Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings – The Forgotten History of Daring Exploration and Human Genius

by Earl Swift

"Earl Swift lays out this great unsung saga with verve and magisterial sweep." —Hampton Sides

In this "brilliantly observed" (Newsweek) rediscovery of the final Apollo moon landings, the acclaimed author of Chesapeake Requiem reveals that these extraordinary yet overshadowed missions—distinguished by the use of the revolutionary lunar roving vehicle—deserve to be celebrated as the pinnacle of human adventure and exploration.

8:36 P.M. EST, December 12, 1972: Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt braked to a stop alongside Nansen Crater, keenly aware that they were far, far from home. They had flown nearly a quarter-million miles to the man in the moon's left eye, landed at its edge, and then driven five miles in to this desolate, boulder-strewn landscape. As they gathered samples, they strode at the outermost edge of mankind's travels. This place, this moment, marked the extreme of exploration for a species born to wander.

A few feet away sat the machine that made the achievement an electric go-cart that folded like a business letter, weighed less than eighty pounds in the moon's reduced gravity, and muscled its way up mountains, around craters, and over undulating plains on America's last three ventures to the lunar surface.

In the decades since, the exploits of the astronauts on those final expeditions have dimmed in the shadow cast by the first moon landing. But Apollo 11 was but a prelude to what came while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin trod a sliver of flat lunar desert smaller than a football field, Apollos 15, 16, and 17 each commanded a mountainous area the size of Manhattan. All told, their crews traveled fifty-six miles, and brought deep science and a far more swashbuckling style of exploration to the moon. And they triumphed for one very American they drove.

In this fast-moving history of the rover and the adventures it ignited, Earl Swift puts the reader alongside the men who dreamed of driving on the moon and designed and built the vehicle, troubleshot its flaws, and drove it on the moon's surface. Finally shining a deserved spotlight on these overlooked characters and the missions they created, Across the Airless Wilds is a celebration of human genius, perseverance, and daring.

Genres: History, Science, Nonfiction, Space, Astronomy, Audiobook, American History

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 6, 2021

About the author

Longtime journalist Earl Swift is the author of the forthcoming ACROSS THE AIRLESS WILDS: THE LUNAR ROVER AND THE TRIUMPH OF THE FINAL MOON LANDINGS, due from HarperCollins in July 2021.

He is also the author of seven other books, among them the New York Times best seller CHESAPEAKE REQUIEM (HarperCollins, 2018), the story of an island town threatened with extinction by the very water that has sustained it for 240 years; AUTO BIOGRAPHY (HarperCollins, 2014), a narrative journey through postwar America told through a single old car and the fourteen people who've owned it; THE BIG ROADS (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), an armchair history of the U.S. highway system and its effects, physical and cultural, on the nation it binds; JOURNEY ON THE JAMES (University of Virginia Press, 2001), about a great American river and the largely untold history that has unfolded in and around it; WHERE THEY LAY (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), for which he accompanied an Army archaeological team into the jungles of Laos in search of a helicopter crew shot down thirty years before; and a 2007 collection of his stories, THE TANGIERMAN'S LAMENT (UVa Press). He also co-authored, with Macon Brock, ONE BUCK AT A TIME (Beachnut/John F. Blair, 2017), an insider's account of Dollar Tree's rise from loopy idea to retail juggernaut.

Since 2012 he's been a fellow of Virginia Humanities at the University of Virginia. He lives in the Blue Ridge mountains west of Charlottesville.

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

"[In 1957], it seemed plain that lunar voyaging was only a matter of time. And once on the moon's surface, American explorers would not be content to walk everywhere. They'd want to drive." -- page 52

Across the Airless Wilds tackles, I think, one of the more obscure or offbeat ideas for a non-fiction based text - the brief history of the "moon buggy" (an informal nickname, via American journalists) or LRV (the Lunar Roving Vehicle, its actual moniker from NASA), that bare-bones two-occupant open-air coupe - constructed via the teaming of the major manufacturers Boeing and General Motors - which was used by several U.S. astronauts on the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 moon exploration missions between 1971 and 1972. Author Swift starts out strong by providing biographical excerpts on the various visionaries - an eclectic group of executives, researchers, and technicians with diverse backgrounds and some interesting personal histories - who brought the LRV into existence. The book then gets a bit dry during the bidding, manufacturing, and ballooning expense portion in the middle - although the author makes a good point that this vehicle was really needed, as the early missions were somewhat hampered by the severely limited distances the astronauts could travel on foot in their bulky protective suits - but comes roaring back with some detailed retellings of those three missions in which the LRVs were used with great success. Probably my favorite moment was the focus on Apollo 16, in which astronauts John Young and Charlie Duke (two military gentleman who both happened to be native Southerners) put the LRV through its paces like they were hot-rodding on country backroads with a trunkful of moonshine. God Bless America, indeed! ;-)

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

”But fact is, the greatest achievements of our lunar adventure came later, when the world was no longer hanging on every word the moon-walkers spoke or following every step they took, on missions that are recalled dimly today. In fact, you could argue that every earlier American venture into space was preparation for the last three trips to the moon.”

Great book about the creation and use of the lunar rover on the moon. I was worried that the book might be too technical after reading some of the reviews, but while it is definitely a deep dive into the engineering side of the space program, it was also very accessible and very well-told.

Swift does a great job of setting up all the difficulties of trying to engineer a space car (1/5th gravity, unknown soil composition, driving inside a space suit, extreme temperatures) and then puts you along side the engineers as they work everything out.

There is a lot of great space program history here as well, told from a different angle than you usually see it. In The Right Stuff you get the history of the space program told through pilots and personalities. Here you get the history of the program told through supply chains and government contracts. And it was just as fascinating to me.

Some notes:
- We talk now about how nobody cares about the moon anymore. And it’s true, but it’s not a new problem. Almost as soon as the Apollo 11 astronauts left the moon the Apollo missions became blasé. Funding started to dry up before the first rovers could even be built. Space cars that should have been given their own flights to the moon on their own special rocket ended up having to be designed in a way that they could be folded up under the leg of the lunar module. It ended up being a little go-kart instead of a car, but that made it’s accomplishments even more amazing once they actually got to the moon.
- The Apollo missions were all geology missions first and foremost, but that only took place because they had to pick one field of science to focus the time and resources on and geology won out. But there were many who thought the missions should have been used to study the earth itself from a different viewpoint. Instead of sending geologists (and training pilots to be geologists) we would have sent astronomers and physicists.
- Buzz Aldrin and Neal Armstrong almost ended the rover project before it really even got a chance to start. They came back from Apollo 11 and said it wouldn't work. All the engineers and experts in terramechanics who had spent decades on the idea thought it definitely would work, but in late 1969 there were only two real moon experts. And they had a lot of clout.
- First part of this book has a great mini-biography of Wernher von Braun.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astounding History Of An Oft-Forgotten Era. One point Swift makes in this text is clear even in my own experience - *even as someone who has been to the NASA Cape Canaveral Visitor Center many times*: The era of Apollo after 11 and in particular after 13 is often forgotten in the zeitgeist. People talk about Armstrong and Aldrin all the time. People even talk about Lovell and Mattingly in Apollo 13 a fair amount (helped somewhat by the excellent and mostly realistic Tom Hanks movie and the fact that to this day, NASA sells quite a bit of "Failure Is Not An Option" merchandise).

But after that particular era is when the "real" lunar science began. And for that, NASA needed another tool that got a fair amount of (slightly inaccurate) press back in the day, but whose story has never been quite so thoroughly documented as this particular effort by Swift. That tool was the lunar rover, aka the "moon buggy", and here Swift does an extremely thorough job of documenting the first inklings of an idea that it may be possible through the early history of American rocketry (while not hiding one iota from its roots in Nazi experimentation) through the conceptualization and manufacturing of the actual rover and even into its impacts on modern rover design, such as the newest Mars rover, Perseverance.

The book does get in the weeds a bit with the technical designs and what exactly went into each, along with the various conceptual and manufacturing challenges of each. Similar to how Tom Clancy was also known to get so in the weeds about certain particulars from time to time, so Swift is in good company there.

But ultimately, this is an extremely well researched and documented book that does a simply amazing job of really putting you right there as all of these events unfold, all the way to feeling the very dirt and grit the final men to walk on the moon experienced when they had certain cosmetic failures on the buggy... millions of miles away from being able to really do anything about it. Truly an excellent work that anyone remotely interested in humanity's efforts to reach outide of our own atmosphere should read. Very much recommended.

[Pop Bop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Just, Wow!

The Lunar Rover didn't get to the Moon until Apollo 15. By then people were jaded enough about Moon landings that there hadn't been much mission coverage in the popular press; certainly nothing like the coverage of the first landing. But the Apollo 11 landing was really just the prelude to what would be the exciting and productive later landings. The real science was done on the last three Apollo missions. While the Apollo 11 astronauts wandered over an area considerably less than the size of a football field, the last Apollo mission astronauts actually explored the Moon, with the indispensable aid of the Lunar Rover. This book introduces the Rover, from conception to birth, and then takes you along with those explorers.

The first third or so of the book gives you a good recap of NASA's entire manned spaceflight program, starting with Werner von Braun. Starting that far back wasn't strictly necessary for the purpose of telling the Rover story, but no harm done; it's still interesting. We conclude that section with a fairly crisp and concise outline of the engineering challenges that would be faced by the Rover dreamers and then the Rover designers. The second third of the book covers way more about the details, setbacks, and complications of the actual development and fabrication and delivery of the Rover than you'll ever need to know, unless you are a special fan of Grumman, Boeing, Bendix, and GM, or of government procurement contracts, or of the project managers who toiled on the lunar project. I have to admit to skimming a bit here, although there are interesting nuggets to be found.

In any event it's worth it because the last third of the book is the big payoff. It takes you day by day, and almost hour by hour, through the final three Apollo missions. You ride the Rover, skip around craters, pick up samples, and get a true, authentic feeling for what the astronauts actually did on the Moon. You get to slip and slide and fishtail, and to huff and puff your way up and down crater rims and across pockmarked plateaus in search of shiny objects. On the Moon. Much of the tale is told with direct quotes from the astronauts drawn from Mission Control records, so you get a true, admittedly punched up, sense of "you are there!".

All of this is presented in an engaging, congenial, and well paced style that is commanding but not intrusive; somehow the author manages to provide detail and deep information while sustaining a colorful narrative. Less than a textbook, but more than a fictionalized reimagining, this book hits the dead center sweet spot for popular science, and will get you looking back up at the Moon.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

[Susan Paxton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just as the common view of Egypt is informed by the popular belief that Egypt = the pyramids, King Tut, and Ramesses the Great (i.e. the Fourth Dynasty and the New Kingdom, a sliver of a vast sweep of history), so the common view of Apollo appears to consist of the Apollo 8 crew reading Genesis in lunar orbit, Neil and Buzz landing on the moon, and Tom Hanks saving the day aboard Apollo 13. Totally forgotten are the final three landings, the so-called "J missions" (each Apollo mission was assigned a letter denoting its type - for example A missions were the early unmanned flights of the Saturn V/CSM combination, B added the LM, still unmanned, G was Apollo 11, the H missions were Apollos 12-15, and the J missions were to feature extended exploration in both range and duration). The J missions carried a special addition to the lunar surface: a battery powered rover folded neatly into the side of the LM that, once deployed, would enable the astronauts to cover more territory with a lot less exhaustion. This book tells the remarkable story of the versatile Boeing/GM LRV.

Earl Swift does a great job not only telling the full story, from early thoughts about rovers to actual manufacturer proposals to the lunar missions, but he also brings out the great personalities who were involved, and describes it all in a clear and accessible fashion - not an easy task where technology is involved. I think the book drags a tiny bit during the actual manufacturing phase of the rover, but it picks up again with vivid descriptions of the three lunar explorations that utilized the rover vehicle.

The book is well organized, and is well illustrated with greyscale images in the body of the text and several pages of color plates. Anyone interested in the Apollo missions will enjoy this: I think this is the best book on the program since Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon, and that's high praise.

[C.H. Cobb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Presents the incredible challenge of developing the Lunar Rover amidst the constraints of time, budget, allowed weight, and the conditions of the lunar surface. Well written. Held my attention from start to finish.

As a postscript from someone who watched the entire Apollo program as a young teen, I cannot believe it was 50 plus years ago!

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just when man landing on the moon was getting redundant, NASA introduced the Lunar Rover. It was the Rover that made exploration and science possible, but getting it there wasn’t easy. The first third of the book looks at the evolution of designing a lunar vehicle before it was ever a tangible prospect. We’re introduced to all the engineers that dreamed of how a vehicle would operate on the moon’s surface.

The second part of the book details the actual development of the winning concept in a very short amount of time. The deadline NASA set to get the Rover on Apollo 15 was one of the tightest they ever set for themselves (and Boeng, the contractor and GM the subcontractor). “In retrospect, the frenzied nature of the rover’s creation, and the hassles that NASA and its partners ran up against during those hectic months, serve only to underline the remarkable nature of the achievement.”

We see the Rover in action in the final third and how the astronauts performed on it. Without it, they would never have gotten such a huge variety of samples to bring back to Earth. I would have liked to see a segment detailing some of the discoveries made from the samples obtained, but I guess that would take another book. This last section of exploration was certainly the most fun and fascinating.

To build such a complex machine involves lots of mechanical design, and I’m certainly no engineer, but I can appreciate the efforts of the men who achieved it. “Including the price of development, each of those fifty-six miles,” driven on the moon by three Rovers, “cost something in the neighborhood of $680,000, or well over $4 million in today’s money.” Now I understand why the final three Apollo missions were so significant.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly interesting. I hadn't appreciated the importance of the lunar rover to moon exploration. And small details of the rover, such as its fender, turned out to be critical! I only wish that Swift had gone more into some of the technical details. (The notes at the end do have a few gems, though.)

> the Sunset Crater area seemed an ideal lunar analog, and Cinder Lake especially so. Or it would be, with some modification. In July 1967 USGS crews dug forty-seven holes in the field, stuffed them with dynamite and fertilizer, and blew them into craters ranging from five feet to forty-three feet in diameter. When the dust and cinders settled, the holes were a match in size and placement for those on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility—a very specific area, five hundred feet square, that the Survey itself had recommended for the first Apollo landing. Three months later, the team added ninety-six craters to the original forty-seven, expanding the field to eight hundred feet on a side.

> “One of the main lessons we learned here, just as a practical thing, was that when you look at a picture taken from overhead, you see all the craters on the moon,” Kestay said. “They’re just obvious.” He raised his voice over the sound of our crunching. “When you’re walking on the surface, you don’t see them.”

> we passed a bright white rock resting on top of the cinders, then another chunk of light-colored stone that seemed out of place. “Sandstone,” Kestay said. “This particular patch was used as a final test of the astronauts’ geological understanding. The scientists seeded it with all sorts of rocks that put together a story that the astronauts were supposed to sort out, to figure out what was going on.”

> The Survey built a third field an hour south of Flagstaff in February 1970, after it became clear that snow and northern Arizona’s winter cold rendered these first two unusable for several months a year. Again using dynamite, it blasted 362 overlapping craters into thirty-five acres of desert hardpan. Later in the year, fourteen new craters were added. Black Canyon, as the training ground was known, has disappeared without a trace. A subdivision occupies the spot today.

> Science had been a stated aim of the lunar program from the start, but no one science had been identified as its focus. “You had astronomers and physicists who thought it would be great to be able to make observations from up there,” Kestay said. “Shoemaker said, ‘No. We’re doing geology.’ And there are places in history where a single individual’s force of will tips things.”

> It was nowhere near NASA’s 400-pound target for both rover and SSE, however. In fact, it missed it by nearly 25 percent—LRV-1 alone weighed just over 464 pounds, and its deployment gear another thirty. The excess would, by Houston’s reckoning, cost the lunar module nearly ten seconds of hover

> The rover’s instrument display included a hinged, triangular “sun shadow device,” essentially a sundial that, once unfolded, threw a needle-thin, precise shadow onto a graph etched into the panel’s face. Scott parked the rover so that it faced down-sun, and this reading gave Houston the information it needed to “zero in” the LRV’s navigation. Or most of it: The sun shadow device’s accuracy depended on the rover being perfectly level. A slight tilt to the right or left, or nose- or tail-high, threw off the angle of the sun to the sundial. So, attached to the console’s left side was a two-way gauge that displayed the rover’s angles of roll and pitch.

> They were close to Hadley Base when Scott spied a chunk of black basalt sitting by itself on the light gray plain, so seemingly out of place that it brought to mind the rocks the Geological Survey had seeded among the craters at Cinder Lake. He wanted that rock—but knew that if he asked for permission to stop, Allen would turn him down: Mission Control wanted them back to set up the remote ALSEP array, which would take hours. Instead, he pretended he was having trouble with his seat belt. “Okay, we’re stopping,” Irwin said—then, catching on to his partner’s ruse, launched into a monologue about the small craters and rocks around them. Scott was back quickly. The rock would become known as the “seat belt basalt.”

> In the weeks after the mission, the Marshall Center obsessed over the rover’s minor failures—in particular, the front steering glitch during the first EVA. … They never pinned it down. Houston, not quite so obsessive, blamed “MEF,” or mysterious evil forces.

> Scott and Irwin spent eighteen hours and thirty-five minutes outside—impossible without the rover. They drove for just over three hours, during which they covered 17.25 miles. At one point, they ranged 3.2 miles from their lander. They brought back 170.4 pounds of samples. Millions of Americans watched the rover in action, and the media covered Falcon’s three-day stay with gusto.

> For the second mission in a row, the LRV had lost half its steering for reasons unclear, only to have it return just as mysteriously.

> “We gave a wide berth to the rim of that crater, because if you fell in, you wouldn’t be able to get back out,” Duke recalled. “You get down in a crater like that, and it sloughs. You can’t get traction. The angle of repose is such that if you try walking out, you keep sliding backward. We had to be very careful, because we had no rescue.”

> As he was moving around the rover, Young passed too close to the right rear wheel, and either his suit or a hammer jutting from his shin pocket snagged the fender. With a spray of dust, its sliding extension snapped off. “There goes the fender,” he said. On the drive to Station 9, neither astronaut mentioned the effects of the missing piece, but they were pronounced. Without that few inches of fiberglass, the right rear wheel flung a steady arc of dirt over the rover and its passengers

> mission commander Eugene Cernan would walk too close to the right rear wheel with a hammer sticking out of his shin pocket. And that a moment later he’d groan, “Oh, you won’t believe it.” It was a near-exact duplication of John Young’s misstep, only worse: Cernan had been out of the Challenger for only an hour and forty-one minutes; he and his lunar module pilot, Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, had barely started their mission.

> It was when they dusted themselves off before reentering the lander that the full impact of the fender’s loss came home to them. Their suits were filthy. Dust filled their pockets, sweatered their backpacks, and had insinuated itself into the complex aluminum rings locking their gloves and helmets into place. Those rings could take only so much dust before they started seizing. And the stuff was both abrasive and so fine that it smeared: wiping it from their helmet visors scratched the delicate coatings, which threatened to play hell with visibility. Worst of all, it was only a matter of time before the rover’s dust-covered electronics melted down.

> They were to take four laminated pages from their Geological Survey map package, and duct tape them into a single sheet measuring fifteen by ten and a half inches. Then they were to scavenge the clamps from the lunar module’s pair of hang-anywhere task lights, and use those to pin the maps to the fender. … Gene Cernan’s replacement fender for LRV-3, designed overnight by a team in Houston. Fashioned from Geological Survey maps, duct tape, and clamps, it wasn’t much to look at—but it worked

> “The LRV was not a huge technical challenge. It was a timetable challenge. Every day, something would come up that threatened to make the schedule slip. “But you had a lot of people on this thing, all trying to get it done in seventeen months. And it all came together.”

> I’ll admit that it took me awhile to “get” the harmonic drive, and I hope I’ve walked you through it effectively. If I’ve fallen short, I suggest you look up the Wikipedia page on “Strain wave gearing,” where you’ll find a simple GIF that puts the device in motion—and once you see that, it might make more sense.

> Morea told me several times that he was concerned from the start that Boeing’s bid undershot the project’s actual expenses. The “Cost Chronology” indicates how concerned he was: it says that his office tried to keep $40 million as the project’s cost in its budgetary docs but was told by headquarters it couldn’t do that. Instead, in December 1969 it submitted a program operating plan estimate, or POP, of $32.2 million for the LRVs, which “represented a genuine concern for a probable cost escalation ... in the neighborhood of 50 to 60 percent of the prime contractor estimates.”

[Alisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Thank you Netgalley for the ARC.]

I was drawn in by the cover (I love anything that has to do with space/lunar exploration), and by the book’s dreamy and poetic title. I soon realized that Across the Airless Wilds is much more substantial than that. Swift made me appreciate the tireless effort, long endeavor, and ambition of the thousands of people who made the initial moon landing – and subsequent explorations – possible. So many minds went into developing the lunar rovers even before anyone had any concrete knowledge of the moon’s surface. Yet, through trial, error, many failures, budget cuts, and years of development, the dream of making it to the moon was never abandoned (thanks in large part to the space race!).

The author clearly did a great deal of careful research, including conducting interviews with some of the key figures of the space age. I learned a lot: one fact that unsettled me was how much NASA/moon exploration owed to the Nazi rocket engineers. Though their rockets (when aimed at cities) led to devastation and great losses of life, they also made it possible for the United States to beat the Soviets to the moon.

Swift goes into great detail about the manufacture and development of the moon rovers. I never knew that there is a crater field in Arizona which was created to help astronauts navigate the lunar surface (road trip time?!). Though I felt that some of the chapters were bogged down in technical detail at times, I also saw the necessity of showing how much work and care went into the moon rovers. I truly enjoyed the chapters that detailed the astronauts’ exploration of the lunar surface; the author made it seem as though I were plodding through the lunar dust beside them.

I finished this book at a significant time. A week from now (2/18/21), the Mars rover Perseverance will be touching down on the Martian surface. I know that this would not have been possible without the decades of scientific achievement that had gone into the execution of the lunar missions. I felt a little melancholy thinking that, though NASA missions have broadened their horizons so much since the 60s, we have not been back to the moon since those final rover explorations. Someday soon, I hope, we’ll be back for more visits.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Across the Airless Wilds has to be the definitive account of the development and use of the lunar rover on the later Apollo missions. It's an aspect of the moon missions that is overshadowed by the famous first landing and the near-disaster of Apollo 13. Swift makes the argument that the rover was critical in expanding the exploration possible on later missions from a few steps to miles.

The first third of Across the Airless Wilds focuses on the Apollo program and its major figures generally. The second part is about the design of, procurement and construction of the rover, and the final section exhaustively describes its use on several moon landings.

This book is very heavy on the technology and engineering, explaining every component of what was really a very flimsy vehicle. It also describes every design proposed by various companies and the procurement process in great detail. This was a lot more than I was interested in, and as I listened to the audio version, I likely would have been aided in comprehension by seeing the designs that I assume were depicted in the print version.

[Gary Schroeder · Rating 4 out of 5]

In tales of the Apollo project, the Lunar Roving Vehicle is often an afterthought. The vehicle itself is not nearly as sexy as the Saturn rockets or Apollo spacecraft, but as a tool for the later explorations of the moon, it was no less important. In fact, without the "moon buggy", the scientific return of Apollo would have been greatly diminished. Eric Swift does a good job filling in one of the last missing gaps in the histories of Apollo that have been written in the last 30 years or so with his entertaining "Across the Airless Wilds."

Important as this book is (and as interesting as certain parts of the rover's development are), it's slightly less fertile territory for a book than some of the other topics mentioned above. Swift covers a few of the personalities behind early thoughts on the mechanics of the lunar soil and how best to propel a crewed vehicle across it, along with early designs for a rover. (Should it be on tracks? On balloon wheels? A giant propulsive screw?) What's missing is drama. Not every historical tale is filled with drama and certainly, an author can't manufacture it. The story simply is what it is. So, to fill in, Swift relates quite a bit of information on the details of contract enforcement, cost overruns, and other themes of accountancy between the U.S. government via NASA and the contractors tasked with building the rover.

Despite some chapters populated with less-than-thrilling details of this type, you'll come away with a greater appreciation for the extreme challenges of building a vehicle that had to work flawlessly in an unforgiving environment, fit within the tight confines of the lunar module, and weigh ridiculously little while doing it.

[Jon Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have had a life-long interest in the US manned and unmanned space program and have read any number of books over the years about Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, the shuttles, the ISS, and various space probes and landers. So the appearance of this book, which is focused on the "moon buggies" of the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions, was a welcome happenstance. Earl Swift does a masterful job of capturing the tortured development of these vehicles and the colorful personalities of their designers. NASA studied various concepts for lunar surface mobility and exploration from the very beginning of the space age, but most were associated with the "pie-in-the-sky" ideas of establishing manned, semi-permanent lunar bases that would require the equivalent of lunar pickup trucks for hauling cargo and astronauts from place to place. By the time Apollo 11 returned triumphantly to Earth, it was clear that there weren't going to be lunar bases and space trucks. I was surprised to learn that there were initially no plans for the Apollo landers to be equipped with rovers - but when later missions (Apollo 18 through 20) were cancelled, the rovers were developed as a "crash" program to wring as much exploration and scientific value as possible from the last Apollo missions flown. Swift gives a detailed accounting of the design process for these amazingly versatile machines, and a thrilling account of their use on the moon. These moon cars instantly transformed Apollo landings from "hop out and plant a flag" affairs to true missions of exploration and discovery that ranged for dozens of miles "across the airless wilds." I was completely fascinated by this fine book. Five out of five stars.

[Andrew Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Apollo book dedicated solely to the development and performance of the lunar rover (LRV) used on the later lunar missions. I have looked through various old Apollo documents about the LRV for my day job, and this book, which sources many LRV engineers still alive added some interesting details. While most people think of names such as Armstrong, Aldrin, or von Braun when it comes to Apollo, we are introduced to lesser known people who made the lunar rover famous. Like Polish immigrant M.G. Bekker, the father of the field of terramechanics. Or Hungarian-born Ferenc Pavlics, who developed the famous rover wire mesh wheels.

In addition to the people, the development of competing rover designs and the final LRV bids was detailed in depth. It was very interesting seeing how the cost plus contract structure, thought to offer the proper incentives for projects with hard-to-estimate costs, was found to be very problematic.

There's also plenty of detail of the operation of the rovers on their three missions. As someone who has read some of the transcripts from these missions, there might have been some editing done to the promote the positive attributes of the LRV and not some of the stability issues that were discovered. Still, a great mix of technical details and narrative.

[❆ Ash ❆ (fable link in bio) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good book that goes over the history of the moon landings after 1969. It was interesting to see the breakdown and who were key players in the Apollo program.

“ᴀɴʏᴏɴᴇ ᴡʜᴏ ꜱᴛɪʟʟ ᴅᴏᴜʙᴛꜱ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴀꜱᴛʀᴏɴᴀᴜᴛꜱ ᴠɪꜱɪᴛᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏᴏɴ - ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴏꜱᴇ ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ ꜱᴛɪʟʟ ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴀᴍᴏɴɢ ᴜꜱ, ᴇᴠᴇɴ ᴀᴛ ᴛʜɪꜱ ʟᴀᴛᴇ ᴅᴀᴛᴇ -ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴏɴʟʏ ɢᴏ ᴏɴʟɪɴᴇ ᴛᴏ ꜰɪɴᴅ ᴏᴠᴇʀʜᴇᴀᴅ ᴘʜᴏᴛᴏꜱ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀɴᴅɪɴɢ ꜱɪᴛᴇꜱ, ᴛᴀᴋᴇɴ ɪɴ 2011 ʙʏ ᴀ ʟᴜɴᴀʀ ᴏʀʙɪᴛᴇʀ. ɪɴ ꜱᴜʀᴘʀɪꜱɪɴɢ ᴅᴇᴛᴀɪʟ, ᴛʜᴇʏ ꜱʜᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛʜʀᴇᴇ ʀᴏᴠᴇʀꜱ ᴘᴀʀᴋᴇᴅ ɴᴇᴀʀ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ʟᴀɴᴅᴇʀꜱ. ᴘʟᴀɪɴʟʏ ᴠɪꜱɪʙʟᴇ ᴀʟʟ ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇᴍ, ᴀɴᴅ ꜱᴛʀᴇᴛᴄʜɪɴɢ ꜰᴏʀ ᴍɪʟᴇꜱ ᴀᴄʀᴏꜱꜱ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴜɴᴀʀ ᴡᴀꜱᴛᴇꜱ, ᴀʀᴇ ᴛɪʀᴇ ᴛʀᴀᴄᴋꜱ.”

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very enjoyable book covering the history of NASA and the Apollo space program. The close up insight on the lunar rover conception, design and missions made for an excellent read. The included astronaut dialog along with maps and many images gives a better understanding of the risks so few people have experienced, and how important the rovers were to the final three landings. With the Artemis program under way, it's exciting to think about future footprints and rover tracks running alongside those historic Apollo EVAs.

[Gina G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great read! "Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings" was a fantastic overview of the development and use of the Lunar Rover. I enjoyed learning about the later Apollo Missions (15, 16, and 17), which I didn't know much about. I better appreciate the technology that got us to the moon and helped humans explore its surface. It makes me wonder how different things may have been if we had strayed. I anxiously await our return.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply put...excellent. If you have made it this far, you are obviously a space geek/hipster and are very much into the space program and the Apollo program specifically. Do yourself a favor and read this book. The author has taken what could be a very dry topic and made it extremely engaging. The author has an excellent writing style and intersperses the book with suspense, drama, and humor.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding and absorbing history of the lunar rover used during the last three Apollo moon landings in 1971 and 1972, presenting the story from concept through design proposals, engineering, delivery and on to its successful use on the moon. Great read for space exploration fans, as it provides a detailed look at what at first seemed a sideshow to the moon landings, but was an essential tool that greatly enhanced the exploration and scientific achievements of the Apollo mission. Highly recommended!

[Ted Haussman]

Hess is a master narrative nonfiction storyteller. The original moon landing gets all of the attention, but this fascinating story tells of how the lunar rover was developed and deployed on the 3 final Apollo missions. The tracks left by those jaunts are still on the moon.

[John Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m always impressed at how much work went into the Apollo missions. There’s always another program that I haven’t heard about that did industry pioneering work to make those missions successful. Never gets old to learn about

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book focused on the science and engineering of the last moon landings using the rover. Interesting but I felt the book was much more for engineers and scientists.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Detailed and on point

You can really find out what building the rover took, in terms of research, development and testing, what kind of people were involved and, ultimately, how difficult it was too correctly assess the lunar surface and build a machine for it.
I enjoyed it a lot, and now that I've read it, i feel like I'm in the know regarding the LRV. It's like an extended museum trip, with a perfect guide and lots of time to muse about the lunar explorers...

[Jodie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one took me a while to finish. I was so happy to know that someone took the time to dig into the last missions to the moon because so many people stopped paying attention after 1969 and so many incredible things were discovered during the later missions. I love the space program and books on NASA, but to be honest, this one had spots that dragged for me. I would have liked more on the last moon landings and a little less on the construction specs on the rover. It was all well documented in the book, but parts of it were a little dry for me. There is so much that happened in those last moon landings that the book could have focused more on them and a bit less on the designing of the rover itself. Glad someone took the time to put this all together though.

[LeeAnn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was instantly drawn in by Swift's beginning at The US Space & Rocket Center. One of my favorite places to visit is the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, KS: a museum not unlike the one Swift visits at the start of this book.

This book reads like a nostalgic travelogue. Each chapter is a new stop along a journey that leads to the moon and back again. (Swift's style, in fact, reminds me of Tolkien. Aren't we all on a journey?)

Part of why I am so glad I got to read this ARC is my daughter's love of space. Though she is now 20, and a dancer/choreographer, her dreams of space - the moon and Mars - permeates her sense of adventure in every step of her journey. Oh that all of us should be so enamored of the adventure!

Did you watch the Pixar movie Up? This book gives me the same feeling! "Adventure is out there!"

This book is set to debut in July. Though the ending sections are full of future promise ground down by the devastation of 2020-2021, I believe that with hope, the future dreams and adventures of the US Space Program will continue.

For all who have grown up in the shadow of the moon, this book is for you.

[Robert Mckay · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the ways I can tell I'm getting older is by considering how many people I know weren't born the last time a human being set foot on the moon. I'm not old - only 61 - but almost everyone I know is too young to remember those events.

I watched the first landing, when Apollo 11 set down in the Sea of Tranquility. I heard, live, Neil Armstrong fumble a line he'd planned out, saying that it was "one small step for man" when he'd intended to say "one small step for a man." And I watched the lunar rover kicking up dust - dust that, in vacuum, fell immediately to the ground instead of hanging in the non-existent air.

I always thought the lunar rover was a neat piece of machinery. It was evident, even to me, and I was only nine when Apollo 11 reached the moon, that it was difficult to move in the pressure suits the astronauts wore. Their hopping across the moon might have been entertaining, but you could tell that the suits didn't bend easily. And the rover helped with that. Instead of the exhausting labor of moving themselves around, the astronauts could ride across the moon, going further and doing more than they ever could have without the vehicle.

What I hadn't known, until I read this book, was just how close to disaster the rover came. I suppose I ought to've expected it - the US government is famous for buying things at grossly inflated prices, and charging us for the stupidity in our taxes. But it wasn't just the money here, but really stupid decisions that gave production into the hands of theorists, with consequences that nearly derailed the program, and made it cost much more than it ought to've.

But there are also genius, and hard work, and dedication, and decades of desire to actually explore the moon, as opposed to just going there and then coming home. We still haven't fulfilled the lifelong dream of Werner von Braun of being true explorers and colonists in space - the dream that moved him to join the Nazi Party, and the SS, and countenance the use of slave labor because that helped him work toward that dream. We sent a few people to the moon, and that's it - every other human endeavor in space has been in earth orbit. We send machines to Mars, and Jupiter, and Pluto, and out of the solar system, but human beings remain here. Still, the lunar rover was an important tool in achieving what we have achieved, and the story's fascinating.

Earl Swift is a good writer, too, which is important. A good story with a mediocre writer comes out boring, while a good writer can take mundane events and make them interesting (which is what Ernest Hemingway did in his fiction). When a good writer tells a good story, it's well worth reading, and that's what we have here. The only quarrel I have with the book is a geographical error. He says that Amboy Crater in the Mojave Desert is close to Needles, California - when in fact they're 80 miles apart. And even in the desert, where I grew up thinking nothing of going 40 miles to school, 80 miles is not nearby. I guess Swift never actually traveled between Needles and the volcano, and just figured that if the nearest town to the east was Needles, they must be close.

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book!

I didn’t know about all the different companies who bid on the final lunar rover project, and on all the prototypes they had done over the years up to that point, including bigger split devices, like a semi with two bobtail-type trailers. Grumman, with its nautilus shell type wheel spokes, also interesting, and for making them from fiberglass and epoxy, not metal.

Nor was I aware of any of the names involved, other than von Braun, whether at NASA, such as Ferenc Pavlics, or the guy who had the soil engineering background mandating how traction would work, the Polish-Canadian-American Mieczyslaw Gregory Bekker.

Next? After Boeing/GM won the contract, NASA started cheating on it, and offloading weight from elsewhere on the Version 2.0 Lunar Module in general to the rover, a physics accounting cheat. It also, from Huntsville not HQ, started dumping other post-contract requests.

That said, all of this was against a backdrop of Congress continuing to slash NASA’s budget, which led to eliminations of missions, which forced it to speed up the timetable for a contract and construction of a rover if there was going to be one.

Finally, after many, many snafus, and Sonny Morea from Huntsville running roughshod on the Boeing and GM folks, there was one. The USGS, in a sidebar, constructed a “Grover” from an old vehicle it had, to give astronauts something to train on. Much of this was done near Sunset Crater in Arizona; other major portions along the Rio Grande Gorge in northern New Mexico. I’ve visited both places more than once, though was unaware of the fake moon field NASA created near Sunset Crater.

And, then, there WAS a rover. Finally.

And, three missions that showed every cost overrun on construction was more than worth it. The problems with lunar depth perception are illustrated by some of the photos.

Side note: I have a personal connection of sorts to this part of the tale. When I was a kid, I met Jack Schmitt. I still have an autographed business card of his and an Apollo 17 mission glossy.

In a nice epilogue, Swift talks about the robotic rovers NASA has put on Mars, and how they were inspired by some of the early designs inspired by Bekker, and as articulated by Grumman and Bendix on their lunar rover designs. From there, he talks about NASA plans past and present to contract with private agencies to put a robotic rover on the Moon, whether at the lunar South Pole or elsewhere.

As for Jack Schmitt’s words just before the epilogue? I would be surprised if there’s a man on the Moon before 2030. Going beyond him, I’d be hugely surprised if there’s a man on Mars before 2040. I think Musk, Bezos, et al will realize just how much that costs, even if they want to cut massive corners on crew safety that could either leave someone dying in mission or else dying years early from cancer due to interplanetary radiation. But, that’s another story.

[Katlyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m very conflicted on Across the Airless Wilds because I enjoyed the ending immensely, but the beginning was so incredibly dull. I think this is a book where I’m the problem and not the book itself. Keep in mind, if you’re reading this review, that I review based on my personal enjoyment. Additionally, I have no scientific or engineering background to go off of. I’m somewhat familiar with the Apollo missions from the wonderful book, A Man on the Moon, and I was hoping this would be in a similar vein. Alas, it was a tale of engineering specs and bureaucracy. While I do find the rovers interesting, hearing about every single design change and the constant back and forth between Boeing and NASA was a bit much. I understand the process was drawn out and absurdly complicated, but it seems like every single detail was included. That may be a positive aspect of the book in the minds of some readers, but I’d personally rather hear about space travel than all the bureaucracy involved in making it happen.

Additionally, I listened to this book. The audiobook was well narrated, but it felt like it was missing some things. The incredibly detailed descriptions of tire treads and such may have been easy to picture for some people, but I was often completely lost. Obviously, the audiobook wasn’t able to provide diagrams as the physical version hopefully did. Lots of the time, I had no clue what the author was describing, and it kind of ruins the relaxing effect of the audiobook if you’re constantly having to Google pictures just to follow along. I didn’t, which meant I was basically always confused. I just looked up a picture and was surprised by how simply they looked after how complex all the descriptions were! The photos still gave me that tingly sense of joy that I feel when seeing images of Space, but I digress. The book did excel after the astronauts made it to the moon, which makes me think maybe I just didn’t enjoy the excessive amounts of detail involved in making the rovers themselves. I loved hearing about them cruising around the moon and collecting rocks. It was honestly fascinating and was able to save the book for me. I also enjoyed the ending, which was hopeful for future space exploration. In conclusion, basically if you’re an engineer or someone super interested in the moon rovers, I would totally recommend this book. If you’re casually interested in the Apollo program, I wouldn’t start with it. 3/5 October 26 2022

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Earl Swift has written an engaging history of the Apollo Lunar Rover and successfully argued that it was one of the most essential elements in making the last moon landings worthwhile endeavors. Neil Armstrong only voyaged about 65 yards away from his Lunar Module, but the crews of the last three moon missions (Apollo 15-17) voyaged a distance about equal to the size of Manhattan. Only then could astronauts travel about four and a half miles away from their lander, as Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt did during the last mission, and take a truly significant crack at deciphering the geologic history of the Moon. The reason these crews could do that was a vehicle containing wire mesh wheels that could cruise across the boulder strewn lunar surface at speeds of up to about 11 miles per hour. Swift recounts the evolution of the vehicle from early concepts in the 1950s and 1960s, through the effort that Boeing and General Motors made to solve myriad problems with the actual vehicle after winning the contract to build it in 1969, and then the effort that the astronauts made to solve problems with its operation and drive to craters and mountains in 1971 and 1972.

I am impressed with the effort Swift made to break new ground in the Apollo story, as he conducted interviews with several figures from NASA and General Motors I had not been familiar with and uncovered many documents that are today archived in Georgia and Texas. After reading it, I have a newfound sense of respect for the people from both government and industry (several of the most important ones foreign born, such as Greg Bekkers and Frank Pavlics) who navigated a daunting time crunch to develop the rover for the astronauts' use. The book leaves me wondering how the astronauts of the Artemis program will rove around the lunar surface later this decade, and how their means of mobility will draw on the lessons learned from Apollo. Any future explorers of the Moon will have this book to help them understand how the first effort succeeded.

[Matthew Kresal · Rating 5 out of 5]

When it comes to the Apollo missions, it's perhaps inevitable that a few get much of the fanfare. Apollo 8 was the first to reach the Moon at Christmas 1968, gifting us with the famous Earthrise photograph. Apollo 11 was the first to place a crew on the lunar surface. Then there's Apollo 13, "a successful failure" full of drama that famously made its way to the big screen in the form of Ron Howard's titular film. Yet the high-point of Apollo may well have come in its final three missions, 15-17, when the astronauts had a most remarkable tool at their disposal: the Lunar Rover Vehicle (LRV). This Rover is the focus of Earl Swift's Across the Airless Wilds, documenting just how this remarkable vehicle came to be an integral part of Apollo's final act fifty years ago.

Given the subject matter, it might be easy to think that this would be a dry and technical read. On the contrary, Swift's prose makes it a highly accessible read, focusing as much on the remarkable cast of characters as the technical side of the Rover. They include Wernher von Braun, who set NASA on the both toward a rover when he was promoting space flight in the 1950s, and the Polish-born M.G. "Greg" Bekker, whose work on vehicle mobility laid the groundwork for rovers not just on the Moon but today on Mars. There are also numerous engineers such as Sam Romano and Frank Pavlics, who conceived of literally folding the Rover onto the side of the spider-like Lunar Module, making the final vehicle possible. And, of course, there are the astronauts from Jerry Carr, who never went to the Moon but played a role as one of the astronauts involved with it, to Apollo 15 commander Dave Scott and Apollo 16's Charlie Duke. It can be easy to forget that the Apollo missions were made possible by thousands of people, something that Swift wonderfully brings to life, detailing not only their histories but encountering many of them in the present day.

One of the remarkable things to come out of reading Swift's book is how unlikely it was that the Rover ended up going to the Moon at all. Tracing its history back to the 1950s, the idea of something like a car roaming across the lunar landscape was much-discussed but little explored. Indeed, despite all of the discussion and various companies, including carmaker GM and Lunar Module contractor Grumman spending literally years and their own money looking at Rover concepts, the entire thing came together incredibly quickly. Swift explores how the Rover as we know it today, perhaps one of the most iconic vehicles ever built, went from ideas that included a literal lab on wheels to the four-wheeled open-top vehicle through trial, error, and budget issues. It's also, finally, the story of how they allowed Apollo to at last deliver on the promise of exploration, taking three groups of astronauts farther than any human being has gone before or since. It's a story that makes it all the more remarkable that there are three now sitting a quarter of a million miles away from where you're reading these words.

Whether you are interested in the space race or simply seeking a good non-fiction read, Across the Airless Wilds has something to offer. It's the story of how an unlikely idea came to become a reality, brought to life by a cast of characters, and expanded our knowledge of the Moon. One that highlights the power of ideas and ingenuity, making it possible to move across the airless wilds of the Moon and beyond.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd prefer to give this a 3.5, buy that's besides the point. This is not a book for the casual reader. This is a book for someone who has an abiding interest in space exploration and the Apollo missions (if I'm not being redundant). While rich in technical facts, it does not get completely bogged down in acronyms and such. In fact, Across the Airless Wilds reads more like an extended article you might find in Air & Space Smithsonian or maybe Popular Mechanics.

Deeply, and dare I say painstakingly researched, Across the Airless Wilds looks at the men whose careers led them not only to developing and driving the lunar rovers during Apollo missions 15-17, but also provides a basic primer of the U.S> space program's origins and growth. Swift took his work on the road, so to speak, interviewing people involved in the rover's development and visiting the places on Earth where different models were tested before contracts were awarded and the machine was approved for lunar missions.

Now remember when I said it didn't get completely bogged down in techspeak and jargon? That's true, but it did happen here and again. Not a huge issue, but it did slow down in spots. Further, while it's neat to have recordings of astronauts' conversations with ground control and each other, at times these direct quotes seem almost jammed in to add authenticity to the narrative when I thought the author could have done it better himself.In any event, I'm glad to have read it to add to my own knowledge of how these great missions were accomplished. If such things interest you, give it a go.