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Amazon.com
A decade in the making, this
book is based on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with each of the twenty-four
moon voyagers, as well as those who contributed their brain power, training and
teamwork on Earth. In his preface Chaikin writes, "We touched the face of
another world and became a people without limits."
What follows are thrilling accounts
of such remarkable experiences as the rush of a liftoff, the heart-stopping touchdown
on the moon, the final hurdle of re-entry, competition for a seat on a moon flight,
the tragic spacecraft fire, and the search for clues to the origin of the solar
system on the slopes of lunar mountains.
Booklist
Chaikin believes we have never truly come to terms with the fact that 24 men have
left their footprints on the moon. In an effort to document and understand the
shift in consciousness that transformed the moon--a celestial body long associated
with goddesses, love, madness, and mystery--into a moving target and goal of the
world's most sophisticated technology and determined egos, Chaikin conducted numerous
interviews with the moon voyagers and their earthbound colleagues who guided and
prayed for them.
The result is a can't-put-it-down
volume that picks up where Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff left off. These portraits
of the men who were willing to be more alone than any human had ever been before
are vibrant and compelling. And Chaikin meticulously chronicles each Apollo mission
in dramatic detail, describing the dynamics within each trio, the emotions of
the astronaut who had to orbit the moon alone while his more glorified comrades
romped across powdery moonscapes, and the unprecedented, almost unimaginable experiences
of the men who gathered moon rocks and watched the earth rise. This account helps
us reclaim the awe these adventures originally inspired, the wonder at such audacity,
and the now-ingrained image of the beautiful blue-green Earth spinning hopefully
in the austerity of space.
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