What an enjoyable read! In Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon--The Untold Story, author Jeffrey Kluger, who co-wrote the book that the movie Apollo 13
is based on, details the middle child of the early U.S. space program.
The Mercury missions were the firsts for the program, and Apollo
missions went to the moon. Gemini made those moon missions possible.
Kluger writes in a chatty style, and the book itself is a breezy 300 pages. Naturally there's information about the Mercury program, but I enjoyed the amount of information about the formation of NASA and the decision about where to put manned spacecraft center (Houston). There's a lot about budgets and going to Congress for money and projects going over budget. And it really struck me how many vendors NASA worked/works with to build everything. A lot of my work is basically project management, and the thought of trying to wrangle all these companies on that kind of project is exhausting.
I've read a decent amount about the space program in the 1950s and 1960s and I still learned quite a bit. There were a number of people in the astronaut program whom I don't believe I'd ever heard of, and Kluger does a good job of giving the reader a feel for these men and their personalities in pretty brief snippets. Of particular note was Scott Carpenter sucking (he wasted a bunch of fuel in space when ground control was telling him not to) and Wally Schirra, in his last mission (admittedly it was one of the Apollo missions), also refusing orders from control; Schirra had flown in space three times and knew he wouldn't go again, but the men with him who also disregarded orders were thereafter grounded. (At least the orders they refused were things involving being on television and how to wear their spacesuits, not something that endangered the actual mission, like what Carpenter did.)
Kluger provides a really solid overview of the program. It really brought home what a long shot it was for NASA to get men on the moon in the time frame Kennedy wanted. There were 10 crewed Gemini missions, and 16 men went into space; they achieved rendezvous and docking and long-duration spaceflight and spacewalks. No man was lost, but dang, so very few of the missions actually went according to plan. Gemini achieved what it was supposed to--and, notably, there wasn't a single Soviet mission during the Gemini era--but it seems all the more remarkable when you learn the details of the program.
Definitely recommend for anyone interested in the early space program.
Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for my honest opinion.
Kluger writes in a chatty style, and the book itself is a breezy 300 pages. Naturally there's information about the Mercury program, but I enjoyed the amount of information about the formation of NASA and the decision about where to put manned spacecraft center (Houston). There's a lot about budgets and going to Congress for money and projects going over budget. And it really struck me how many vendors NASA worked/works with to build everything. A lot of my work is basically project management, and the thought of trying to wrangle all these companies on that kind of project is exhausting.
I've read a decent amount about the space program in the 1950s and 1960s and I still learned quite a bit. There were a number of people in the astronaut program whom I don't believe I'd ever heard of, and Kluger does a good job of giving the reader a feel for these men and their personalities in pretty brief snippets. Of particular note was Scott Carpenter sucking (he wasted a bunch of fuel in space when ground control was telling him not to) and Wally Schirra, in his last mission (admittedly it was one of the Apollo missions), also refusing orders from control; Schirra had flown in space three times and knew he wouldn't go again, but the men with him who also disregarded orders were thereafter grounded. (At least the orders they refused were things involving being on television and how to wear their spacesuits, not something that endangered the actual mission, like what Carpenter did.)
Kluger provides a really solid overview of the program. It really brought home what a long shot it was for NASA to get men on the moon in the time frame Kennedy wanted. There were 10 crewed Gemini missions, and 16 men went into space; they achieved rendezvous and docking and long-duration spaceflight and spacewalks. No man was lost, but dang, so very few of the missions actually went according to plan. Gemini achieved what it was supposed to--and, notably, there wasn't a single Soviet mission during the Gemini era--but it seems all the more remarkable when you learn the details of the program.
Definitely recommend for anyone interested in the early space program.
Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for my honest opinion.
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