Lost Moon
Recounts how after only fifty hours into its flight to the moon, the Apollo 13 space ship was rocked by an explosion, and tells how the ship was brought under control, and the crew safely returned to earth.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
14mentions
8people
2012–2025years
57% recommend43% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I highly recommend his book with Jeffrey Kluger, “Apollo 13”, originally published as “Lost Moon” in 1994.
- Jeffrey Kluger also wrote Lost Moon, about Apollo 13, in collaboration with Jim Lovell. That is also an excellent read.
- If you are even tangentially interested in the Apollo program, or by extension Apollo 13, I can strongly recommend the book "Apollo 13", formerly sold as "Lost Moon", by Jim Lovell and Jeff Kluger.
The book briefly outlines Lovells early life and career as a test pilot up to the Gemini and Apollo programs, and the Apollo 8 mission before spending the bulk of the book recounting Apollo 13.
Even on the earlier missions and programs, the book is full of interesting tidbits, anecdotes and explanations. Particularly with Apollo 13 it is IMO quite gripping to read about the myriad of issues that came up and how they were discussed and dissected on the ground to systematically come up with a viable solution.
From the movie adaptation, I guess one of the more commonly know issues was the LiOH CO2 scrubber, where the CSM canisters didn't fit into the LEM. While apparently a lot less dramatic in real life, there were tons of other issues that the movie glossed over, from accidentally loosing navigation data while moving over from one computer to the other, the two course correction burns that were needed, exploding lead-acid batteries on the LEM, etc...
Anyway, as I said before, it's IMO a good read and I can strongly recommend the book.
- I also recommend Lost Moon (which is sometimes published as Apollo 13). I've joked with people it's the same story, except in outer space. If by "story" you mean getting the feeling every 20 pages or so of "they are dead now for sure," then it's not really that much of a joke.
I read both of these around the same time and loved them both.
- The story of Apollo 13 never gets old for me. I enjoyed Lovell's book, Lost Moon [1] (and despite its occasional dramatic liberty/deviation, I rate the film Apollo 13 highly), and I can't resist plugging again on HN the Apollo in Real Time site [2], which features Apollo missions 11, 13 and 17. I keep returning to 13.
- Second this recommendation for the book and miniseries. Jeff Kluger and Jim Lovell's Lost Moon (retitled Apollo 13 after the movie based on it) and Kluger's Apollo 8 are also good reads.
For podcast listeners, these episodes of the Omega Tau podcast cover the Apollo hardware at a very high level of detail:
http://omegataupodcast.net/239-the-saturn-v-launch-vehicle/ http://omegataupodcast.net/83-how-apollo-flew-to-the-moon/ http://omegataupodcast.net/97-how-apollo-explored-the-moon/ http://omegataupodcast.net/167-the-apollo-guidance-computer/ http://omegataupodcast.net/218-a-life-in-apollo/
