Product Description

On 25 May 1961, just 20 days after Alan Shepard's 15 minute suborbital Mercury flight, president John F Kennedy announced to congress his plan of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the decade. The project would be called Apollo. On 7 November 1962, NASA announced that Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, of Bethpage, New York, was selected to build the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module. Within seven years of winning the contract, the Grumman team had accomplished what many had said was impossible -- despite schedule delays, budget overruns, seemingly endless design changes and congressional funding cuts, the Grumman team's perseverance and commitment to excellence produced the Apollo Lunar Module, the spacecraft that did land men on the Moon, six times, with never a failure. On 3 March 1969, Apollo 9 lifted off from Cape Kennedy with LM-3 on board, the first Lunar Module to fly in space, and it performed flawlessly, achieving all of its test objectives. During the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, the Lunar Module became the life boat that saved the crew's lives. The ascent module of the Apollo 17 LM, the final Lunar Module to fly, lifted off from the Moon's surface on 13 December 1972, and nothing to compare to it has been built since. The complexity of the design and fabrication of the Apollo Lunar Module was rivalled only by that of the Apollo Command and Service Modules. Many of the engineering disciplines involved were stretched to the limits of the state of the art and beyond. Much of the fabrication was hand-crafted and employed processes developed exclusively for this one project. It is hard to imagine that such a project could ever be undertaken again. Now you can see the intricacies of the LM design and learn details of its manufacture, including some of the major problems that had to be overcome. Virtual LM, like Virtual Apollo before it, is a book dedicated to showing us the details of design and production using amazing full-colour renderings of the structures, components, sub-assemblies and the completed spacecraft, accompanied by supporting descriptions. 'Virtual LM' shows us the Apollo Lunar Module as both an engineering masterpiece and a work of art. This book will be an essential part of any space enthusiast's library. The Bonus CD-ROM includes: Apollo Operations Handbook, Apollo 14 Lunar Module Timeline, Apollo 15 Lunar, Module Cue Cards and Data Cards, Apollo 16 Contingency Checklist, and more...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #391608 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
"The diagrams are very clear and well annotated. ... Another winning concept from Apogee." -- Spaceflight, April 2005. "The emphasis is on the wealth of illurtrative material rather than the text, and the book is for space enthusiasts...Highly recommended" -- Choice, April 2005. "...it's hard to think of a reason why anyone interested in the history of Mankind's greatest expedition should not want to own this book." -- International Space Review, online review from July 2005. Featured in the article '17 must read books for a cloudy night' -- Astronomy, Special Edition, January 2006.

About the Author
Scott P Sullivan

Customer Reviews

The Virtual Lunar Module
This is an excellent mainly graphical colour analysis of the construction of the "H" and "J" series Lunar modules developed for the Apollo Program.

There are a few anecdotal facts interspersed with the graphics such as: the unit cost for an LM was $50 million, and that was in the 1960's.Also did you know that they were manufactured and built by hand?

There is less emphasis on the design considerations and development decisions involved which would have been interesting in itself. However the excellent illustrations more than make up for the lack of text. It is literally a step by step collation of images from the start of the construction to the finished article, inside and out.

Well worth adding to your collection, especially if you are of an engineering background or just interested in seeing how these incredible machines were put together to put man on the moon.

Virtual LM
I'm really pleased with this book. Like its sister book, Virtual Apollo, it is a very detailed breakdown, full of exploded engineering drawings, in colour, of the Lunar Module, the PLSS backpacks and the rover. The quality of reproduction is superb and the choice of views and aspects is good. I'm sure Sullivan could have made it twice as thick.

I've reduced it to 4 stars for two reasons. The book is in landscape format. I can see the reason for this, but it is a little irksome to handle. There are also a few careless errors (eg PLSS = Personnel Life Support System (wrong) on one page; = Portable Life Support System (correct) on the next. IGS = internal (*inertial*) guidance system).

Minor details in an excellent book. Buy it if you're interested in Apollo.

Virtual LM
An awesome book, packed full of detail, which really lets you get "underneath the skin" of the LM. It is an ideal reference for model makers, and people like my self who always wondered how did they build that fragile looking machine.