Product Description

CD-ROM and Book. October 1968 and the US manned space program was about to be reborn. An entirely new space vehicle awaited its pilots at Pad 34. After 21 months the three-man Apollo space capsule had undergone a transformation. Over 1300 modifications had been made to the spacecraft following the tragic fire which had claimed the lives of the Apollo I crew. Now the three men who had been back-up crew for that ill-fated mission were faced with the task of flying an all-new space vehicle. It was to be the first manned flight of America's lunar spacecraft and it was to be the first manned launch of Wernher von Braun's giant Saturn lB rocket. The prestigious task of commanding the first Apollo mission was given to Captain Walter M Schirra, a veteran of America's Gemini and Mercury programs. Accompanying him were Command Module Pilot, Major Donn Eisele, and physicist-civilian, Walter Cunningham - both were taking their first ride into space. Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham would be the first men to ride on a Saturn rocket and were then expected to fly the new spacecraft for the full length of a lunar mission. Every single onboard system would have to be tested and studied. Apollo 7 would be the longest first flight of any spacecraft or aircraft in the history of aviation. Incredibly, within nine months of this first manned Apollo mission, two Americans would fly the hardware to the Sea Of Tranquillity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1084495 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Another entry in Robert Godwin's detail-packed, armchair astronaut NASA Reports series, the Apollo 7 compilation includes all the tech-heavy goodies that earlier instalments featured: the official press kit, pre- and post-mission reports, the technical debriefing, dozens of diagrams and colour photos, and even a CD-ROM packed with astronaut interviews, thundering launch footage, and over 500 70mm pictures taken by the flight crew.

Godwin's books are so addictive because they're the real deal--essentially unedited, unaltered artifacts from some of NASA's most hair-raising missions. And while Apollo 7 might not have matched Apollo 11 or 13 for sheer drama, the crew of Wally Schirra, Walt Cunningham, and Donn Eisele had a lot on its hands. It was what would be the longest first flight of any craft in aviation history, the first successful manned launch of Wernher von Braun's Saturn IB rocket, and the first successful restart of the service module's hypergolic-propelled motor after a "cold soak" in space.

Because there's no-one to hold your hand through the details, the Godwin books can be daunting to casual readers. But that same rawness makes this report (like its predecessors) often very funny, fascinating, and revealing, whether it's complaints about head colds and congestion in the post-mission report, or just Wally Schirra waxing space-cowboy in the debriefing ("...I've had a harder landings on a carrier landing. If you ever watch a guy land in a Demon, for example, his head goes bla-lah-lah lah-lah-lah as he rolls out on the flight deck. It's that bad.") --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
Compiled and Edited by Robert Godwin

Customer Reviews

Lots of detail on an undervalued mission
I thought this one was going to be overlooked by Godwin. As ever, the collection of contemporary info and press kits etc is thorough and informative, perhaps more so in respect of the CSM systems and hardware. One must remember, of course, that this was the first manned launch of the Saturn 1b boooster and, more importantly, the CSM itself, which had been highly modified following the Apollo 1 fire nearly two years before.

Much was riding on the mission - if the capsule wouldn`t work for the likely period of a round trip moon mission the whole Apollo regime would have ground to a halt and Kennedy`s goal of getting to and from the moon before the end of the 6o`s would have been practically impossible to reach.

The interviews with Schirra and Cunningham are a good balance of detail for the real tech-heads and of anecdote for the more history-biased readers (like me!). We all know that Apollo 7 is known for Schirra`s alleged "mutiny" and prolonged conflict with Ground Control but both give their own accounts.Interestingly, (and much against the prevailing myth)it seems that only Schirra had the cold, but his character is such that Cunningham indicates that when Wally had a cold, they all had one!!As with the Gemini 6 interview in an earlier volume , Schirra`s humour shows through. Cunningham also tells us of how even he as a space-rookie (without the Mercury and Gemini experience of his commander)soon became used to life in space, eventually running out of experiments and camera film, dismissing the passing vista of the world below with a casual remark - how many of us would like to test our own boredom thresholds in the same way?

Both recognise their shortsightedness in being initially hostile to the pressure to provide live TV from space. What do we all remember now? Those very films, of course, from this and the other Apollo missions.

Another point of interest arises by dint of the fact that Schirra confirms the accuracy of one of the scenes in "From The Earth To The Moon" concerning his mission, as did Dick Gordon in his interview with Godwin on the Apollo 12 CD.

I look forward to future volumes in the same series as they move towards the scientific zenith of the era during the Apollo 15-17 missions.

Apollo 7 preserved on ice.
Following what has become GODWIN's standard format for Apollo missions, this provides a complete and detailed study of the first manned Apollo flight. As usual, not all the documents are an easy read, and the original typos can prove confusing, but their close examination provides rich rewards.

As the years pass by this series of books provides us with the most authentic look these missions available. They remain undimmed by the passage time and the frailties of memory.