Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon

by David West Reynolds, Gene Cernan (Afterword), Von Hardesty (Introduction)

NASA's Apollo answered President Kennedy's 1961 directive to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade. The astronauts, scientists, and mission control operators who took part in the fifteen manned Apollo missions not only accomplished this memorable triumph of courage and technical ingenuity, they stirred the world's imagination and redefined the notion of what is truly possible.

In this captivating story of adventure and exploration, expert David West Reynolds presents a complete and engaging reconstruction of all the key events and personalities in the Apollo program. From the thrilling experiences of the astronauts to the men of extraordinary vision and skill who built a reality out of a dream, Reynolds captures the drama of this epic journey.

Rendering complex and technical material into accessible terms for the uninitiated reader, while providing unusual details for the aficionado, Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon takes you along on the most unforgettable ride of the twentieth century.

Genres: Space, History, Nonfiction, Science

272 pages, Hardcover

First published May 20, 2002

About the author

Dr. David West Reynolds earned his Ph.D. in archeology at the University of Michigan. A lecturer, veteran of field expeditions on three continents and author of scientific archeological publications, Reynolds has also written X-Wing: A Pocket Manual, Tie Fighter: A Pocket Manual, and various Star Wars articles. He approaches the world of Star Wars like ancient Rome or Egypt, considering it a culture from another time and place to explore. Reynolds lives in Marin County, California.

Reviews

[Audrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book that is ultimately a beautiful tribute to all the men and women who dreamed of reaching space and the moon and then worked to make that a reality. It’s full of glossy color photos, but the text is also well written. The writer captures the spirit of wonder, adventure, and optimism of the space program and remains apolitical and nonjudgmental but still honest.

The book covers man’s first dreams of going to the moon, then the Mercury and Gemini missions. Each Apollo mission is explained, then post-Apollo stuff like space stations and the space shuttle.

I learned a lot even though I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about the space program. The book contains a four-page fold-out diagram of the Saturn V, and I knew very little about the rockets before this.

You feel like you’re there with the astronauts throughout the book. Here’s the description of Apollo 8’s liftoff:

Borman, Lovell, and Anders felt the rumble originating 350 feet below them. The thurst had risen to maxiumm. Explosive charges fired and released all four hold-down arms within the same millisecond. The Saturn V suddenly stood on pure flame, pure force, in the air, and it rose. Fire and ice cascaded past one another as frozen condensation vibrated off the supercooled hull and rained down around the engines. The holocaust poured and blossomed. Hypersonic waves of flame bathed the flame defector’s sufarce, searing 1,900 F torrent blasting almost an ince of ceramic surface off the devide. For 12 seconds, the Saturn V lifted, its engines moving to steer it from drifting into the launch tower.





Here are a few random things I learned (mostly about the Saturn V):
● All the instructions for assembling the Saturn V were not saved, so the rocket would basically have to be reinvented if we wanted to use it again. Like, !!!
● Without an atmosphere, distances are impossible to judge on the moon. Just looking at photos shows you how.
● It took about six hours to move a rocket to the launch pad.
● Wernher Von Braun was so inspired by the movie Frau im Mond that he insisted on all the rockets being painted black and white as they were in the film.
● Bar codes were invented to keep track of all the rocket’s parts.
● Just the flames from the rocket would reach mach 3+.

I liked the map of the moon that showed all the Apollo landing sites. And it felt very appropriate to be reading it during the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. It makes a good coffee table book but is definitely worth reading every word.

Book Blog

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m kind of a space junkie. As a kid I remember crowding around a tiny Black & White tv with my family to watch Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moon. This book takes you through all NASA endured and accomplished with the Apollo missions. Really enjoyed it!

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best space book I've read. It would be the book I'd recommend for anyone looking for one book on the subject. Very readable, beautiful photos, clear descriptions, and best of all a real sense of the grandeur. I enjoyed this so much.

[Levi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Levi Huber
4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


Apollo, the Epic Journey to the Moon, by David West Reynolds



I rated this book a 4 stars out of 5 because I really enjoyed this book, it is a beautiful book that really shows the reader what space is really about, It can really inspire the readers to look towards the stars. But sometimes the information got a little too much. I still really enjoyed this book due to the fact that it went into really good detail about every launch, every obstacle, and the history about it, This book really does a good job of explaining the story of Apollo and different space programs that NASA has tried, the book goes into depth about the space race and other backgrounds.

I learned a lot even though I thought I knew a lot about spaceships before this. The book has many diagrams and folds out of rockets. This book was really an eye opener because normally, I am not much of a reader, But this book caught my attention. I have always been a sucker for space and this book was special for me. There's not a main character or plot, but it talks about The space age, going to the moon and all the difficulties that they had to overcome. Apollo, The Epic Journey to the moon is an awesome book I definitely recommend to any space nerd, or even anyone interested in the history and facts of building our way to the moon.

One of the themes of this book that David West Reynolds talks about is determination, in the book, determination comes of a lot and is a key detail of this book. On page 99 the book says “It was the most daring proposal NASA had ever seriously considered.” This was really inspiring to me because people worked hard. Themes like this are very common in this book. Determination was a very key factor for getting to the moon. Throughout all the struggles determination was the thing that drove NASA forward, and this book taught me that. (352 Words if you were wondering)

[Richard Archambault · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned lots of details about some of the post-11 missions, things I had no idea about. 1 star less because of the somewhat annoying ra-ra-ism, as in "capitalism and the US are the best". Still I enjoyed the mission histories.

[Margo Berendsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't put it down; every glossy page was full color with photos, diagrams and sidebars, and prose that didn't overwhelm with either technical or political details.

The only thing I wished for was more personal insight from the people actually involved - engineers, mission control, astronauts.

But the book was superb at "framing" the entire Apollo program, such as this example:

The Saturn V [largest rocket ever made, to this day] would become the greatest pinnacle of rocket design ever achieved and an achievement ranking among the wonders of time, along with Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. When the Greek historian Herodotus visited the Great Pyramid in 430 BC, he asked the locals how many people it had taken to build the legendary structure. "Four hundred thousand," they told him, working over 10 years, an almost inconceivable labor force to be organized toward one construction goal. When NASA took a count of the Americans working on the Moon program during the decade of the 1960's, they discovered a starling coincidence. Almost five millenia after the Great Pyramid was brought to pass, a new wonder would be formed by the same number of hands.

The book does a tremendous job not only describing the scale of the 363 foot tall rocket (of which only 10 ft would actually return to earth) - but also blows your mind with the scale of the facilities required to assemble and move such a monstrosity. I wonder if you can still see the leviathan crawlers that moved it to its launch pad? The two crawlers (NASA always build backups) are the largest land vehicles in the world.

This was my favorite excerpt, about Apollo 8, the first orbit around the moon:

After Apollo 8, the world would never again see itself from the same perspective. We could no longer pretend that our world was without limits; we would see that we were an island paradise in the vast cold void of space. The image of the earthrise communicated this perspective in a language that transcended cultural difference. As Bill Anders later shared with the space historian Andrew Chaikin, we had come all this way to study the Moon, and what we discovered was the Earth.

Everyone knows Neil Armstrong's famous words when he first set foot on the moon, but I had never heard the transcript of the astronauts on Apollo 8, on Christmas Eve (broadcast around the world), just before they lost communication with earth while passing behind the moon. They took turns quoting the first 10 verses of the Bible, Genesis 1:10.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good history of the Apollo space program with details going back to the beginnings of rocket science with Robert Goddard, Tsiolkovsky and Wehrner Von Braun and including the Mercury and Gemini programs.


There is information about each Apollo mission, with lots of detail on the planning and engineering that went into creating and assembling the Saturn V and scouting landing locations. There are a wealth of great photographs and a map of all of the Apollo landing sites. I like how he points out the great scientific accomplishments of later Apollo missions (which I had been unaware of) and how they were shortchanged by the media and Nixon, whose mutual disinterest the author blames in Apollo's early termination. I was also surprised how critical he was of NASA itself in later years, particularly of the space shuttle program which he points out could only achieve low earth orbit-lower than even Gemini flew-couldn't handle as large a payload and was prohibitively costly. This book made me sad that it's been so long since we've sent manned missions out of our own orbit and really appreciate the achievement the moon landings were.

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful illustrated history of the entire Apollo program including the missions, astronauts, and scientists and personalities who made it happen. There is some striking photography in this book, as well as a great gatefold of the Saturn V rocket (which Jeff Bezos just excavated from the Atlantic Ocean a few weeks ago).

If you are a space fan or are simply looking for a beautiful book on American history, I highly recommend this title!