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Apollo Collection: Vol.1: How America Won the Race to the Moon
Apollo Collection: Vol.1: How America Won the Race to the Moon | Philip Gibson
2 posts | 1 read
On 25 May, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced the hugely ambitious goal of sending a man to the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the decade. The president's announcement came at the height of the Cold War confrontation and it set off an intensely competitive race with the Soviet Union who desperately wanted to gain for themselves the huge propaganda victory of being the first nation to land a man on the Moon. President Kennedy's dramatic announcement galvanized the United States. There was just one problem: in May 1961, the United States' manned space program remained far, far behind that of the Soviet Union. In the months and years following the president's announcement, NASA threw itself into an intensively accelerated program in which they would attempt to launch 26 increasingly complex manned missions into space in a massive and hugely expensive effort to beat the Soviet Union to the Moon. This collection details all the NASA missions up to and including the first Moon landing, including moment-by-moment accounts of the particularly dramatic and historic Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 missions. These missions are retold in the form of today's social media platforms, allowing us to witness the unfolding drama of the missions as if we were following them in real time and as if the participants and observers were sharing their thoughts and actions with us directly. The narratives of these accounts are based on detailed recollections of the astronauts, NASA transcripts of the fascinating continual communications with Mission Control in Houston, broadcasts of the main TV networks covering the missions and the thoughts of many expert and laypeople observers of the time. There is an extensive list of major sources at the end of the book.
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Connster
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The Moon landing of 1969 seems like so long ago, but I‘ve just realised it was only 13 years before I was born! I‘m learning a huge amount about what the Apollo missions entailed from this book; it explains how they could do what was seemingly impossible. The technology must have seemed so far ahead of its time to people watching in 1969. An amazing feat of engineering and special kind of people who could make it happen.

blurb
Connster
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An awesome telling of the later Apollo missions! It‘s really relevant at the moment as it‘s 50 years this week since the Moon landing. I‘m currently reading this and watching a documentary about Apollo 13 at the same time. So interesting!