Book Review: Rocket Men

Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon 

Robert Kurson

2018

It's hard to express how much I enjoyed Rocket Men. I was an "Apollo kid" and something of a space historian myself, so I knew the story, but what the author does here is make us FEEL it. The astronauts, of course, take center stage (including Anders, who is kind of the forgotten man on this mission), but the key Earth-based figures, including the administrators who argued and finally approved (with fingers crossed) a very rushed first mission around the Moon, the families, and others - all are brought to life. The technical aspects are well explained and very clearly described. There's an odd point where we switch to the views of unnamed cosmonauts and back in the same paragraph, and the background events of a turbulent year, which are very well described, could have been better tied in to NASA activities. These are quibbles, though. The author, not a space expert by training, puts us into the capsule with excellent descriptions of life for three men in a can. A couple of memorable bits to me were 1) the Saturn V liftoff (except for the wording that there were "explosions" of fuel and oxidizer, which might just have been a bit of hyperbole). I have seen a Saturn V launch, albeit from 10 miles, and I understand the booster technology, and I think he nails it, and 2) the description of an oft-overlooked bit of most space voyages, the recovery: this book captures the drama and the humor of the events that started with the scary but very clean reentry. Well done, sir, VERY well done. Everyone interested in space history and the lunar race will want this book.