BOOK REVIEW FIRST ON THE MOON A VOYAGE TO THE MOON WITH NEIL ARMSTRONG MICHAEL COLLINS AND EDWIN E ALDRIN JR BY NEIL ARMSTRONG MICHAEL COLLINS AND EDWIN E ALDRIN JR WITH GENE FARMER AND DORA JANE HAMBLIN MELANIE CHIN ENGINEERING APOLLO 16 895 ESD 30 STS 471 SPRING 2007 BACKGROUND First on the Moon is a detailed account of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon and the three astronauts aboard The book is written by Neil Armstrong Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin along with Gene Farmer and Dora Jane Hamblin Citing the three astronauts as the authors is true to the extent that they provided the long passages of quotes that make up much of the book In actuality the quotations from Armstrong Collins and Aldrin as well as others peripherally related to the mission families other astronauts NASA officials etc were originally obtained for Life magazine s features on the space program Excerpts taken from these interviews are sequenced to fit into the defined chapters of the book which was actually written by Life magazine editors Farmer and Hamblin While narrative from all three astronauts is included this book uniquely provides a glimpse of the mission to the moon from the perspective of Neil Armstrong who was one of the few astronauts that did not publish his own memoir both Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins went on to write their own books accounting their journeys onboard Apollo 11 Return to Earth and Carrying the Fire An Astronaut s Journey respectively SOURCES Large portions of the book are in essence biographical accounts of the astronauts with information about and anecdotes from their childhood upbringings educations and careers prior to astronautics In addition special attention is paid to their spouses comprehensive accounts are given of how each astronaut met his respective wife and the activities of Joan Aldrin Jan Armstrong and Pat Collins during the eight days of the mission are described in great almost excruciating detail Given that most of the information was gathered by Life journalists and intended for publication in Life helps to explain why minutiae such as Pat Collins started her Saturday with a nine thirty appointment for a hair shampoo and set 1 are included The astronauts were celebrities public fascination with the men extended into their personal and family lives That their wives engaged in common errands like going to the hairdresser or the supermarket made them relatable to their adulating public and helped promote the image of the astronauts as all American men with strong family values Moreover shedding light on the daily albeit mundane activities of the dutiful wives during the Apollo mission demonstrated 1 Armstrong N Collins M and Buzz Aldrin First on the Moon 166 their strength of character and their ability to maintain an air of calm while their husbands faced uncertain dangers in space Interspersed with these personal accounts are transcripts from radio communications between Columbia Eagle and Houston during the Apollo 11 flight chronicling the mission from lift off to splash down In order to make the technical jargon in these transmissions understandable to a layman brief mention is made of the technology onboard Apollo Beyond that very little is devoted to the scientists and engineers who worked behind the scenes it is clear the focus here is on the astronauts This book was first published in 1970 and thus probably written soon or immediately after Apollo 11 splashed down in July 1969 For this reason it is unable to place Apollo in a broader historical perspective which might have prompted mention of these technological achievements as one of the significant impacts of the Apollo missions CRITICAL EXAMINATION In the bigger scheme of literature on the history of the Apollo program as deemed by Roger Launius 2 First on the Moon clearly falls into the category which focuses on the astronauts In essence the book is a human interest story right out of Life lengthened to 400 plus pages Thus the book has a very commercial and polished appeal with a glossy up close and personal view of the mission through the astronaut s eyes idealizing the astronauts into supermen Interestingly the technological feats of the mission are downplayed the lunar module itself is described by the astronauts as a pretty good piece of machinery the landing radar was tricky to read but was necessary since the computer would not do the job by itself 3 The instruments onboard Apollo 11 all had historical antecedents the space sextent was derived from the astrolabe the inertial guidance system acted as a compass and the spacecraft s computer subsystem was in a sense a descendant of the first chronometer 4 In contrast to the oversimplification of the instrumentation onboard a great deal of emphasis is placed on the rigorous training and skill of the astronauts both in terms of piloting and technical competency Buzz Aldrin s doctorate from MIT is highlighted several times throughout the book and he is touted as a pioneer in the concepts of rendezvous and docking Michael Collins describes 2 Launius Roger Interpreting the Moon Landings Project Apollo and the Historians Armstrong N Collins M and Buzz Aldrin First on the Moon 212 4 Ibid 143 144 3 flying the command module as complicated as flying a B 52 bomber The Apollo vehicles were built not to do all these things automatically consequently we ve got our fingers in all kinds of pies around the interior of that spacecraft 5 As such the important roles the astronauts played and the high degree of control they had over their spacecraft is a recurrent theme throughout the book ENGINEERING DECISION The account of the landing on the moon is appropriately filled with daring decisions one of which involves the 12 02 alarms which signified a hardware failure onboard The 12 02 alarm was first experienced during a powered descent simulation a month before Apollo was set to fly The landing radar had been programmed to fail in simulation causing the computer to turn to the landing radar for information that wasn t available The computer lockup resulted in a mission abort during the exercise The first important decision was made by Gene Kranz after the 12 02 alarm failure Most of the flight controllers thought it was not possible to get a 12 02 alarm but Kranz called a meeting nonetheless to go over every possible program alarm that could be experienced during descent In a technical sense this required programmers to compile a list of all the program