Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon

790 Pages·2009·2.18 MB·English

by  Craig Nelson

Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication

PART I
Chapter 1 - Behemoth
Chapter 2 - The General’s Command
Chapter 3 - Anything but What He Is
Chapter 4 - The Sons of Galileo
Chapter 5 - Mr. Cool Stone
Chapter 6 - Don’t Eat Toads
Chapter 7 - A Way to Talk to God

PART II
Chapter 8 - How the Pyramids Were Built
Chapter 9 - Total Cold War
Chapter 10 - The Bluff at Nobleman’s Grave
Chapter 11 - The Fluid Front
Chapter 12 - The Transfiguration

PART III
Chapter 13 - The Great Black Sea
Chapter 14 - The Birth of the Moon
Chapter 15 - The Eagle Has Wings
Chapter 16 - One of Those Sad Days When You Lose a Machine
Chapter 17 - “Mr. President, the Eagle Has Landed”
Chapter 18 - To Rediscover Childhood
Chapter 19 - A Tenuous Grasp
Chapter 20 - We Missed the Whole Thing
Chapter 21 - Through You, We Touched the Moon
Chapter 22 - When All Those Curves Lined Up

Praise
Acknowledgements
Notes
Sources
Index
ALSO BY CRAIG NELSON
Thomas Paine
The First Heroes
Let’s Get Lost

VIKING
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First published in 2009 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © The Craig Nelson Company, Inc., 2009
All rights reserved
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journey by Michael Collins. Copyright © 1974 by Michael Collins.
Photographs from NASA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Nelson, Craig, 1955-
Rocket men : the triumph and tragedy of the first Americans on the moon / Craig Nelson. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-05773-5
1. Project Apollo (U.S.) 2. Space flight to the moon. 3. Astronautics—United States—History—20th century. I. Title.
TL789.8.U6A559 2009
629.45’40973—dc22 2008051175
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Dedicated to the 400,000 men and women of Apollo.
You made the dream come true.
Then what am I [when flying]—the body substance which I can see with my eyes and feel with my hands? Or am I this realization, this greater understanding which dwells within it, yet
expands through the universe outside; a part of all existence, powerless but without the need for power; immersed in solitude, yet in contact with all creation?
—Charles Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis

Ad astra per aspera—
A rough path leads to the stars.
—Apollo 1 Memorial, Kennedy Space Center