''One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon'' is a 2019 nonfiction book by journalist Charles Fishman, about the

Apollo program The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which Moon landing, landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo followed Project Mercury that put the first Americans in sp ...

, that focuses on thousands of people who worked on it.

Background

Fishman wrote the book concentrating not on the biographies of

Neil Armstrong Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and aerospace engineering, aeronautical engineer who, in 1969, became the Apollo 11#Lunar surface operations, first person to walk on the Moon. He was al ...

Buzz Aldrin Buzz Aldrin ( ; born Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.; January 20, 1930) is an American former astronaut, engineer and fighter pilot. He made three extravehicular activity, spacewalks as pilot of the 1966 Gemini 12 mission, and was the Lunar Module Eag ...

, but writing about ordinary people and often overlooked scientists and engineers who worked on the project. In his review, Robert Schaefer, a research engineer at MIT

Haystack Observatory Haystack Observatory is a multidisciplinary radio science center, ionospheric observatory, and astronomical microwave observatory owned by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It is in Westford, Massachusetts, in the United States, abo ...

, writes that "between 1961 and 1966, 20,000 companies and a half a million workers were designing, building, or assembling pieces of Apollo ... if Apollo were a corporation, it would have been bigger than every Fortune 500 corporation except for GM." Fishman counted the numbers as "410,000 men and women at some 20,000 different companies hocontributed to the effort". Among the scientists are

Charles Stark Draper Charles Stark "Doc" Draper (October 2, 1901 – July 25, 1987) was an American scientist and engineer, known as the "father of inertial navigation". He was the founder and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Instrumentat ...

, the head of MIT Instrumentation Lab, that designed the

Apollo Guidance Computer The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was a digital computer produced for the Apollo program that was installed on board each Apollo command module (CM) and Apollo Lunar Module (LM). The AGC provided computation and electronic interfaces for guidanc ...

(AGC), Bill Tindall, "the talented writer and

orbital mechanics Orbital mechanics or astrodynamics is the application of ballistics and celestial mechanics to rockets, satellites, and other spacecraft. The motion of these objects is usually calculated from Newton's laws of motion and the law of universal ...

'genius' from the

Langley Research Center The Langley Research Center (LaRC or NASA Langley), located in Hampton, Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay front of Langley Air Force Base, is the oldest of NASA's field centers. LaRC has focused primarily on aeronautical research but has also ...

", and John Houbolt, NASA engineer who advocated for the

lunar orbit rendezvous Lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) is a process for landing humans on the Moon and returning them to Earth. It was utilized for the Apollo program missions in the 1960s and 1970s. In a LOR mission, a main spacecraft and a lunar lander travel to lunar or ...

(LOR). Fishman writes that "Apollo didn't usher in the

Space Age The Space Age is a period encompassing the activities related to the space race, space exploration, space technology, and the cultural developments influenced by these events, beginning with the launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, and co ...

, but it did usher in the

Digital Age The Information Age is a History by period, historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during the Industrial Revolution, to an economy centered on info ...

. It helped lay the foundation of the technology that created the digital revolution, and it helped give Americans a sense of excitement and anticipation about the Digital Age ... that had been completely missing before the 1960s began."

Reception

The book received positive reviews. National Space Society review writes that "As NASA prepares to return astronauts to the Moon within the next decade ... this book acts as a reminder about what is required to achieve epic results", while ''

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus. The magazine's publisher, Kirkus Media, is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, no ...

'' calls the book "a fresh, enthusiastic history of the moon mission". In his review for the ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'', Mark Whitaker praised the book as "meticulously researched and absorbingly written". He notes that Fishman "skips retelling the personal stories of Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins". Robert Schaefer notes that "Fishman is a really, really good storyteller, and One Giant Leap would make a fantastic audio book". He writes that the book gave a good understanding "of America as it was and how it changed with the Apollo mission". Schaefer concludes his review writing that "This reviewer has but one complaint, that even at 480 pages, One Giant Leap could and should have been even longer, with more on the Mercury and Gemini missions preceding Apollo, more on the Saturn V, more on each Apollo astronaut, and more on their discoveries."

References

{{reflist

External links

What You Didn’t Know About the Apollo 11 Mission
by Charles Fishman for the ''

Smithsonian Magazine ''Smithsonian'' is a magazine covering science, history, art, popular culture and innovation. The first issue was published in 1970. History The history of ''Smithsonian'' began when Edward K. Thompson, the retired editor of ''Life'' magazine ...

'' Spaceflight books Books about the Apollo program

Background

Reception

See also

References

External links