The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters. (Running Press,2005) [Paperback]

by Richard Russell Lawrence

In the words of those who trod the void and others based at mission control, here are more than fifty of the greatest true stories of suborbital, orbital, and deep space exploration. From Apollo 8’s first view of a tortured landscape of craters on the “dark side” of the Moon to a series of cliff-hanger crises aboard space station Mir, The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters offers moments of extraordinary heroic achievement as well as episodes of terrible human cost. High points include the classic, nail-biting account of abandoning Apollo 13 on the way to the Moon and Jerry Linenger’s panic attack during a space walk where he was “just out there dangling.”

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Space

Paperback

First published January 10, 2004

Reviews

[Books and margaritas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a collection of more than 50 true stories of humanity’s space exploration, told by the very first space explorers. Reading through these accounts you understand how much we have accomplished and achieved in space, outside of the Earth’s gravity. It makes me wonder how much is yet to come.

While I do find the topic extremely interesting, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I hoped. Firstly, there are a lot of grammatical errors which probably means that whoever edited it didn’t do a very thorough job. Secondly (and full disclosure: this is my fault and not the editors or the authors), there is too much technical jargon that made some sections of the book very challenging to understand. I didn’t take physics beyond grade 10, and while I do occasionally watch (and somewhat understand) astrophysics documentaries, my knowledge of rocket engineering is extremely limited. The stories were written by professionals who dedicated their life to space, and it’s not surprising that their accounts are not very lay person friendly. That being said, if you have some knowledge of the technical aspects of rocket science beyond watching sci-fi movies and documentaries, I am sure you would find this book very entertaining.

[Peter Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book - some of the accounts, including Apollo 13, were real page-turners.
The section on Mars near the end of the book was written in a different style, which I imagine would appeal to someone with a particular interest in Mars, but I found repetitive and excessively detailed.

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

The excerpts in this book are mostly from the autobiographies and biographies of the people who made history working at NASA. everything from Mercury to Mir is mentioned in this book, and mostly in first-person voice from the people who lived through it all. Thankfully, there weren't as many disasters in the book as successes.

The bad thing is that the book has a lot of spelling errors in it. sloppy editing I presume. It really throws the breaks on my imagining of the situations in the book when I see a misspelled word.

[Esoderek · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit heavy on the technical jargon (I don't think astronauts are capable of speaking in human-speak) but still very interesting if you like reading about tragedy and tragedy narrowly averted.