Chariots for Apollo: The Making of the Lunar Module by Charles R. Pellegrino, Joshua Stoff

Abstract

708 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE on the aerospace industry, to name but a few. The index is full of St. Louis natives but omits generic topics such as “airlines” and “jets.” The book’s organization, with reams of air-show details sandwiched between two shorter sections on airfields and manufacturing, seems to undercut a sense of continuity. Although the extensive material on early ballooning and air meets is carefully researched and informative, the post—World War II era does not receive the same thorough attention, and there is no doc­ umentation for the “Publisher’s Afterword.” There are few studies of aviation and its relation to the urban environment. This book rep­ resents a start but is not necessarily the best model to follow. Roger E. Bilstein Dr. Bilstein teaches courses in aerospace history at the University of Houston— Clear Lake and is the author of several books and articles on the subject, including Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts (Baltimore, 1984; updated paperback, 1987). Chariots for Apollo: The Making of the Lunar Module. By Charles R. Pel­ legrino and Joshua Stoff. New York: Atheneum, 1985. Pp. xiv + 238; illustrations, bibliography. $17.95. The essence of the American space program can be crystalized into the story of the lunar module. Charles Pellegrino and Joshua Stoff have achieved this difficult undertaking in a manner and style that are unique in studies of this genre. Using a plot scheme reminiscent of a Michener or Uris who weaves his stories around a number of families or groups of participants and then brings them together as the book unfolds, the authors provide pleasant reading. But unlike a novel or a TV docudrama, Chariots for Apollo portrays real people in real situations, and it does so with strict adherence to the actual events. The result is docuhistory. Contrary to the majority of works in tech­ nological history, Pellegrino and Stoff have created an intriguing mas­ terpiece of human emotions and flesh-and-blood people. The authors place the space race against the backdrop of world events. The lunar module (LM) design was debated at the same time that Castro sus­ pended democratic elections in Cuba and began to fill the Batista death camps with enemies of his own. On the same day that Apollo 6 failed to meet its primary mission (and the backup test of a crash dive to simulate a return to earth from the moon was viewed as a failure), Martin Luther King’s mission in America met death in Memphis. Human interest may well be the strongest aspect of the book. We forget that the people involved in the moon mission were performing unprecedented tasks. So it is appropriate that we know that Bob Ekenstierna , the descent stage supervisor, repairs ancient metal armor. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 709 Why? Because the LM was assembled in the same manner: piece by meticulous piece. Or that Houbolt, who advocated the accepted idea of the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, found the records of Russian Kondratyrek , who advocated the same approach fifty years before and was ignored. The authors avoid the tedium of technical history with interesting tidbits—points in the process part of the interior structure were to be edible in case the astronauts were stranded, and the as­ tronauts were going to have “patches” to slap over micrometeorite holes. At the end, we note that LM engineers were selling hot dogs on Manhattan streets, von Braun was selling helicopters, Americans were spending more on “space invaders” than the space shuttle, the Russians were building a space station, and the Japanese unveiled plans for a space city. The human drama and suffering of “fire in the spacecraft” and the agony of using the LM as a “lifeboat in space” are brought much closer to the reader by this book than by other studies. Pellegrino and Stoff successfully employ oral history to sup­ plement the traditional documentation. Subthemes cover important NASA history such as management, the moon race with the Russians, and the decline of NASA in the 1970s and 1980s; one cannot help seeing the seeds of the shuttle disaster in these pages. This book is not a humdrum nuts...