Chaikin's Masterpiece

This book is undoubtedly the best and most lively historical review of the events and people behind the Apollo program yet. Chaikin brings to life the characters that put the man on the moon with a crafted mix of historical/scientific facts and personality traits of the astronauts, scientists and program managers.

Chaikin is an editor for the magazine "the Sky and the Telescopes" and his historic account has been built on interviews with many of the moon travelers and people involved in the program.

The book reads well and is absolutely intriguing - an excellent commuter book, if you are one of those readers!

Recently reprinted in a large format hardcover edition with hundred of pictures - an unprecedented document on the last and maybe most daring human voyage of exploration.

The HBO series directed by Tom Hanks was directly based on Chaikin's historical account. It is now available on DVD.

Those interested in the subject might want to pick up "Failure is not an option", by Gene Kranz. Although he does not recall ever saying the quote that the movie Apollo XIII made famous, failure is not an option was simply the mantra of everyone involved in the program. Kranz thoroughly goes through the creation of flight procedures for something simply no one had done before - a mix of management, engineering knowledge and military-like thinking in determining what steps had to be carried out first, which system failures would still allow a mission to proceed safely, which would cause an abort, and so on. I highly recommend reading it after Chaikin's book.

For those interested in a specific mission, Phoenix press is releasing a series of paperbacks titled "The Nasa mission reports". Several Apollo missions have already been covered with plenty of material previously unclassified.