Moon Missions: Mankinds First Voyages To AnotherWorld

If you, the kind reader of this review, expect to read a pleasurable book about the great accomplishment of landing the first person on the moon, then you may wish to read William Mellberg's Moon Missions: Mankind's First Voyage to Another World (Plymouth Press, 1997). Mellberg honors and respects the "430,000 Americans" who were "the best industrial engineering talent in America" (p. 45) and who "were involved with building the hardware that would carry" astronauts to the moon (p. 62). The author also appreciates the courage of astronauts who explored the surface of the moon under the guidance of George E. Miller, "overall program" leader of the Office of Manned Space Flight" (p. 51), and who were launched into space with the new technology of Robert Goddard, Wernher von Braun, and Sergei Korolev. Mellberg is clearly knowledgable about space exploration. He outlines the history of the Mercury, Gemini, Ranger, Lunar Orbiter, Surveyor and Apollo missions -- forty-four in all! He details the parts of the Moonport at Cape Canaveral in Florida (p. 46), the Lunar Wardrobe (p. 95) and the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (p. 103). And he writes appendices on the "Moon's Vital Statistics (I did not know the surface could get up to 243 degrees F), "Apollo Lunar Missions" ("A total of 24 Apollo astronauts flew to the moon" and "twelve walked on its surface"[p. 175]), and on "Lunar Geologic History". "Moon Missions" is a very good book, in my opinion, because "Moon Missions" shows that every rocket launched prior to Apollo 11 prepared the way for Neil Armstrong's announcement July 20, 1969: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" (p. 93).

This relatively small book presents a very good summary of NASA's conquest of the Moon. The book is divided into three sections plus several appendices. The first section of the covers the early ideas about the moon and Russia's and America's pre-Apollo space race. The second section, which is approximately 2/3 of the book, details the entire lunar exploration program from the early Ranger missions to the splashdown of Apollo 17. This portion of the book also has some nice sections of the launching facilities and the Lunar EVA suits. The final section examines what was learned from the exploration of the Moon. The book does contain some minor information on the unmanned Russia probes to the Moon. The appendices are first rate and provide a synopsis of the missions, a dictionary of the important geology terms and a bibliography.If you're looking for a book that contains an excellent overview of the exploration of the Moon, this book is it. The book not only provides information on all the missions that went to the moon, but also provides information of surface experiments, the lunar rover, spacesuit design, etc. While all the photographs are in black and white, they are excellent quality and include some of the more classic space explorations photographs as well as those, which were not as famous.

a well written, concise book...lots of details left out, but, for the most part, quite enjoyable..

I'm a space nut, but I loved this book. Quite Cool!