How Apollo flew to the Moon

David Woods

Stung by the pioneering space successes of the Soviet Union, the United States gathered the best of its engineers and set itself the goal of reaching the Moon within a decade.

David Woods tells the exciting story of how the resulting Apollo flights were conducted by following a virtual flight to the Moon and back. From launch to splashdown, he hitches a ride in the incredible spaceships that took men to another world, exploring each step of the journey and detailing the enormous range of disciplines, techniques and procedures the Apollo crews had to master. While describing the tremendous technological accomplishment involved, he adds the human dimension by calling on the testimony of the people who were there at the time.

In How Apollo Flew to the Moon there is a wealth of fascinating and accessible material: the role of the powerful Saturn V, the reasoning behind trajectories, the day-to-day concerns of human and spacecraft health between two worlds, and the sheer daring involved in traveling to the Moon in the mid-twentieth century.

Table of Contents

• List of Illustrations
• Author's Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
  1. Apollo: an extraordinary adventure
  2. The Apollo flights: a brief history
  3. Launch: a fiery departure
  4. Earth orbit and TLI
  5. Retrieving the lander
  6. Navigating to the Moon
  7. Coasting to the Moon
  8. Entering lunar orbit: the LOI manoeuvre
  9. Preparations for landing
  10. Next stop: the Moon
  11. Orbital sojourn: looking at the Moon
  12. Rendezvous and docking
  13. Heading for home
  14. Re-entry
• Epilogue
• Glossary
• Further reading
• Index

Extent: 424 pages; 8-page colour section
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: January 2008
ISBN: 978-0-387-71675-6

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