Rocket Men by Robert Kurson

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Rocket Men by Robert Kurson Discussion Questions 1. What was your initial reaction to the book? Did it hook you immediately, or did it take some time to get into? 2. The book includes a large amount of biographical information about each of the astronauts. Do you think this distracted or added to the story? 3. The book explores the experiences of the wives of the astronauts? Did their actions seem plausible? Why or why not? 4. Which person did you relate to the most, and what was it about them that you connected with? 5. Were the political and cultural events happening in the country during the same timeframe important to the story? 6. The Apollo 8 mission is the focus of this story. Do you think the Apollo 11 mission (where astronauts first walked on the moon) overshadowed the importance of the Apollo 8 mission? 7. Did the book change your opinion or perspective about NASA or the space program, and its future? Do you feel differently now that you’ve read the book? 8. As a non-fiction book, did the writing style and structure of the book create the momentum to hold your attention? Why or why not? 9. Do you think the author was trying to communicate a point of view or opinion in his handling of the topic? 10. What was your favorite moment in the book? 11. Share a favorite quote or passage from the book. Why did this quote stand out for you? 12. If the author were to write another book on any aspect or character of Rocket Men, what would it be? 13. What surprised you most when reading the book? 14. If you could ask the author of this book one question, what would it be? .

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Documenting Apollo on The
NASA HISTORY DIVISION Office of External Relations volume 27, number 1 Fourth Quarter 2009/First Quarter 2010 FROM HOMESPUN HISTORY: THE CHIEF DOCUMENTING APOLLO HISTORIAN ON THE WEB By David Woods, editor, The Apollo Flight Journal Bearsden, Scotland In 1994 I got access to the Internet via a 0.014 Mbps modem through my One aspect of my job that continues to amaze phone line. As happens with all who access the Web, I immediately gravi- and engage me is the sheer variety of the work tated towards the sites that interested me, and in my case, it was astronomy we do at NASA and in the NASA History and spaceflight. As soon as I stumbled upon Eric Jones’s burgeoning Division. As a former colleague used to say, Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (ALSJ), then hosted by the Los Alamos NASA is engaged not just in human space- National Laboratory, I almost shook with excitement. flight and aeronautics; its employees engage in virtually every engineering and natural Eric was trying to understand what had been learned about working on science discipline in some way and often at the Moon by closely studying the time that 12 Apollo astronauts had spent the cutting edge. This breadth of activities is, there. To achieve this, he took dusty, old transcripts of the air-to-ground of course, reflected in the history we record communication, corrected them, added commentary and, best of all, man- and preserve. Thus it shouldn’t be surprising aged to get most of the men who had explored the surface to sit with him that our books and monographs cover such a and add their recollections.
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