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Footprints in the Dust: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975
Following the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11 , as NASA prepares to return astronauts to the moon, Footprints in the Dust offers a thorough, engrossing, and multifaceted account of the Apollo missions.
The flight of Apollo 11 was a triumph of human endeavor, persistence, and technology, one of the greatest achievements in human history. This book begins with the mission that sent Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin to the moon, then follows American spaceflight through the harrowing rescue of Apollo 13 before moving on to the successful joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with key figures in the space program, the authors convey the human drama and chart the technological marvels that went into the Apollo missions. They also put the accomplishments of American spaceflight into historical context, examining the competitive space race with the Soviet Union, the roles of politics and personality in launching the mission, and the consequences, practical and profound, of this giant leap for mankind.
The flight of Apollo 11 was a triumph of human endeavor, persistence, and technology, one of the greatest achievements in human history. This book begins with the mission that sent Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin to the moon, then follows American spaceflight through the harrowing rescue of Apollo 13 before moving on to the successful joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with key figures in the space program, the authors convey the human drama and chart the technological marvels that went into the Apollo missions. They also put the accomplishments of American spaceflight into historical context, examining the competitive space race with the Soviet Union, the roles of politics and personality in launching the mission, and the consequences, practical and profound, of this giant leap for mankind.
520 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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August 19, 2019
As always, I am a day late and a few $$ short when it comes to most things. I had intended to have this review timed to the actual 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing on July 20, but as fate would have it I was still nose deep in the middle of The University of Nebraska’s excellent document of the Apollo missions, “Footprints in the Dust.” Published in 2010, “Foot prints in the Dust” is part of the tremendous “Outward Odyssey: A People’s History of Spaceflight” series.
As a HUGE proponent of scientific and technical education in the U.S., I’d like to commend The University of Nebraska Press for bringing this comprehensive history of space exploration to the public in the form of a MASSIVE collection of books that bring the humanity and history of the “space race” to life. The “Outward Odyssey” series is written for the layman yet maintains a serious tone and doesn’t dilute the science or talk down to its audience. To my knowledge it is the only book series to present a thorough history of international space exploration from the early days of rocketry all the way to the privatization of space travel. I cannot say enough good things about this series. I’m pretty much of the belief that every American home should own a complete set of these books, much like families in the middle portions of the 20th century always seemed to have a set of Encyclopedia Britannicas sitting around for easy reference. At the very least every public library should own a set.
https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/ser...
Each chapter of the book was written by a different author, and this give “Footprints……” a sort of anthology feel to it. It is also the least technical of any of the books that I have read in the series thus far. That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of hard science to be found in these pages, but it’s clear from the start that the focus is clearly upon the people involved in the Apollo program, along with the cultural and political impacts of the lunar landings as a whole. Astronaut Dick Gordon provides a short forward and there is also the full text of President John F. Kennedy’s famous “shoot for the moon” address at Rice University. Colin Burgess contributes a prologue that sets the tone and style of the chapters to come.
Chapter One - “The Whole World Was Watching” - by Rick Houston - Apollo 11 as seen by various viewpoints across the world. The part of this chapter that affected me the most was the story of fighter pilot Dick Stratton, a P.O.W. in custody of the North Koreans. When news of the moon landing reached he and his fellow prisoners during a radio broadcast by “Hanoi Hannah,” it was a huge boost in spirit. Stratton is quoted as saying……
“ You can well imagine what a tremendous boost it gave to our morale, what an exhilarating boost of national pride to our battered psyches, and what a great sense of comradeship we felt with our fellow aviators who accomplished such a feat. And the beauty was the (North Vietnamese) were too stupid to know that they had disclosed the “secret.” One for our side.”
Chapter Two - “The Eagle and the Bear” - by Dominic Phelan - The Soviet Union decided to not broadcast the images of Apollo 11 to its citizens, even though Alexi Leonov and other government elites saw the live feed at a secret monitoring center. Sergei Korolev’s death in 1966 had sown chaos within the Soviet space program, and further decentralized a system that was already spread out and in competition with itself to gain State recognition and influence. These factors likely doomed the Russians in their race to the moon, although their propaganda continued to tout their readiness and capabilities. There was going to have to a be a serious refocus in the Soviet space program now that they were no longer in competition for the ultimate prize in space exploration.
Chapter Three - “Rendezvous on the Ocean of Storms” - by John Youskauskas - Apollo 12 splahes down within walking distance of the unmanned lunar probe Surveyor 3, in and of itself a massive technological achievement. The mission was generally regarded as one of the most flawless and smooth Apollo landings, due in large part to the fact that all three members of the crew were Navy men and close friends outside of NASA hallways. Important experiment packages were deployed and the astronauts collected 75 pounds of lunar material to take back to Earth. Even so, the mission was perceived as a bit anticlimactic in the wake of Apollo 11.
Chapter Four - “Apollo 13, We Have a Solution" - by Stephen Cass - A brilliant chapter detailing the doomed Apollo 13 mission, where an oxygen tank blowout almost sealed the fate of the three astronauts on board. This is a tense and technically rich portion of the text. So many people on the ground….mission control specialists, vendors….all displayed great heart and a never-say-die attitude to getting this mission back to Earth safely. The section on the development of the hand-written instructions on how to power up the lunar module to use as a lifeboat are startling and full of bravado. Also heart-pounding are the details surrounding coming up with a protocol on the fly for maximizing the use of the wounded ship’s batteries, and then once again shutting DOWN the lunar module. One of the best chapters in a book full of great chapters.
Chapter Five - “Altered Directions” - by Colin Burgess - A chapter about the Soviet Union’s 1969 “troika” flight, designed to test docking procedures and test human longevity in space. By that time the Soviets knew that they were not going to be able to beat the Americans to the Moon, especially in the wake of Apollo 10’s spectacular fly-by that tested all systems and did everything BUT make a manned landing. The Soyuz 9 crew would indeed set a record for endurance in microgravity conditions, but several of the astronauts returned to Earth in very poor health, causing consternation and concern among the Soviet space planners.
Chapter Six - “Science, and a Little Golf” - by Philip Baker - Apollo 14 was the first of the moon landings that had an expressly science-focused agenda. Lunar geology was always one of the driving forces behind the moon landings, but Apollo 14 ratcheted up the science and mapping expectations to a new level. Apollo 14 would end up being immortalized by a more mundane act, however, as Alan Shepherd took time to pull out a golf club and get down to some driving action on the lunar surface, the first man to ever pay golf on another world. The crew would bring back almost a hundred pounds of lunar material and set a record for time spent outside of the lunar module at nine hours and twenty-four minutes.
Chapter Seven - “A Whole New Focus” - by Colin Burgess - Now that the race to the moon was over, the Soviet Union began to take a different path on future space exploration. Figuring that long-term occupation of space was the next logical step, the Russians took on the challenges of an orbiting space station. In April 1971, Salyut 1 was launched atop a Proton rocket and became the world’s first operational orbital space station. Soyuz 11 carried aloft the first crew to occupy the station in June 1971. The three cosmonauts on the mission had a successful occupation of the station, spending just short of 24 days in orbit. The mission would end in disaster when the crew failed to close the air vents located between the landing and orbital modules, causing decompression of the capsule and killing all three members of the crew. It was a horrible tragedy that would shake both the Soviet and U.S. space programs to the core.
Chapter Eight - “On a Roll at Hadley” - by Geoffrey Bowman - Apollo 15 was another of the science-oriented missions, and was the first to deploy the fascinating Lunar Rover. Basically a dune buggy developed specifically for wheeled mobility on the lunar surface, the rover would enable the astronauts to cover much more ground than they would otherwise have been able to. This mission was a geological gold mine that highlighted the importance of the high-level training that the astronauts had been given by various professional rock hounds back on Earth.
Chapter Nine - “Worth the Wait” - by Simon A. Vaughn - Apollo 16 seemed like a redux of Apollo 15, but on steroids. The astronauts collected over 200 pounds of rocks and lunar soil for analysis back on Earth, much of which still lies in storage today waiting to be worked through. The mission was plagued by technical issues, however, which caused it to be shortened by one day, and made for an adventurous and tense splash down.
Chapter Ten - “One More Time” - by Melvin Craft - Apollo 17 was turned into the swan song for the Apollo lunar landings after the cancellations of Apollo 18 and 19 and 20. This meant that there was a serious push to send along an actual scientist on Apollo 17. The choice was clear. NASA would choose Jack Schmitt, a geologist and pilot who was perfectly able to handle the lunar module pilot duties as well as being the chief science advisor aboard the mission. This ended up being a great decision, as Schmitt was able to take his expertise to new levels while on the lunar surface, and his work is still being analyzed for new details as I write this.
Chapter Eleven - “Beyond the Moon” - by Colin Burgess - A shorter chapter detailing the aftermath of the final lunar mission and the challenge to determine NASA’s direction going forward. The next step on the agenda was the Skylab project, since it could use much of the leftover hardware from the Apollo program. The entire history of the Skylab project is documented in another book in the “Outward Odyssey” series: “Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story.”
Chapter Twelve - “The Last Apollo” - by Geoffrey Bowman - The joint Apollo-Soyuz mission as seen through the experiences of Irish writer and space enthusiast Geoffrey Bowman. Bowman heads to Florida on a package tour to witness the final takeoff of an Apollo mission into orbit. The mission itself was anticlimactic, little more than a photo-op of a handshake in space between adversaries at a relatively warm moment in the Cold War. Bowman is full of fire and enthusiasm, though, and it comes through in his recollections of his journey. This is space obsession at its finest, and I found myself geeking out with Bowman as the chapter unfolds.
Epilogue - “Souvenirs of Small Steps” - by Robert Pearlman - Each of the twelve astronauts to set foot on the lunar surface is given a coda, an opportunity to reflect on their experiences having walked and lived on another world. A beautiful way to end the book.
“Footprints in the Dust” stands as a massive undertaking, an attempt to visualize the Apollo manned lunar landings from a more human perspective. It is virtually impossible to separate the men from the technology that took them to where no man has gone before, but in the end it is still with human eyes that we as a species looked out into the vast unknown vista of another planet. Reading this brought back some of the memories and excitement that I felt as a youngster, watching the moon landings on my little black & white television set and dreaming of a future full of exploration and excitement. I drank Tang every day. I ate those little astronaut-approved nutrition bars. I built the models and read the articles in the daily papers with rapt enthusiasm. And to this day I still get filled with hope that mankind as a species can once again capture that shared vision and ability to work cooperatively as we move on to the challenges that face us in our near future. And maybe that was the real payoff from the space program, the idea that we can be better versions of ourselves when we have a goal to shoot for, a horizon to conquer.
Stepping off of my soap box now. Get this book and read it. It’s important that you do so. ‘Nuff said.
As a HUGE proponent of scientific and technical education in the U.S., I’d like to commend The University of Nebraska Press for bringing this comprehensive history of space exploration to the public in the form of a MASSIVE collection of books that bring the humanity and history of the “space race” to life. The “Outward Odyssey” series is written for the layman yet maintains a serious tone and doesn’t dilute the science or talk down to its audience. To my knowledge it is the only book series to present a thorough history of international space exploration from the early days of rocketry all the way to the privatization of space travel. I cannot say enough good things about this series. I’m pretty much of the belief that every American home should own a complete set of these books, much like families in the middle portions of the 20th century always seemed to have a set of Encyclopedia Britannicas sitting around for easy reference. At the very least every public library should own a set.
https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/ser...
Each chapter of the book was written by a different author, and this give “Footprints……” a sort of anthology feel to it. It is also the least technical of any of the books that I have read in the series thus far. That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of hard science to be found in these pages, but it’s clear from the start that the focus is clearly upon the people involved in the Apollo program, along with the cultural and political impacts of the lunar landings as a whole. Astronaut Dick Gordon provides a short forward and there is also the full text of President John F. Kennedy’s famous “shoot for the moon” address at Rice University. Colin Burgess contributes a prologue that sets the tone and style of the chapters to come.
Chapter One - “The Whole World Was Watching” - by Rick Houston - Apollo 11 as seen by various viewpoints across the world. The part of this chapter that affected me the most was the story of fighter pilot Dick Stratton, a P.O.W. in custody of the North Koreans. When news of the moon landing reached he and his fellow prisoners during a radio broadcast by “Hanoi Hannah,” it was a huge boost in spirit. Stratton is quoted as saying……
“ You can well imagine what a tremendous boost it gave to our morale, what an exhilarating boost of national pride to our battered psyches, and what a great sense of comradeship we felt with our fellow aviators who accomplished such a feat. And the beauty was the (North Vietnamese) were too stupid to know that they had disclosed the “secret.” One for our side.”
Chapter Two - “The Eagle and the Bear” - by Dominic Phelan - The Soviet Union decided to not broadcast the images of Apollo 11 to its citizens, even though Alexi Leonov and other government elites saw the live feed at a secret monitoring center. Sergei Korolev’s death in 1966 had sown chaos within the Soviet space program, and further decentralized a system that was already spread out and in competition with itself to gain State recognition and influence. These factors likely doomed the Russians in their race to the moon, although their propaganda continued to tout their readiness and capabilities. There was going to have to a be a serious refocus in the Soviet space program now that they were no longer in competition for the ultimate prize in space exploration.
Chapter Three - “Rendezvous on the Ocean of Storms” - by John Youskauskas - Apollo 12 splahes down within walking distance of the unmanned lunar probe Surveyor 3, in and of itself a massive technological achievement. The mission was generally regarded as one of the most flawless and smooth Apollo landings, due in large part to the fact that all three members of the crew were Navy men and close friends outside of NASA hallways. Important experiment packages were deployed and the astronauts collected 75 pounds of lunar material to take back to Earth. Even so, the mission was perceived as a bit anticlimactic in the wake of Apollo 11.
Chapter Four - “Apollo 13, We Have a Solution" - by Stephen Cass - A brilliant chapter detailing the doomed Apollo 13 mission, where an oxygen tank blowout almost sealed the fate of the three astronauts on board. This is a tense and technically rich portion of the text. So many people on the ground….mission control specialists, vendors….all displayed great heart and a never-say-die attitude to getting this mission back to Earth safely. The section on the development of the hand-written instructions on how to power up the lunar module to use as a lifeboat are startling and full of bravado. Also heart-pounding are the details surrounding coming up with a protocol on the fly for maximizing the use of the wounded ship’s batteries, and then once again shutting DOWN the lunar module. One of the best chapters in a book full of great chapters.
Chapter Five - “Altered Directions” - by Colin Burgess - A chapter about the Soviet Union’s 1969 “troika” flight, designed to test docking procedures and test human longevity in space. By that time the Soviets knew that they were not going to be able to beat the Americans to the Moon, especially in the wake of Apollo 10’s spectacular fly-by that tested all systems and did everything BUT make a manned landing. The Soyuz 9 crew would indeed set a record for endurance in microgravity conditions, but several of the astronauts returned to Earth in very poor health, causing consternation and concern among the Soviet space planners.
Chapter Six - “Science, and a Little Golf” - by Philip Baker - Apollo 14 was the first of the moon landings that had an expressly science-focused agenda. Lunar geology was always one of the driving forces behind the moon landings, but Apollo 14 ratcheted up the science and mapping expectations to a new level. Apollo 14 would end up being immortalized by a more mundane act, however, as Alan Shepherd took time to pull out a golf club and get down to some driving action on the lunar surface, the first man to ever pay golf on another world. The crew would bring back almost a hundred pounds of lunar material and set a record for time spent outside of the lunar module at nine hours and twenty-four minutes.
Chapter Seven - “A Whole New Focus” - by Colin Burgess - Now that the race to the moon was over, the Soviet Union began to take a different path on future space exploration. Figuring that long-term occupation of space was the next logical step, the Russians took on the challenges of an orbiting space station. In April 1971, Salyut 1 was launched atop a Proton rocket and became the world’s first operational orbital space station. Soyuz 11 carried aloft the first crew to occupy the station in June 1971. The three cosmonauts on the mission had a successful occupation of the station, spending just short of 24 days in orbit. The mission would end in disaster when the crew failed to close the air vents located between the landing and orbital modules, causing decompression of the capsule and killing all three members of the crew. It was a horrible tragedy that would shake both the Soviet and U.S. space programs to the core.
Chapter Eight - “On a Roll at Hadley” - by Geoffrey Bowman - Apollo 15 was another of the science-oriented missions, and was the first to deploy the fascinating Lunar Rover. Basically a dune buggy developed specifically for wheeled mobility on the lunar surface, the rover would enable the astronauts to cover much more ground than they would otherwise have been able to. This mission was a geological gold mine that highlighted the importance of the high-level training that the astronauts had been given by various professional rock hounds back on Earth.
Chapter Nine - “Worth the Wait” - by Simon A. Vaughn - Apollo 16 seemed like a redux of Apollo 15, but on steroids. The astronauts collected over 200 pounds of rocks and lunar soil for analysis back on Earth, much of which still lies in storage today waiting to be worked through. The mission was plagued by technical issues, however, which caused it to be shortened by one day, and made for an adventurous and tense splash down.
Chapter Ten - “One More Time” - by Melvin Craft - Apollo 17 was turned into the swan song for the Apollo lunar landings after the cancellations of Apollo 18 and 19 and 20. This meant that there was a serious push to send along an actual scientist on Apollo 17. The choice was clear. NASA would choose Jack Schmitt, a geologist and pilot who was perfectly able to handle the lunar module pilot duties as well as being the chief science advisor aboard the mission. This ended up being a great decision, as Schmitt was able to take his expertise to new levels while on the lunar surface, and his work is still being analyzed for new details as I write this.
Chapter Eleven - “Beyond the Moon” - by Colin Burgess - A shorter chapter detailing the aftermath of the final lunar mission and the challenge to determine NASA’s direction going forward. The next step on the agenda was the Skylab project, since it could use much of the leftover hardware from the Apollo program. The entire history of the Skylab project is documented in another book in the “Outward Odyssey” series: “Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story.”
Chapter Twelve - “The Last Apollo” - by Geoffrey Bowman - The joint Apollo-Soyuz mission as seen through the experiences of Irish writer and space enthusiast Geoffrey Bowman. Bowman heads to Florida on a package tour to witness the final takeoff of an Apollo mission into orbit. The mission itself was anticlimactic, little more than a photo-op of a handshake in space between adversaries at a relatively warm moment in the Cold War. Bowman is full of fire and enthusiasm, though, and it comes through in his recollections of his journey. This is space obsession at its finest, and I found myself geeking out with Bowman as the chapter unfolds.
Epilogue - “Souvenirs of Small Steps” - by Robert Pearlman - Each of the twelve astronauts to set foot on the lunar surface is given a coda, an opportunity to reflect on their experiences having walked and lived on another world. A beautiful way to end the book.
“Footprints in the Dust” stands as a massive undertaking, an attempt to visualize the Apollo manned lunar landings from a more human perspective. It is virtually impossible to separate the men from the technology that took them to where no man has gone before, but in the end it is still with human eyes that we as a species looked out into the vast unknown vista of another planet. Reading this brought back some of the memories and excitement that I felt as a youngster, watching the moon landings on my little black & white television set and dreaming of a future full of exploration and excitement. I drank Tang every day. I ate those little astronaut-approved nutrition bars. I built the models and read the articles in the daily papers with rapt enthusiasm. And to this day I still get filled with hope that mankind as a species can once again capture that shared vision and ability to work cooperatively as we move on to the challenges that face us in our near future. And maybe that was the real payoff from the space program, the idea that we can be better versions of ourselves when we have a goal to shoot for, a horizon to conquer.
Stepping off of my soap box now. Get this book and read it. It’s important that you do so. ‘Nuff said.
November 20, 2021
Final volume of the 3 part series about space travel from the late 50s to the mid-70s including both the American and the Soviet Union/Russian programs. Growing up near the Manned Spacecraft Center in Texas, NASA and the space program were a huge part of my life. This volume, focused on the Apollo program, was a great trip down memory lane and brings out the human element of the process of going to the moon. I learned a number of things from the book and especially enjoyed all of the commentary from the astronauts and Mission Control members.
April 4, 2025
Another thorough account of NASA missions. Now part 3 of the series written by Colon Burgess, this is a more loose format book with a lot of anecdotal stories and fait divers to pad the book.
Again, the coverage of Russian missions is welcome, but the chapters vary a lot informat. The Apollo Soyuz mission chapter is done in first person account of travelling from Ireland to Florida to watch the launch (instead of an actual in mission report and behind de scenes stuff).
All in all, these 3 books are excellent. This is probably the less interesting of the 3 but nonetheless very engaging.
Again, the coverage of Russian missions is welcome, but the chapters vary a lot informat. The Apollo Soyuz mission chapter is done in first person account of travelling from Ireland to Florida to watch the launch (instead of an actual in mission report and behind de scenes stuff).
All in all, these 3 books are excellent. This is probably the less interesting of the 3 but nonetheless very engaging.
November 22, 2017
I love reading about spaceflight, but this didn't seem to address much new ground, and, at first, seemed to be an almost haphazard collection of stories. I still enjoyed the book, but this isn't one of my must reads.
August 6, 2017
Pretty good book. Probably could have been better given the topic.
March 9, 2019
Another Great entry in this series. Space travel is so fascinating, and I think we should return to more human space exploration.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews