Thirteen: The Apollo Flight That Failed

I took in this book in a few long reads. It is an absolutely fantastic book. Firstly, it is technically correct beyond most other books on the space program and for a space enthusiast this is exactly what gives it its thrill. Secondly, it has "presence". If you know something about how the Apollo Spacecraft looked and operated and about the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston and how it operated, you "are there": Inside the LM and the command module and in the centre. Combine this book with the TC feature "Apollo 13 - to the edge and back" and with the (almost) realistic "Apollo 13 movie" and you have a triplet on Apollo 13 that gives it all. Well, actually Cooper's book is even more thrilling than the movie because it gives it all through the intricacies and technicalities oif space flight. If you go to U-Tube and find the "voice recording" of the entire Apollo 13 accident, you are most struck by the apparent calm of the voices. If you do not know after "Hourston, Apollo 13, we've had a problem" you would not know a crisis was on. In the Hanks movie they exaggerate the voices and behaviour of the astronauts, actually without any need. The action is thrilling enough without that. I can still remember lying awake during the nights of "Apollo 13" worrying and I sttill feel a chill when reading about the unusually long "black out" during reentry. These were worry some days and indeed "Nasa's greatest moment". This was "their finest hour" to cite Churchill on the "Battle of Britain". Space exploration, including manned ones, are hardly nearer to routine than they were in 1970. The Colu,bia tregady shows us that, but we shall probably never come back to the times of Apollo. For us that experienced the early manned space program, these were "the times". Cooper's book brings it all back as alive as can be. I shall read this book many times more!

I am an Apollo 13 Nerd and thought I knew all there was to know about the mission but I learnt a few things more from this great book. I read the whole book in one hit.It details the "revised" mission blow by blow almost in story book format. How the astronauts were thinking, how mission control were thinking along with a lot of minute detail that most books I have read on the subject (and I've read more than a few) leave out.I recommend this book to anyone from the remotely interested to the most devout of spaceflight historian.

good book