Chariots for Apollo: The Untold Story Behind the Race for the Moon

click here for more details, find new or used items	Charles R. Pellegrino, Joshua Stoff Used from £1.57 Pages: 320 (Board book) ISBN: 0689115598 Pub: Prentice Hall & IBD Pub date: 1985-11 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 644896

Reader Reviews:

An account of the building of the Apollo Lunar Module (0/0 people found this helpful)

This is definitive account of the design, engineering and building of the Apollo Lunar Module. Grumman Aerospace (of Long Island New York), now Northrop Grumman, were the contractors.

The book chronicles the early development, the key players (Tom Kelly) and the flights. There is big mention of the role of the Apollo 13 Lunar Module which was the lifeboat in making a recovery possible.

Mostly though, this book is about the amazing engineers who dedicated 7 years of their lives to build a moon lander

Indifferent writing style, but worthwhile content (3/3 people found this helpful)

This book is basically a collection of anecdotes and recollections from individuals who were involved in the development of the Lunar Module. Most of the material seems to come from interviews with Grumman staff.

To anyone with a specific interest in this subject, particularly from an engineering standpoint, the book is essential reading as it contains material not published elsewhere. Apart from highlighting several of the technical problems, it also sheds some light on personal issues, such as the effect on Grumman staff of the seven-day-a-week commitment over a period of years. The paralysing effect of the Apollo 1 fire, after which risk-reduction was taken to such extremes that LM progress all but stopped, is also covered.

The downside of the book is that...it is structured like an edited set of "raw" interviews - all the insights come from the people interviewed. There is no attempt to put it all together into context. As others have noted, the title is rather misleading, but then "The untold story of the development of the LM" is hardly going to sell to Joe public.

A good read but contains major inaccuracies! (1/4 people found this helpful)

Obviously trying to do for the LM what The Right Stuff did for the Original 7, this is a decent read. However, anyone who knows anything about this subject knows that the Apollo 11 LM was crashed into the moon to test moonquake sensors, NOT sent into orbit! (The Apollo 10 LM was sent into orbit around the sun to test how long water supplies etc. would last). This innaccuracy, which is repeated several times is very annoying and spoilt the book for me. Worth reading though (just about).

A good book, but... (1/1 people found this helpful)

Interesting information on the building of the lunar lander (LEM); however, there was certainly more to Project Apollo than the LEM, i.e., the book covers absolutely nothing regarding the command and service modules. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but in my opinion the book's subtitle is a bit misleading... Instead of reading, "The Untold Story Behind the Race to the Moon," it should read, "The Untold Story Behind the Building of the LEM." Although the book falls short of telling the "whole story" behing the race to the moon, it does provide good information about the development of the LEM and is certainly worth reading.

A good, if narrow, history (0/0 people found this helpful)

The cover rather oversells the book- it's really mainly a lightweight history of the LEM, or lunar lander, along with some history of the missions and the astronauts. There's little technical data, and the stories are incomplete, but it's a good read.

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