Apollo Moon Missions

This is a celebration of the ordinary men and women who helped land a man on the moon. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued a challenge: the United States would land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth before the end of the decade. It seemed like an impossible task and one that the Soviets - who had launched the first satellite and put the first man into earth orbit - would surely perform first. The ingenuity, passion, and sacrifice of thousands of ordinary men and women, from all walks of life, enabled the space programme to meet this extraordinary goal. In all, six crews would land on the moon. This is the story of those men and women who worked behind the scenes to make these missions a success. They include Julian Scheer, a NASA publicist who successfully argued for the inclusion of a television camera on Apollo 11; Sonny Morea, designer of the Lunar Rover; Hugh Brown, one of the few African Americans who worked on Apollo, who helped monitor Russian submarines trying to jam NASA communication; lightning expert Jo Ann Morgan, one of the few women involved in the space programme; Joan Roosa, widow of astronaut Stuart Roosa, who talks about the sacrifices of the families; and Joe Schmitt, the technician responsible for spacesuits. Thirty years later, they still speak of Apollo with pride, sometimes even awe. Containing a foreword by Apollo astronaut Fred Haise, this work tells the stories of those behind the scenes of the Apollo programme, and includes women and minorities who contributed to the Moon Race.