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Lost
Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13
By the Commander of Apollo 13 - Jim Lovell.
In 1970, during the glory days of the Apollo Program, NASA sent Jim Lovell and
two other astronauts on a mission to the Moon. Only 55 hours into the flight,
disaster struck when an explosion rocked the ship draining the essential oxygen
and power. This book chronicles the full story about this moon shot which has
been described as the successful failure. This is the book that the movie
Apollo 13 was based on staring Tom Hanks. |
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The Last Man on
the Moon
By the Commander of Apollo 17 Gene Cernan.
This is a down-to-earth account from the last man to walk on the
moon. It chronicles the career of Astronaut Gene Cernan in his own
words. I found the book very easy to read as well as providing information
which I never knew before. |
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Failure Is Not An Option: From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond
By Flight Director Gene Kranz
This book chronicles Kranz's experiences in the trenches of Mission
Control
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John Glenn: A Memoir
By John Glenn.
Get this new and highly anticipated autobiography that spans Glenn's amazing life from Astronaut to Senator to Astronaut again! |
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Apollo: An Eyewitness Account
By Alan Bean LM Pilot and Moonwalker of Apollo 12.
Alan Bean became the 4th man on the moon during the Apollo 12 mission
and in the intervening years has been capturing that experience on canvas. This book showcases a life's work and the unique perspective of an
astronaut/artist. |
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The Way of the Explorer
By Edgar Mitchell, Moonwalker from Apollo 14.
A truly fascinating autobiography of the 6th Moonwalker. Mitchell reconciles the supposed dichotomy of religion and science through his own
unique experiences and earnest quest for understanding the universe. A great and insightful book. |
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Schirra's
Space
By Wally Schirra, Mercury, Gemini & Apollo Astronaut.
Wally Schirra does an excellent job in giving his first hand account of the NASA program, missions,
and astronauts. His opinions really open you up to some insightful thoughts about the space
program and those who were involved in it. |
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The
Unbroken Chain
By Guenter Wendt, Pad Leader
Wendt's autobiography is a ground shaking, fumes in your nostrils documentary of the glory days of
manned spaceflight. It is described in graphic detail by the one man who worked side by side with
every astronaut that left the Cape bound for space. |
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The
Return
By Buzz Aldrin, Apollo Moonwalker.
Fictional story were a former astronaut Scott Blackstone has been instrumental in reinvigorating the flagging American
space effort. NASA has retained his firm to manage "Citizen Observers" - a
programme to bring Americans from all walks of life on selected space missions. Then, a tragic shuttle accident occurs. |
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Encounter
With Tiber
By Buzz Aldrin, Apollo Moonwalker
Buzz Aldrin, one of manned space flight's pioneers, has helped create a stunning, possibly
prophetic novel of the future of space exploration. A radio beacon from an unknown world
leads an astronaut to disaster on the Moon -- and his son far beyond that as he searches
for the key to the mystery of Tiber, a civilization who left artifacts in the solar system
some 9,000 years ago |
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Leap
of Faith
By Gordon Cooper, Mercury & Gemini Astronaut.
His recounting of the whole range of
his experiences with NASA in the days of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo has the distinct
feeling of truth, no matter how un-sugarcoated it might be. And his first-hand impressions
of his fellow astronauts, is one of the few clear pictures of those diverse (and not always heroic) personalities who launched America into space that
I've read. |
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Deke!:
U.S. Manned Space
By Deke Slayton
The autobiography of one of the original Mercury Seven
astronauts, this is one of the best additions to the literature of the
early American space effort. Slayton, who'd first flown as a World War II
bomber pilot, came to the space program by a somewhat circuitous route. He
was grounded in 1962 because of a heart murmur, and actually flew as an
astronaut only once, in the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission. |
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Flight
My Life in Mission Control
By Chris Kraft
For Kraft, frightening moments were part of his job as director of Mission Control. He
encountered many of them in the early years of the space program, when failures were
commonplace and all too often caused not by mechanics but politics. We learn of many in Kraft's
pages. |
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A
Man on the Moon
By Andrew Chaikin
A decade in the making, this book is based on hundreds of hours
of in-depth interviews with each of the twenty-four moon voyagers, as well as those who contributed their brain power,
training and teamwork on Earth. In his preface Chaikin writes, "We touched the face of another world and became a people
without limits." |
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Carrying
the Fire
By Michael Collins, Gemini & Apollo Astronaut.
In 1969, Michael Collins went to the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the
historic Apollo 11 flight. When he came back, he wrote the finest account we have of the
training and the experiences of a test pilot and astronaut. This is the story of one of the
great adventures of this century. |
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Korolev : How One Man Masterminded the
Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon
By James Hartford
The history of the intensely secretive Soviet space program makes
a riveting backdrop to this lucid biography of the dominant figure in that program, Sergei Korolev (1907-66). A brilliant engineer
and superb organizer. |
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Exploring
the Moon: The Apollo Expeditions.
By David Harland
David Harland's book is one of the finest I have ever seen on the Apollo program or on Solar
System exploration in general. Getting beyond the technical aspects of space flight, the spacecraft or
the astronauts' personalities which have been done by other authors, this book brings out the
excitement of exploration and the discovery of the unknown that the Apollo
astronauts participated in. |
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Chariots
for Apollo: The Untold Story Behind the Race to the Moon
By Charles Pellegrino & Joshua Stoff
There are countless books chronicling the race to the moon and the triumphs of the Apollo
program. Most of them are well worth reading too. Chariots sets itself apart though.
Rather than celebrating the astronauts, or even the flight controllers and ground crews,
Chariots goes behind the scenes at Grumman Aerospace Corporation, the company that
won the contract to build the Lunar Module (LM). |
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