Propulsive Reading Alexandra Witze Savours Seven Books Saluting the 50Th Anniversary of the Lunar Touchdown

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MOON LANDINGS Propulsive reading Alexandra Witze savours seven books saluting the 50th anniversary of the lunar touchdown.

Buzz Aldrin steps off the Lunar Module to become the second person on the Moon on 20 July 1969

n May 1961, US President John are the 24 Americans who flew to the Moon There are delightfully nerdy chapters, F. Kennedy delivered an astonishing call and back — including 12 who walked on its such as one on the development of Apollo’s

to action. “We choose to go to the Moon,” surface. computer hardware and software. Fishman NASA/JSC Ihe declared, because it would “measure the The story of who they are, and how they describes the work of engineer Charles best of our energies and skills”. Kennedy got there, has been told by scores of writers, Stark ‘Doc’ Draper’s legendary team at the wasn’t, however, all that interested in space. such as Andrew Chaikin in his authoritative Massachusetts Institute of Technology He said as much to then-NASA admin- 1994 book A Man on the Moon. Now, to com- (MIT) in Cambridge. This crucial group istrator James Webb in November 1962, memorate the half-century of Armstrong’s developed the navigation and guidance 18 months after committing the United one small step, a fresh crop of books attempts systems that enabled the Apollo 11 crew to States to landing a person on the Moon by the to bring new insight into the Apollo project reach their target, undock the lunar lander decade’s end. In the depths of the cold war, — along with what led to it, and from it. and pilot it to a precise site on the basalt geopolitical concerns were the biggest factor plain known as the Sea of Tranquillity (Mare in NASA’s Apollo project (see page 167). APOLLO IN CONTEXT Tranquillitatis). Fishman also lauds the work The Soviet Union’s space achievements For a one-stop overview of how Apollo of Bill Tindall. The NASA manager and — including the 1957 launch of Sputnik, the unfolded, One Giant Leap by journal- engineer knew how to translate MIT’s break- first satellite, and Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering ist Charles Fishman wins. It lays out the throughs into a successful mission — delet- Earth orbit in 1961 — constituted a formida- basics of how NASA designed and built the ing extraneous computer code and ensuring ble challenge. And, as presidential historian unprecedented hardware required to go to that only the most reliable and well-tested Douglas Brinkley outlines in his new book the Moon, from the mighty Saturn V rocket commands remained. American Moonshot, Kennedy mustered all to the improbably spindly lunar lander. his political will to ensure that the United Fishman sets his narrative in the social ROCKET BOOSTERS States would lead in space. By the time Neil context of the 1960s, highlighting US fears Inevitably, several other books celebrate Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the about Soviet military dominance and the the engineers behind the feat. Nancy Moon on 20 July 1969, the space race was concurrent rise of the civil-rights move- Atkinson’s Eight Years to the Moon fea- over. Fifty years on, the only humans who ment. It shows how Apollo sprang up at a tures Earle Kyle, one of the few African have ever travelled beyond low Earth orbit time of international and domestic tumult. American aerospace engineers of the time,

BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT

American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race DOUGLAS BRINKLEY BETTMANN Harper (2019) One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission that Flew Us to the Moon CHARLES FISHMAN Simon & Schuster (2019) Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions NANCY ATKINSON Page Street (2019) The Apollo Chronicles: Engineering America’s First Moon Missions BRANDON R. BROWN Oxford University Press (2019) Apollo’s Legacy: Perspectives on the Moon Landings ROGER D. LAUNIUS Smithsonian Books (2019) Moon Rush: The New Space Race LEONARD DAVID National Geographic (2019) The Moon: A History for the Future OLIVER MORTON The Economist Books (2019) Civil-rights leaders including Ralph Abernathy (front) protest at the launch of the Apollo 11 mission.

and Dottie Lee, who not only calculated from space (see go.nature.com/2ne4zai). He no Kennedy — has tasked NASA with spacecraft trajectories but also designed reminds us that the Apollo project, although returning astronauts to the lunar surface by and tested the vehicles. A more personal often lauded as a visionary achievement, was 2024. But the landscape now is wildly differ- view comes in The Apollo Chronicles by not well accepted by many in the United ent, as journalist Leonard David describes Brandon Brown, a physicist whose father States — including scientists — at the time. in Moon Rush. Commercial companies such worked on the project. Brown takes us leap A 1967 poll found that residents in six US as SpaceX and Blue Origin are entering the by leap through the 1960s, tracing the par- cities saw tackling pollution and poverty, for realm of space flight, and China is a strong allel engineering work at Cape Canaveral instance, as more important. contender for sending the next human to (the launch site in Florida), the Manned Launius highlights the tensions between the Moon. Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas (now space policy and social policy. On the eve Whoever takes that step, Oliver Morton, the Johnson Space Center), and the rock- of the Apollo 11 launch, civil-rights leader an editor at The Economist, dubs it the etry group in Huntsville, Alabama, led by Ralph Abernathy took several hundred Return. The Moon, his paean to our satel- German-born Wernher von Braun. people to Cape Canaveral to demonstrate lite, gives the scientific, historical and cul- Brown peppers his account with on-the- against the massive tural context to this pressing possibility. ground details of how engineers dealt with spending on the “The Apollo This is a book to bend your mind with the unexpected problems. Some were simple. space programme project, although mysteries of the swirl-like markings on the In Houston, technicians working to perfect in the face of pov- often lauded lunar surface or the cadence of impacts that Apollo’s control thrusters panicked on find- erty and social as a visionary have bombarded the inner Solar System. It ing a mysterious residue coating vehicles injustice. “We do achievement, links the geological history of Earth with in the car park. Could explosives leak that not oppose the was not well the chances of asteroid impacts ferrying far from the laboratory? A chemist subse- Moonshot,” said life between planets. And it tosses in an quently identified the substance as golden Hosea Williams, a accepted by apocalyptic scene of the Moon’s birth, from rod pollen. Other issues were complex. leader of the group. many in the a cosmic collision involving Earth. Morton, Revisiting the tragic Apollo 1 fire of 1967, “Our purpose is to United States.” a former editor at Nature (and my former in which astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward protest America’s manager), has written what is surely the White and Roger Chaffee died during a inability to choose human priorities.” Poli- most eloquent exploration of our modern capsule test at the Cape, the horror of engi- tics, science and engineering working in understanding of the Moon. neers familiar with the electrical systems concert, Launius notes, might have been Yet we should not be seduced by the that killed them is palpable. able to send a man to the Moon, but back nostalgia of Apollo or the allure of the Return on Earth, solutions to egregious social issues as we grapple with vast, multipronged chal- SOCIAL JUSTICE such as racism and inequity were and are lenges on Earth. Then-NASA administrator The Apollo project involved some slow in coming. Many people continue to Thomas Paine recognized as much at the 400,000 people working for a decade to hold up Apollo as an example of how the Apollo 11 launch, when he spoke to Aber- send a dozen humans to the surface of the Moonshot approach might solve some of nathy. Paine later recalled admitting that Moon. For a holistic analysis, there’s no bet- the most pressing problems facing society, compared with solving poverty, racism and ter source than Roger Launius, former chief such as climate change. History shows this other injustices, the “great technological historian for NASA. In Apollo’s Legacy, Lau- analogy is far from perfect. advances of NASA were child’s play”. ■ nius explores the many ways in which the Today, following in the steps of for- public has interpreted the landings — from mer presidents George H. W. and George Alexandra Witze is a correspondent for denial to embracing the whole-Earth view W. Bush, Donald Trump — certainly Nature based in Boulder, Colorado.