Nancy Atkinson's Blog - Posts Tagged "moon-landing"

Hello there! I’d like to introduce you to my upcoming book, “Eight Years to the Moon!” But before I tell you all about it, I have some very fun news to share:

I’m excited to announce that Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart has written the foreword for the book! I’m absolutely thrilled he took the time out of his very busy year, full of Apollo 50th anniversary events to write this, and I really love what he wrote.

Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo MissionsNancy Atkinson

Rusty is one of the most interesting and thoughtful people I’ve ever had the chance to talk with, and he brings a unique viewpoint of those incredible days of the 1960’s when we figured out how to go to the Moon.

Which brings me back to the book….

“Eight Years to the Moon” tells the story of the Apollo program through the eyes of those who truly worked behind the scenes. The book includes the stories of about 60 people (over 40 that I interviewed and the oral histories of about 20 more), all told within the larger story of Apollo. Many of these people haven’t had the chance to widely share their stories before. Of note, some of the stories include the experiences of two of the few women engineers at NASA and one of the few African American engineers that worked for one of the contractor companies (Honeywell) in the 1960s.

The stories in the book range from funny, to heart-warming, to heart-breaking and they provide a glimpse into the lives of some of the hundreds of thousands of people who made it possible to land humans on the Moon. Many of the people I interviewed shared personal photographs, part of over 150 images in the book.

Through interviews and research, I uncovered little-known details about the Apollo program, including a potentially catastrophic event that could have ended the Apollo 11 mission in disaster.

“Eight Years to the Moon” will be released on July 2 (but is available for preorder at your favorite online stores,) I’ll be sharing more about the book and “writing of” stories in the days to come.

My sincere thanks to everyone who made this book possible: everyone who took the time to talk with me to share their unique Apollo stories and insights and who worked with me to ensure accuracy of technical and historical details, as well as the wonderful people at Page Street Publishing, who had the idea for the book.

https://youtu.be/-Z5tXFYxEM0

Above is a link to a video preview — or ‘book trailer’ — of some of the people and stories you’ll find in my new book Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions It is a tribute to not only the 60 people I feature in the book, but everyone who worked on the Apollo program.

This trailer’ includes an amazing song by award-winning singer/songwriter Ben Bedford, and I’m so grateful to be able to share this song, “The Pilot and the Flying Machine, Part 1.”

The story of how this video came about stems from the fact that I’ve been a fan of Ben for over 10 years now, and when I lived in Illinois — where Ben is from — my husband and I would try to go hear Ben sing and play guitar as often as we could. We got to know Ben and his wife/amazing backup singer Kari and they even came to sing for a backyard concert at our house at a surprise birthday party my husband organized and planned for me (and the surprise was executed successfully, if not magnificently!)

Fast forward to March of 2019. We had been living in Minnesota for a few years, and Ben came to sing in Minneapolis. Of course, we attended. He opened the night by singing the song “The Pilot and the Flying Machine, Part 1.” Now, I know that I have heard that song many times before. But that night, it seemed like it was a brand new song. I had spent the last several months — over a year, actually — immersed in writing “Eight Years to the Moon.” For all intents and purposes, I was living in the 1960’s and the only thing in my head were all the stories of Apollo I had heard and transferred to paper. When Ben sang that song, I could almost ‘see’ this video playing in my head. The song was a perfect tribute to the women and men who made it possible to land on the Moon with Project Apollo.

Making the video wasn’t quite as easy as how it played in my head, since I have limited video editing experience. But here it is, and I hope you enjoy it!