Product Description

CD-ROM and Book. Homer himself could not have written a more captivating story than the flight of Apollo 13. On 11 April 1970 veteran astronaut Jim Lovell and his crew mates Jack Swigert and Fred Haise rode atop the ill-fated journey to the moon. The aptly named command module Odyssey and the reluctant lunar module lifeboat Aquarius were to take the three men to a date with the lunar highland area known as Fra Mauro but fate and a faulty circuit in one of the vehicle's oxygen tanks would irrevocably alter their plans and turn the flight of Apollo 13 into an epic to rival the original Odyssey. After an explosion in the service module crippled the spacecraft while it was still outward bound, the crew would spend several harrowing days in near frigid temperatures while the technicians at home worked around the clock to devise new and ingenious ways to keep them alive and bring them home safely. In 1970 some considered Apollo 13 a catastrophic failure but it has since been recognised as one of NASA's truly great moments, when the spirit of daring and ingenuity came to life in the team at Mission Control as they successfully brought the crew home. Some of the rare official documentation of the voyage of Apollo 13 is collected and made commercially available for the first time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #465779 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
A dream come true for dedicated space buffs, the NASA Mission Reports series pulls together an almost overwhelming array of official NASA press kits, operation reports, images, CD-ROM movies, and even dinner menus from some of the space agency's most momentous missions, from Gemini 6 to the many Mars launches.

Series editor Robert Godwin explains in his introduction why the failed Apollo 13 mission (later of Tom Hanks-Ron Howard fame) is particularly deserving of such detail-intensive attention: "Putting aside the high drama of the events, the following documents reveal a side of NASA that is often overlooked, the talents of the management and administrators." Those talents are nowhere more evident than in the minutes from the House Science and Astronautics Committee hearing, numerous internal NASA memos, and the previously classified technical debriefing of the astronauts. Even the pre-mission materials prove interesting, explaining with extensive diagrams the many experiments that never reached the lunar surface.

As with the other excellent instalments in the Mission Reports series, the included CD-ROM backs up the already solid content with searchable documents and choice images and movies, including a long interview with Jim Lovell. (And while the CD works more smoothly on Windows, users on other platforms shouldn't have to work too hard accessing its many jpegs and mpegs.) --Paul Hughes

Review
"Likely to appeal to someone who likes to delve deeply into the workings of NASA..." -- Astronomy Now, August 2001. "An essential read, Apogee should be applauded for producing this material in such an attractive format..." -- Spaceflight, August 2002.

About the Author
Robert Godwin, Editor

Customer Reviews

An Interesting "Before and After" Perspective
For those of you who have seen and enjoyed the earlier volumes in the series you will find the usual format and the wealth of technical detail in the text is extensive . The difference in the case of Apollo 13 is , of course , obvious ! Here , we see the mission as it was meant to happen and the digest of what actually took place . The post-mission postmortem of the cause and nature of the Service Module failure is particularly informative and although it is not explicit , the narrow margin between the life and death of the crew is underlined . Had the explosion taken place any earlier or later in the mission , the prospect of a successful return to earth would , for many reasons , have been extremely remote , if not in many scenarios non-existant .

The CD again has a load of interesting material , some contemporary and fairly well known , but some not . The highlight is the interview with Jim Lovell who must qualify as the most jolly and affable of all the surviving astronauts!

As previously , this is hardly a book for the reader with a passing interest in space history or the mission itself but those already "in the know" will undoubtedly find it a useful text from which clearly set out the facts of this pivotal mission - if the crew had been lost , would congress or the American public have allowed Apollos 14 through 17 to have gone ahead ? Think what knowledge and science could have been lost thereby ?

I was also pleased to note that more volumes are planned for this year and also others in due course for not only the other moon missions but also for to include more Mercury , Gemini and Skylab flights .

Anyone who wants to know about the mission from the purely human perspective should read Lovell and Kluger`s "Apollo 13" , published , I believe , as "Lost Moon" in the US .

Raw details of Apollo 13.
Following the same format as GODWIN's book on Apollo 12 (with the notable difference of the inclusion of the Accident Hearings), this provides a complete picture of the Apollo 13 flight. It is an essential companion to any of the many general books available on the subject. The attached CDROM provides an excellent interview with the Commander, James LOVELL, and an in-flight guided tour of the LM. My only critisism is that certain illustrations have been reduced so far as to prove almost illegible, particularly those on page 230.