Andrew Glester reviews Apollo 11: the Inside Story by David Whitehouse
“The most authoritative book ever written about Apollo” – that’s the bold claim on the back cover of my proof copy of Apollo 11: the Inside Story, especially when you consider the books written by some of the lunar astronauts themselves. But once you begin reading journalist and former BBC science-broadcaster David Whitehouse’s latest book, it won’t take long for that claim to fade from bold to fairly reasonable. Apollo 11 is a true celebration of what is inarguably one of humanity’s greatest achievement – setting foot on the Moon. The book tells the story through the voices of the people at the very heart of it – the US and Russian astronauts, as well as the administrators and politicians in both countries.
Whitehouse does not spend much time talking about the thousands of people behind the scenes – the engineers, physicists and mathematicians, those who made the spacesuits and spacecraft. Thankfully, however, their stories are finally being told elsewhere. Still, despite avoiding those tales, there is so much to pack in that the author doesn’t actually get to the surface of the Moon until the last quarter of the book, as the lunar module Eagle finally comes to rest in the Mare Tranquillitatis basin. By that point, you will be under no illusion as to how history had conspired, politicians had manoeuvred and astronauts had jockeyed for position, before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on that grey, alien surface.
Apollo 11 begins with the story of pioneering Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, whose 1903 research paper “The exploration of cosmic space by means of reaction devices” is considered to be the first scientifically viable work exploring our ability to conquer space with rockets. Tsiolkovsky was a self-educated school teacher who imagined rockets fuelled by liquid oxygen and hydrogen, and developed the formula for rocket propulsion. He dubbed this the “formula of aviation”, which describes the relationship between the changing mass and velocity of a rocket, as it burns fuel. You will also read about Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space; find out about just how close Russia got to winning the so-called “space race”, and discover how many spacecraft accidentally crashed into the Moon before the Eagle was landed so deftly by Armstrong.
The long road to Mars
Inextricably intertwined with the majesty and awe of the feats of engineering and physics that were the Moon landings, is the sea of politics and war at the other end of what humanity is capable of. Whitehouse skilfully navigates these often-contradictory aspects of human nature. The author’s compelling style has been honed over years of writing for the BBC and his other books, but his voice here is relatively unheard. Instead, Whitehouse leaves most of the talking to the events that transpired and key players.
I particularly enjoyed hearing from John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. Despite this honour, the journey involved him being stranded for an hour in his Friendship 7 space capsule on top of the Atlas LV-3B rocket while a last-minute engineering check was carried out. In desperate need of the toilet, but not allowed to leave his harness, Glenn frustratedly urinated into his spacesuit. It’s hard not to see this as a metaphor for the astronauts’ role in the Apollo space programme – as figureheads, celebrated guinea pigs and pawns, often caught in a struggle between tetchy world superpowers, with no real control for themselves.
Whitehouse sets the space race in its historic context, born out of fear of the other side getting into space first
As tempting as it is to think of the Apollo missions only as a triumph for science and exploration, it’s equally legitimate to think of them as an unexpected quirk of the Cold War that was raging between Moscow and Washington. In the opening chapter, “The spoils of war”, Whitehouse sets the space race in its historic context, born out of fear of the other side getting into space first in the belief that whoever commanded space, commanded Earth.
The words and sentiment “we came in peace for all mankind” – as printed on the lunar plaque left on the Moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts – were not there from the outset. Indeed, once the Apollo programme ended in 1975, the Russian Luna programme continued for a while but, as Whitehouse puts it, “there was nothing to be gained”. It would be more accurate, though, to say there were no political advantages, as there remains plenty of science to be done on the Moon even today. But with the race “won”, political will and funding dried up, as did the public gaze. An estimated half a billion watched the Apollo 11 Moon landing, while only a fraction of that number watched Apollo 12. The drama of Apollo 13 pulled the programme into focus once more, but it soon waned, before the final planned Apollo mission was cancelled. The 10th, 25th and 30th anniversaries of the first landing each brought renewed focus, just as we see this month on the 50th anniversary.
One step from Earth
In the book’s penultimate chapter, “The long goodbye”, Charlie Duke, the 10th man to walk on the Moon, tells of how he and John Young covered miles in the Descartes Highlands of the lunar surface during Apollo 16. “There was no magnetic field on the Moon, so a magnetic compass wouldn’t work. So we had a little gyroscope that was mounted in the instrument panel of the rover. You never really worried about getting lost up there, because everywhere you drove, you left your tracks.” I can’t help wondering if Duke and Young had been exploring the Moon in a solar-powered electric buggy today, instead of in 1972 during the “been there, done that” malaise in the wake of Apollo 11, they would they be household names too, just like Armstrong and Aldrin.
While many people probably do know that astronauts drove around the Moon in a buggy, I wonder how well known it is that the Apollo 16 crew were expecting to find volcanic rocks to support scientific theories of the time on how the craters on the Moon formed. They discovered no such rocks, but did come home with a treasure trove of samples that are still studied by geologists today (see “Giant leaps for knowledge”) and they changed our understanding of the universe at large.
Apollo 11 sits comfortably among the most informative and enjoyable books about the space programme. It won’t really matter when you read it, but now is as good a time as any.
- 2019 Icon Books £12.99pb 322pp
