How Apollo Flew to the Moon

Springer Praxis Books

By: W. David Woods

Narrated by: Todd Belcher

Length: 21 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

Stung by the pioneering space successes of the Soviet Union - in particular, Gagarin being the first man in space - the United States gathered the best of its engineers and set itself the goal of reaching the moon within a decade. In an expanded second edition of How Apollo Flew to the Moon, David Woods tells the exciting story of how the resulting Apollo flights were conducted by following a virtual flight to the moon and its exploration of the surface. From launch to splashdown, he hitches a ride in the incredible spaceships that took men to another world, exploring each step of the journey and detailing the enormous range of disciplines, techniques, and procedures the Apollo crews had to master. While describing the tremendous technological accomplishment involved, he adds the human dimension by calling on the testimony of the people who were there at the time. He provides a wealth of fascinating and accessible material: the role of the powerful Saturn V, the reasoning behind trajectories, the day-to-day concerns of human and spacecraft health between two worlds, the exploration of the lunar surface, and the sheer daring involved in traveling to the moon during the mid-20th century.

Given the tremendous success of the original edition of How Apollo Flew to the Moon, the second edition will have a new chapter on surface activities, inspired by user comments on Amazon. There will also be additional detail in the existing chapters to incorporate all the feedback from the original edition.

©2011 Springer Praxis Books (P)2020 Cacophony Innovation

A stupendous work

This is such an amazing record of the effort and clever technology that made Apollo the success that it was. Planners for Artemis should give this a good listen to remember what's involved in such an endeavor. Anyone who wants to understand how Apollo worked should listen to this book.

A Must Read For Space Fans

This book was full of useful information without getting too technical. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Brilliant!

A little slow to get into the technical detail, then it satisfied the engineering geek in me.

Event by event rather than mission by mission

This was a very unique way to cover the Apollo program and I found it to be a very effective way to compare the different points in the missions. This worked very well in getting me to compare the difficulties, goals and outcomes of each mission over the previous one. Well done and we'll worth the listen!!

Excellent

Love the minutia. Thank you for compiling all this information. Some was above my pay grade but I still enjoyed it.

Excellent Insight

An excellent overview of the 'how' if the Apollo space program. The author conveys the mundane and the technical in an easy-to-follow presentation.

Exactly what I wanted

So many space-age era books gloss over the fine details. Or they waste a paragraph pandering to a non-technical audience. Not this book.

The level of detail is outstanding. And I enjoyed every second of it.

If you’re an engineer and space nerd like me, you’ll love this book.

Dry but fascinating

This book reads like a dry technical manual, which is basically what it is, but it gives very good details about the whole process of getting to the moon and getting back to earth. Because it is so technically oriented however, it is not an easy read and if listening on audible, you need to have the book available to refer to the photographs for clarity.

Easy read

I’ve tried to read stories about Apollo and I’d get lost in all the technical terms (as I didn’t read everyday), but this book explains the terms several times. So if you casually listen, you’ll still know what is going on. Great read.

Metric Schemetric

We went to the moon using the US imperial system of measurement. Hearing the metric system used in this book was, at best, disconcerting and strange. It really took away from whatever the book had to say. When Buzz said “down at 4” he meant 4 feet, not 4 meters. Nothing really new in this book, either. Sorry, couldn’t finish.