5 Stars for Lost Moon

Summary: 

In April 1970, during the glory days of the Apollo space program, NASA sent Navy Captain Jim Lovell and two other astronauts on America's fifth mission to the moon. Only fifty-five hours into the flight of Apollo 13, disaster struck: a mysterious explosion rocked the ship, and soon its oxygen and power began draining away.

What begins as a smooth flight is transformed into a hair-raising voyage from the moment Lovell calls out, "Houston, we've got a problem." Minutes after the explosion, the astronauts are forced to abandon the main ship for the lunar module, a tiny craft designed to keep two men alive for just two days. But there are three men aboard, and they are four days from home. As the hours tick away, the narrative shifts from the crippled spacecraft to Mission Control, from engineers searching desperately for solutions to Lovell's wife and children praying for his safe return.

The entire nation watches as one crisis after another is met and overcome. By the time the ship splashes down in the Pacific, we understand why the heroic effort to rescue Lovell and his crew is considered by many to be NASA's finest hour.

Lost Moon is the true story of a thrilling adventure and an astonishing triumph over nearly impossible odds. It was a major Oscar(R)-nominated motion picture directed by Ron Howard and starred Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon.

Review:

On the outside, Lost Moon by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger tells story about three astronauts that almost didn’t make it back from space, but inside this book is the deeper story of a nation bent on beating another, creating a paranoia and fear beneath the umbrella of Communism and The Cold War. Russia started this cold competition with Sputnik, leading to greater space flights before we could catch up.

Russia lost its lead on July 20^th, 1969 when our Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Even if folks don’t know many of the details, most people know what Neil Armstrong said when his feet touched the moon – “That’s one small step for man, and one giant leap for man-kind.” After, Russia lost a craft on the moon and gave up. We won. The days that followed were the glory days of the Apollo space program. And then, disaster struck with Apollo 13. Astronauts Lovell, Swigert, and Haise lost oxygen due to an unexplained explosion.  

The next line we remember as a nation about the NASA space flights are Jim Lovell’s words, “Houston, we have a problem.” Now, in as much as heroism followed Armstrong when he landed on the moon and captivated plethora amounts of fans; we should also follow Lovell, Swigert and Haise. As these men continued to lose power and oxygen; they remained calm brainstorming solutions with Houston back home until they landed in the ocean back on earth.

Lost Moon is loaded with engineering jargon, which I admit took my literary mind more than a second to grasp tiny fragments of the engineering genius it took to get home, meanwhile oxygen levels minimalized. The understandable knowledge that held my attention revolved around the central idea held by the three men – oxygen levels could support two, not three of them, if they couldn’t figure a way to power home soon. This kind of deadline kept you reading.

The other information exposing the dangers of space flight to these astronauts/heroes happened prior to their flight. Not long before Lovell jumped aboard Apollo 13; he lost his friend Ed White to a fire that started in the cockpit of a rocket during training. Before I read this book, I took our incredible space flights for granted. They fell in line with a whole other list of heroic activities due surfeit amounts of respect and awe, but with my little understanding of the complications, problems and pure brilliance that made history.

Other than awakening a further understanding of space flight, Lost Moon, did a more than adequate job on the characterization of Jim Lovell. This book made him come to life with small details painting him human. For example, when Lovell was a kid he stumbled into a corporate office asking for potassium nitrate, Sulphur, and charcoal, so that he and his seventeen-year-old friends could build a rocket. Just so happens though, unless these three ingredients are packed right they create gunpowder - not rocket fuel.

This told me two things about Lovell making me root for him: 1) Lovell loved flying from an early age, and followed that dream. 2) Because Lovell didn’t know about the gunpowder, he had a lot to learn, and so he did. He played a massive part in saving his friends, Swigert and Haise, flying home in Apollo 13.