 2019

Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are

by Rebecca Boyle  · 16 Jan 2024  · 354pp  · 109,574 words

Apollo

by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox  · 1 Jan 1989  · 619pp  · 197,256 words

Fallen Astronauts: Heroes Who Died Reaching for the Moon

by Colin Burgess and Kate Doolan  · 14 Apr 2003  · 521pp  · 125,749 words

The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos

by Christian Davenport  · 20 Mar 2018  · 390pp  · 108,171 words

The Ultimate Engineer: The Remarkable Life of NASA's Visionary Leader George M. Low

by Richard Jurek  · 2 Dec 2019  · 431pp  · 118,074 words

Leaving Orbit: Notes From the Last Days of American Spaceflight

by Margaret Lazarus Dean  · 18 May 2015  · 338pp  · 112,127 words

The Last Man on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and America's Race in Space

by Eugene Cernan and Donald A. Davis  · 1 Jan 1998  · 453pp  · 142,717 words

Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman

by Neal Thompson  · 2 Jan 2004  · 577pp  · 171,126 words

Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her

by Rowland White and Richard Truly  · 18 Apr 2016  · 570pp  · 151,609 words

Amazing Stories of the Space Age

by Rod Pyle  · 21 Dec 2016

Voyage

by Stephen Baxter  · 23 May 2011

Apollo 13

by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger  · 14 Jun 2000  · 538pp  · 153,734 words

Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe

by Mike Massimino  · 3 Oct 2016  · 286pp  · 101,129 words

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

by Adam Higginbotham  · 14 May 2024  · 523pp  · 204,889 words

Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos and the Trillion-Dollar Space Race

by Christian Davenport  · 6 Sep 2025  · 441pp  · 127,950 words

Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier

by Neil Degrasse Tyson and Avis Lang  · 27 Feb 2012  · 476pp  · 118,381 words

Spacewalker: My Journey in Space and Faith as NASA's Record-Setting Frequent Flyer

by Jerry Lynn Ross and John Norberg  · 31 Jan 2013  · 259pp  · 94,135 words

Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration

by Buzz Aldrin and Leonard David  · 1 Apr 2013  · 183pp  · 51,514 words

Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon

by Robert Kurson  · 2 Apr 2018  · 361pp  · 110,905 words

Moon Rush: The New Space Race

by Leonard David  · 6 May 2019

Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life

by Ozan Varol  · 13 Apr 2020  · 389pp  · 112,319 words

Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut

by Nicholas Schmidle  · 3 May 2021  · 342pp  · 101,370 words

Speed

by Bob Gilliland and Keith Dunnavant  · 319pp  · 84,772 words

Completely Mad: Tom McClean, John Fairfax, and the Epic of the Race to Row Solo Across the Atlantic

by James R. Hansen  · 4 Jul 2023  · 362pp  · 134,405 words

Never Panic Early: An Apollo 13 Astronaut's Journey

by Fred Haise and Bill Moore  · 4 Apr 2022  · 263pp  · 72,899 words

Building Habitats on the Moon: Engineering Approaches to Lunar Settlements

by Haym Benaroya  · 12 Jan 2018  · 571pp  · 124,448 words

How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight

by Julian Guthrie  · 19 Sep 2016

A Crack in the Edge of the World

by Simon Winchester  · 9 Oct 2006  · 482pp  · 147,281 words

The Mission: A True Story

by David W. Brown  · 26 Jan 2021

Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings

by Earl Swift  · 5 Jul 2021  · 410pp  · 120,234 words

I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution

by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum  · 19 Sep 2011  · 821pp  · 227,742 words

The Right Stuff

by Tom Wolfe  · 1 Jan 1979  · 417pp  · 147,682 words

Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity From Politicians

by Joe Quirk and Patri Friedman  · 21 Mar 2017  · 441pp  · 113,244 words

Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon

by Jeffrey Kluger  · 15 May 2017  · 396pp  · 112,354 words

The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History

by Kassia St Clair  · 3 Oct 2018  · 480pp  · 112,463 words

Flying to the Moon: An Astronaut's Story

by Michael Collins  · 1 Jan 1976  · 133pp  · 47,871 words

The Moon: A History for the Future

by Oliver Morton  · 1 May 2019  · 319pp  · 100,984 words

Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961-1965

by Francis O. French, Colin Burgess and Paul Haney  · 2 Jan 2007  · 647pp  · 161,908 words

Space 2.0

by Rod Pyle  · 2 Jan 2019  · 352pp  · 87,930 words

Strange Sally Diamond: A BBC Between the Covers Book Club Pick

by Liz Nugent  · 2 Mar 2023  · 355pp  · 103,988 words

Open Space: From Earth to Eternity--the Global Race to Explore and Conquer the Cosmos

by David Ariosto  · 24 Mar 2026  · 433pp  · 116,344 words

Hard Landing

by Thomas Petzinger and Thomas Petzinger Jr.  · 1 Jan 1995  · 726pp  · 210,048 words

Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy

by David A. Mindell  · 12 Oct 2015  · 265pp  · 74,807 words

Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Fifty Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe

by Marcus Chown  · 22 Apr 2019  · 171pp  · 51,276 words

Elon Musk

by Walter Isaacson  · 11 Sep 2023  · 562pp  · 201,502 words

The Interstellar Age: Inside the Forty-Year Voyager Mission

by Jim Bell  · 24 Feb 2015  · 310pp  · 89,653 words

The Marches: A Borderland Journey Between England and Scotland

by Rory Stewart  · 14 Jul 2016  · 414pp  · 128,962 words

Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in Histroy

by Ben Mezrich  · 11 Jul 2011  · 301pp  · 96,359 words

USA Travel Guide

by Lonely, Planet

Beyond: Our Future in Space

by Chris Impey  · 12 Apr 2015  · 370pp  · 97,138 words

1,000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before You Die, Updated Ed.

by Patricia Schultz  · 13 May 2007  · 2,323pp  · 550,739 words

Falling to Earth

by Al Worden  · 26 Jul 2011  · 357pp  · 121,119 words

The Doomsday Calculation: How an Equation That Predicts the Future Is Transforming Everything We Know About Life and the Universe

by William Poundstone  · 3 Jun 2019  · 283pp  · 81,376 words

Nobody's Perfect: Writings From the New Yorker

by Anthony Lane  · 26 Aug 2002  · 879pp  · 309,222 words

Artemis

by Andy Weir  · 14 Nov 2017  · 343pp  · 89,057 words

A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?

by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith  · 6 Nov 2023  · 490pp  · 132,502 words

Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation

by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber  · 29 Oct 2024  · 292pp  · 106,826 words

The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts

by Loren Grush  · 11 Sep 2023  · 375pp  · 127,360 words

Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

by Annie Jacobsen  · 16 May 2011  · 572pp  · 179,024 words

Hidden Figures

by Margot Lee Shetterly  · 11 Aug 2016  · 425pp  · 116,409 words

How Money Became Dangerous

by Christopher Varelas  · 15 Oct 2019  · 477pp  · 144,329 words

Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut

by Mike Mullane  · 24 Jan 2006  · 506pp  · 167,034 words

The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success

by Kevin Dutton  · 15 Oct 2012  · 280pp  · 85,091 words

John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon (Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology)

by John M. Logsdon  · 15 Dec 2010  · 306pp  · 36,032 words

The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results

by Andrew McAfee  · 14 Nov 2023  · 381pp  · 113,173 words

Pandora's Star

by Peter F. Hamilton  · 2 Mar 2004  · 1,234pp  · 356,472 words

The Wright Brothers

by David McCullough  · 4 May 2015  · 422pp  · 114,198 words

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

by Laurence Gonzales  · 1 Dec 1998  · 297pp  · 98,506 words

The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

by Annie Jacobsen  · 14 Sep 2015  · 558pp  · 164,627 words

The Search for Life on Mars

by Elizabeth Howell  · 14 Apr 2020  · 530pp  · 145,220 words

The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World

by Tim Marshall  · 14 Oct 2021  · 383pp  · 105,387 words

QI: The Book of General Ignorance - The Noticeably Stouter Edition

by Lloyd, John and Mitchinson, John  · 7 Oct 2010  · 624pp  · 104,923 words

The Fix: How Bankers Lied, Cheated and Colluded to Rig the World's Most Important Number (Bloomberg)

by Liam Vaughan and Gavin Finch  · 22 Nov 2016

The mote in God's eye

by Larry Niven; Jerry Pournelle  · 30 Jan 2011  · 729pp  · 195,181 words

When the Money Runs Out: The End of Western Affluence

by Stephen D. King  · 17 Jun 2013  · 324pp  · 90,253 words

Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane

by Brett King  · 5 May 2016  · 385pp  · 111,113 words

The Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to the Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific

by David Bianculli  · 15 Nov 2016  · 676pp  · 203,386 words

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

by James Gleick  · 1 Jan 1992  · 795pp  · 215,529 words

Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Alec Nevala-Lee  · 22 Oct 2018  · 622pp  · 169,014 words

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

by Margaret O'Mara  · 8 Jul 2019

Lonely Planet Scotland

by Lonely Planet

Concorde: The Thrilling Account of History’s Most Extraordinary Airliner

by Mike Bannister  · 29 Sep 2022  · 436pp  · 127,696 words

Stephen Fry in America

by Stephen Fry  · 1 Jan 2008  · 362pp  · 95,782 words

Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations With Today's Top Comedy Writers

by Mike Sacks  · 23 Jun 2014

Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them

by Donovan Hohn  · 1 Jan 2010  · 473pp  · 154,182 words

American Made: Why Making Things Will Return Us to Greatness

by Dan Dimicco  · 3 Mar 2015  · 219pp  · 61,720 words

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

by Chris Hadfield  · 29 Oct 2013  · 255pp  · 88,987 words

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning

by Jeremy Lent  · 22 May 2017  · 789pp  · 207,744 words

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris Fussell  · 11 May 2015  · 409pp  · 105,551 words

Come Fly With Us: NASA's Payload Specialist Program

by Melvin Croft, John Youskauskas and Don Thomas  · 1 Feb 2019  · 609pp  · 159,043 words

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

by Bill McKibben  · 15 Apr 2019

Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

by Simon Sinek  · 29 Oct 2009  · 261pp  · 79,883 words

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller

by Alec Nevala-Lee  · 1 Aug 2022  · 864pp  · 222,565 words

Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator

by Keith Houston  · 22 Aug 2023  · 405pp  · 105,395 words

Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet

by Edward Luce  · 13 May 2025  · 612pp  · 235,188 words

Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions

by Temple Grandin, Ph.d.  · 11 Oct 2022

Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

by Morgan Housel  · 7 Nov 2023  · 210pp  · 53,743 words

From Beirut to Jerusalem

by Thomas L. Friedman  · 1 Jan 1989  · 639pp  · 212,079 words

Stealth

by Peter Westwick  · 22 Nov 2019  · 474pp  · 87,687 words

California

by Sara Benson  · 15 Oct 2010

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success

by Shane Snow  · 8 Sep 2014  · 278pp  · 70,416 words

Eastern USA

by Lonely Planet

Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX

by Eric Berger  · 2 Mar 2021  · 304pp  · 89,879 words

Wonders of the Universe

by Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen  · 12 Jul 2011

Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology

by Kentaro Toyama  · 25 May 2015  · 494pp  · 116,739 words

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon

by Neil Sheehan  · 21 Sep 2009  · 589pp  · 197,971 words

Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination and the Birth of a World

by Oliver Morton  · 15 Feb 2003  · 409pp  · 129,423 words

Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil

by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Francis de Véricourt  · 10 May 2021  · 291pp  · 80,068 words

The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration

by Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees  · 18 Apr 2022  · 192pp  · 63,813 words

Snowden's Box: Trust in the Age of Surveillance

by Jessica Bruder and Dale Maharidge  · 29 Mar 2020  · 159pp  · 42,401 words

Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars: The Story of the First American Woman to Command a Space Mission

by Eileen M. Collins and Jonathan H. Ward  · 13 Sep 2021  · 394pp  · 107,778 words

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari  · 1 Jan 2011  · 447pp  · 141,811 words

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

by Rick Perlstein  · 1 Jan 2008  · 1,351pp  · 404,177 words

Coastal California

by Lonely Planet

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

by Steve Silberman  · 24 Aug 2015  · 786pp  · 195,810 words

In-N-Out Burger

by Stacy Perman  · 11 May 2009  · 454pp  · 122,612 words

Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account From Curiosity's Chief Engineer

by Rob Manning and William L. Simon  · 20 Oct 2014  · 237pp  · 76,486 words

4th Rock From the Sun: The Story of Mars

by Nicky Jenner  · 5 Apr 2017  · 294pp  · 87,986 words

Picnic Comma Lightning: In Search of a New Reality

by Laurence Scott  · 11 Jul 2018  · 244pp  · 81,334 words

Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex

by Rupert Darwall  · 2 Oct 2017  · 451pp  · 115,720 words

The Last Dance

by Martin L. Shoemaker  · 2 Nov 2019  · 485pp  · 149,337 words

The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful--And Their Architects--Shape the World

by Deyan Sudjic  · 27 Nov 2006  · 441pp  · 135,176 words

Britain Etc

by Mark Easton  · 1 Mar 2012  · 411pp  · 95,852 words

The Crash Detectives: Investigating the World's Most Mysterious Air Disasters

by Christine Negroni  · 26 Sep 2016  · 269pp  · 74,955 words

Business Lessons From a Radical Industrialist

by Ray C. Anderson  · 28 Mar 2011  · 412pp  · 113,782 words

10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less

by Garett Jones  · 4 Feb 2020  · 303pp  · 75,192 words

The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

by Ross Douthat  · 25 Feb 2020  · 324pp  · 80,217 words

Inside British Intelligence

by Gordon Thomas

Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made

by Gaia Vince  · 19 Oct 2014  · 505pp  · 147,916 words

Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto

by Alan Stern and David Grinspoon  · 2 May 2018  · 323pp  · 94,156 words

Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization

by Iain Gately  · 27 Oct 2001  · 434pp  · 124,153 words

The Vortex: A True Story of History's Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation

by Scott Carney and Jason Miklian  · 28 Mar 2022  · 553pp  · 153,028 words

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

by Christopher McDougall  · 5 May 2009  · 274pp  · 102,831 words

Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization

by K. Eric Drexler  · 6 May 2013  · 445pp  · 105,255 words

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty

by Bradley K. Martin  · 14 Oct 2004  · 1,509pp  · 416,377 words

Moonwalking With Einstein

by Joshua Foer  · 3 Mar 2011  · 329pp  · 93,655 words

QI: The Third Book of General Ignorance (Qi: Book of General Ignorance)

by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson  · 28 Sep 2015  · 432pp  · 85,707 words

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

by Mary Roach  · 1 Jan 2010  · 300pp  · 87,725 words

Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing Before Cybernetics

by David A. Mindell  · 10 Oct 2002  · 759pp  · 166,687 words

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

by Adam Grant  · 2 Feb 2016  · 410pp  · 101,260 words

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

by Kai-Fu Lee  · 14 Sep 2018  · 307pp  · 88,180 words

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech

by Jamie Susskind  · 3 Sep 2018  · 533pp

On the Future: Prospects for Humanity

by Martin J. Rees  · 14 Oct 2018  · 193pp  · 51,445 words

Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey Into Space

by Stephen Walker  · 12 Apr 2021  · 546pp  · 164,489 words

Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (In a Big Way)

by Roma Agrawal  · 2 Mar 2023  · 290pp  · 80,461 words

Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military

by Neil Degrasse Tyson and Avis Lang  · 10 Sep 2018  · 745pp  · 207,187 words

Longshot

by David Heath  · 18 Jan 2022

The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters

by Eric J. Johnson  · 12 Oct 2021  · 362pp  · 103,087 words

The Danger Within Us

by Jeanne Lenzer  · 12 Dec 2017  · 328pp  · 98,127 words

The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health

by David B. Agus  · 29 Dec 2015  · 346pp  · 92,984 words

Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought

by Andrew W. Lo  · 3 Apr 2017  · 733pp  · 179,391 words

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

by Thomas L. Friedman  · 22 Nov 2016  · 602pp  · 177,874 words

The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives

by Ernest Scheyder  · 30 Jan 2024  · 355pp  · 133,726 words

Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives

by Michael Specter  · 14 Apr 2009  · 281pp  · 79,958 words

Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

by Michio Kaku  · 15 Mar 2011  · 523pp  · 148,929 words

Red Moon Rising

by Matthew Brzezinski  · 2 Jan 2007  · 497pp  · 124,144 words

The Misfit Economy: Lessons in Creativity From Pirates, Hackers, Gangsters and Other Informal Entrepreneurs

by Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips  · 23 Jun 2015  · 210pp  · 56,667 words

Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing

by Kevin Davies  · 5 Oct 2020  · 741pp  · 164,057 words

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar

by Paul Theroux  · 9 Sep 2008  · 651pp  · 190,224 words

The Light That Failed: A Reckoning

by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes  · 31 Oct 2019  · 300pp  · 87,374 words

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

by Carl Sagan  · 8 Sep 1997  · 356pp  · 102,224 words

Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle

by Dan Senor and Saul Singer  · 3 Nov 2009  · 285pp  · 81,743 words

The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900

by David Edgerton  · 7 Dec 2006  · 353pp  · 91,211 words

The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us

by Diane Ackerman  · 9 Sep 2014  · 380pp  · 104,841 words

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

by Daniel Immerwahr  · 19 Feb 2019

Trees on Mars: Our Obsession With the Future

by Hal Niedzviecki  · 15 Mar 2015  · 343pp  · 102,846 words

The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs

by Jim Rasenberger  · 4 Apr 2011  · 742pp  · 202,902 words

A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond

by Daniel Susskind  · 14 Jan 2020  · 419pp  · 109,241 words

Abundance

by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson  · 18 Mar 2025  · 227pp  · 84,566 words

Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets That Launched a Second Space Age

by Eric Berger  · 23 Sep 2024  · 375pp  · 113,230 words

QI: The Second Book of General Ignorance

by Lloyd, John and Mitchinson, John  · 7 Oct 2010  · 469pp  · 97,582 words

Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, From Missiles to the Moon to Mars

by Nathalia Holt  · 4 Apr 2016  · 288pp  · 92,175 words

The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom

by Graham Farmelo  · 24 Aug 2009  · 1,396pp  · 245,647 words

Adventures in Human Being (Wellcome)

by Gavin Francis  · 28 Apr 2015  · 226pp  · 66,188 words

Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots

by John Markoff  · 24 Aug 2015  · 413pp  · 119,587 words

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

by Jane Mayer  · 19 Jan 2016  · 558pp  · 168,179 words

MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom

by Tony Robbins  · 18 Nov 2014  · 825pp  · 228,141 words

The Deep Learning Revolution (The MIT Press)

by Terrence J. Sejnowski  · 27 Sep 2018

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism

by Calum Chace  · 17 Jul 2016  · 477pp  · 75,408 words

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

by Patrick Radden Keefe  · 12 Apr 2021  · 712pp  · 212,334 words

Buyology

by Martin Lindstrom  · 14 Jul 2008  · 83pp  · 7,274 words

Germany Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

Philanthrocapitalism

by Matthew Bishop, Michael Green and Bill Clinton  · 29 Sep 2008  · 401pp  · 115,959 words

Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

by Temi Oh  · 15 Mar 2019  · 486pp  · 138,878 words

Godforsaken Sea

by Derek Lundy  · 15 Feb 1998  · 300pp  · 99,432 words

The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought

by Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff and Peter Schwartz  · 1 Jan 1989  · 411pp  · 136,413 words

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

by Michael Lewis  · 2 Oct 2011  · 180pp  · 61,340 words

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming

by Mike Brown  · 7 Dec 2010  · 242pp  · 81,209 words

The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution

by Gregory Zuckerman  · 5 Nov 2019  · 407pp  · 104,622 words

The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

by Walter Isaacson  · 6 Oct 2014  · 720pp  · 197,129 words

How We'll Live on Mars (TED Books)

by Stephen Petranek  · 6 Jul 2015  · 70pp  · 22,172 words

Infonomics: How to Monetize, Manage, and Measure Information as an Asset for Competitive Advantage

by Douglas B. Laney  · 4 Sep 2017  · 374pp  · 94,508 words

Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations

by Arnold van de Laar Laproscopic Surgeon  · 1 Oct 2018  · 371pp  · 108,105 words

Talk to Me: How Voice Computing Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Think

by James Vlahos  · 1 Mar 2019  · 392pp  · 108,745 words

Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the New Space Race

by Tim Fernholz  · 20 Mar 2018  · 328pp  · 96,141 words

Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data

by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Thomas Ramge  · 27 Feb 2018  · 267pp  · 72,552 words

Case for Mars

by Robert Zubrin  · 27 Jun 2011  · 437pp  · 126,860 words

Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World

by Vaclav Smil  · 4 May 2021  · 252pp  · 60,959 words

Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting

by Syd Field  · 17 Dec 2007  · 355pp  · 108,420 words

These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means

by Christopher Summerfield  · 11 Mar 2025  · 412pp  · 122,298 words

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI

by Yuval Noah Harari  · 9 Sep 2024  · 566pp  · 169,013 words

Hammer's German Grammar and Usage

by Martin Durrell  · 15 Feb 2021  · 1,233pp  · 239,919 words

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy

by David Gelles  · 30 May 2022  · 318pp  · 91,957 words

We Are as Gods: A Survival Guide for the Age of Abundance

by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler  · 13 Apr 2026  · 225pp  · 76,418 words

Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing

by Peter Robison  · 29 Nov 2021  · 382pp  · 105,657 words

Toast

by Stross, Charles  · 1 Jan 2002

Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

by Robert Coram  · 21 Nov 2002  · 548pp  · 174,644 words

You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall

by Colin Ellard  · 6 Jul 2009  · 293pp  · 97,431 words

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan

by Sebastian Mallaby  · 10 Oct 2016  · 1,242pp  · 317,903 words

The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World

by Sarah Stewart Johnson  · 6 Jul 2020  · 400pp  · 99,489 words

When They Go Low, We Go High: Speeches That Shape the World – and Why We Need Them

by Philip Collins  · 4 Oct 2017  · 475pp  · 156,046 words

Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology

by Howard Rheingold  · 14 May 2000  · 352pp  · 120,202 words

Grand: A Memoir

by Sara Schaefer  · 10 Aug 2020  · 190pp  · 58,981 words

Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future

by Jean M. Twenge  · 25 Apr 2023  · 541pp  · 173,676 words

First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time

by Emma Chapman  · 23 Feb 2021  · 265pp  · 79,944 words

The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers

by Emily Levesque  · 3 Aug 2020

Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain

by Sathnam Sanghera  · 28 Jan 2021  · 430pp  · 111,038 words

Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives

by Michael A. Heller and James Salzman  · 2 Mar 2021  · 332pp  · 100,245 words

Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress--And How to Bring It Back

by Marc J Dunkelman  · 17 Feb 2025  · 454pp  · 134,799 words

Holdout: A Novel

by Jeffrey Kluger  · 2 Aug 2021

The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets

by Alan Boss  · 3 Feb 2009  · 221pp  · 61,146 words

Africa: A Biography of the Continent

by John Reader  · 5 Nov 1998  · 1,072pp  · 297,437 words

Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room

by David Weinberger  · 14 Jul 2011  · 369pp  · 80,355 words

Alan Partridge: Nomad: Nomad

by Alan Partridge  · 19 Oct 2016  · 245pp  · 72,391 words

Some Remarks

by Neal Stephenson  · 6 Aug 2012  · 335pp  · 107,779 words

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

by Bruce Cannon Gibney  · 7 Mar 2017  · 526pp  · 160,601 words

No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy

by Linsey McGoey  · 14 Apr 2015  · 324pp  · 93,606 words

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives

by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler  · 28 Jan 2020  · 501pp  · 114,888 words

Planet Ponzi

by Mitch Feierstein  · 2 Feb 2012  · 393pp  · 115,263 words

Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall--And Those Fighting to Reverse It

by Steven Brill  · 28 May 2018  · 519pp  · 155,332 words

If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy?

by Raj Raghunathan  · 25 Apr 2016  · 505pp  · 127,542 words

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President

by Bandy X. Lee  · 2 Oct 2017  · 369pp  · 105,819 words

Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution

by Richard Whittle  · 15 Sep 2014  · 455pp  · 131,569 words

Little Failure: A Memoir

by Gary Shteyngart  · 7 Jan 2014

Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive ScrabblePlayers

by Stefan Fatsis  · 27 Jul 2001  · 385pp  · 25,673 words

Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream

by Arianna Huffington  · 7 Sep 2010  · 300pp  · 78,475 words

50 Future Ideas You Really Need to Know

by Richard Watson  · 5 Nov 2013  · 219pp  · 63,495 words

Wireless

by Charles Stross  · 7 Jul 2009

The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron

by Rebecca Winters Keegan  · 3 Nov 2009  · 250pp  · 87,503 words

The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable

by James Owen Weatherall  · 2 Jan 2013  · 338pp  · 106,936 words

Inviting Disaster

by James R. Chiles  · 7 Jul 2008  · 415pp  · 123,373 words

Ayn Rand and the World She Made

by Anne C. Heller  · 27 Oct 2009  · 756pp  · 228,797 words

The Internet Is Not the Answer

by Andrew Keen  · 5 Jan 2015  · 361pp  · 81,068 words

Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery

by Scott Kelly and Margaret Lazarus Dean  · 14 Aug 2017  · 411pp  · 140,110 words

Red Moon

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 22 Oct 2018  · 492pp  · 141,544 words

The Sellout: A Novel

by Paul Beatty  · 2 Mar 2016  · 271pp  · 83,944 words

Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence

by Richard Yonck  · 7 Mar 2017  · 360pp  · 100,991 words

On Her Majesty's Nuclear Service

by Eric Thompson  · 18 Apr 2018  · 379pp  · 118,576 words

The Deepest Map

by Laura Trethewey  · 15 May 2023

Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking

by Richard E. Nisbett  · 17 Aug 2015  · 397pp  · 109,631 words

The Evolutionary Void

by Peter F. Hamilton  · 18 Aug 2010  · 857pp  · 232,302 words

The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies

by Jason Fagone  · 25 Sep 2017  · 592pp  · 152,445 words

Realizing Tomorrow: The Path to Private Spaceflight

by Chris Dubbs, Emeline Paat-dahlstrom and Charles D. Walker  · 1 Jun 2011  · 376pp  · 110,796 words

Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica

by Nicholas Johnson  · 31 May 2005  · 363pp  · 109,417 words

Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love

by Dava Sobel  · 25 May 2009  · 363pp  · 108,670 words

Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work

by Dr. Paul Babiak and Dr. Robert Hare  · 7 May 2007  · 345pp  · 100,135 words

The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches

by Marshall Brain  · 6 Apr 2015  · 215pp  · 56,215 words

Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution

by Fred Vogelstein  · 12 Nov 2013  · 275pp  · 84,418 words

Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars

by Lee Billings  · 2 Oct 2013  · 326pp  · 97,089 words

Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origins of America’s Opioid Epidemic

by Barry Meier  · 29 Oct 2020

A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea

by Richard Phillips and Stephan Talty  · 5 Apr 2010  · 260pp  · 79,471 words

Gambling Man

by Lionel Barber  · 3 Oct 2024  · 424pp  · 123,730 words

AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

by Kai-Fu Lee and Qiufan Chen  · 13 Sep 2021

Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections

by Patrick Smith  · 6 May 2013  · 309pp  · 100,573 words

Sextant: A Young Man's Daring Sea Voyage and the Men Who ...

by David Barrie  · 12 May 2014  · 366pp  · 100,602 words

Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

by James Barrat  · 30 Sep 2013  · 294pp  · 81,292 words

Executive Orders

by Tom Clancy  · 2 Jan 1996

Culture works: the political economy of culture

by Richard Maxwell  · 15 Jan 2001  · 268pp  · 112,708 words

CTOs at Work

by Scott Donaldson, Stanley Siegel and Gary Donaldson  · 13 Jan 2012  · 458pp  · 135,206 words

Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America

by Shawn Lawrence Otto  · 10 Oct 2011  · 692pp  · 127,032 words

The Martian

by Andy Weir  · 1 Jan 2011  · 410pp  · 103,421 words

Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life Beyond Our Solar System

by Ray Jayawardhana  · 3 Feb 2011  · 257pp  · 66,480 words

Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence

by Calum Chace  · 28 Jul 2015  · 144pp  · 43,356 words

Ten Billion Tomorrows: How Science Fiction Technology Became Reality and Shapes the Future

by Brian Clegg  · 8 Dec 2015  · 315pp  · 92,151 words

Time Travelers Never Die

by Jack McDevitt  · 10 Sep 2009  · 460pp  · 108,654 words

Confessions of a Bookseller

by Shaun Bythell  · 8 Aug 2019  · 335pp  · 95,549 words

Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist

by Richard Dawkins  · 15 Mar 2017  · 420pp  · 130,714 words

Cities Are Good for You: The Genius of the Metropolis

by Leo Hollis  · 31 Mar 2013  · 385pp  · 118,314 words

Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950-2017

by Ian Kershaw  · 29 Aug 2018  · 736pp  · 233,366 words

How to Be Right: In a World Gone Wrong

by James O'Brien  · 2 Nov 2018  · 173pp  · 52,725 words

How to Weep in Public: Feeble Offerings From One Depressive to Another

by Jacqueline Novak  · 1 Mar 2016  · 173pp  · 54,215 words

Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors

by Matt Parker  · 7 Mar 2019

Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags

by Tim Marshall  · 21 Sep 2016  · 276pp  · 78,061 words

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

by Simon Winchester  · 27 Sep 1998  · 215pp  · 72,133 words

Generation A

by Douglas Coupland  · 2 Jan 2009  · 312pp  · 78,053 words

Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies (Academic Edition)

by Bo Bennett  · 29 May 2017

Being You: A New Science of Consciousness

by Anil Seth  · 29 Aug 2021  · 418pp  · 102,597 words

Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

by Rebecca Henderson  · 27 Apr 2020  · 330pp  · 99,044 words

How to Spend a Trillion Dollars

by Rowan Hooper  · 15 Jan 2020  · 285pp  · 86,858 words

Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History

by Ben Mezrich  · 6 Nov 2023  · 279pp  · 85,453 words

The Rough Guide to Mexico

by Rough Guides  · 15 Jan 2022

The Crux

by Richard Rumelt  · 27 Apr 2022  · 363pp  · 109,834 words

This Is for Everyone: The Captivating Memoir From the Inventor of the World Wide Web

by Tim Berners-Lee  · 8 Sep 2025  · 347pp  · 100,038 words

Tools a Visual History: The Hardware That Built, Measured and Repaired the World

by Dominic Chinea  · 5 Oct 2022  · 197pp  · 49,454 words

Moon Prague, Vienna & Budapest: Palaces & Castles, Art & Music, Coffeehouses & Beer Gardens

by Jennifer D Walker, Auburn Scallon and Moon Travel Guides  · 15 Oct 2024  · 806pp  · 221,571 words

In Patagonia:

by Bruce Chatwin  · 5 Jun 2019  · 243pp  · 70,257 words