How We Got to the Moon book review

 

How We Got to the Moon by John Rocco is a book that I was recently introduced to. I received this book as a prize for scoring highest in an aeronautics quiz at an aerospace engineering camp. The camp instructors facilitated tests on aeronautics and astronautics to 9th-12th graders. The winners of each test received this book as a prize.

How We Got to the Moon Is a nonfiction book so full of information that it stayed interesting the entire time I was reading it. It had very fine details about things that you might have never considered while making a rocket. For example How We Got to the Moon shared things about how the parachutes of the capsules were made, it shared the problems with combustion instability in the rocket engines at the bottom of the massive Saturn V, and it even shared information about how the flight computers worked which was fascinating to me. How We Got to the Moon started at the start of the space program with the launch of the sputnik capsule, the first object to reach orbit. The book progressed through the first launches of humans by the Russians and the Americans. Then How We Got to the Moon explained the creation process of the Saturn V. In my opinion this is the part of it that makes How We Got to the Moon so fascinating to read. In this part of the book the construction process of almost every part of the Saturn V was explained in detail but at the same time simply, so that almost everyone wanting to read it could understand. Most of the pages in this part of the book stated a problem that the engineers faced and then shared the solution employing the use of diagrams and words to make it as digestible as possible. 

After How We Got to the Moon covered the design of the rocket that would get humans to the Moon, the book shared the events of Apollo 11 in chronological order with a countdown on the top of each page. The countdown starts 5 hours before the launch where the crew members are eating their last meal on earth. The countdown goes through the entire mission until splashdown 195 hours into the mission and shows every significant detail in the mission from launch to Lunar landing to re-entry to the earth's atmosphere and finally splashdown.

I fully enjoyed this book, and even though I am interested in space and knew a lot about the early space program, I learned much reading this book. I would definitely recommend this book for people who know any amount of information about space and space travel as an easy read.