For people who grew up during the Apollo program and manned missions to the Moon, Andrew Smith's Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth has an intriguing premise. He sets out to find and interview the men who walked on the Moon and see how it affected their lives. Unfortunately, it ultimately yields the conclusion that many people now seem to have of the Apollo program—a lengthy journey that is ultimately more symbolic than substantial.
Smith's idea stemmed from happening to meet with Charlie Duke, who walked on the Moon as part of the next to last Apollo mission, the day after the death of Pete Conrad, the commander of Apollo 12 and the third man to walk on the Moon. Smith began to wonder about the nine Moonwalkers still alive and the fact it is likely that in our lifetime there will be no one alive who accomplished that feat. Smith, born and initially raised in the U.S. during the Apollo program but now a resident of Great Britain, sets out to interview the surviving Moonwalkers to assess how the experience impacted their lives and what, if anything, it means for our own.
Smith could more accurately subtitle the book something like "my personal search to recapture my youth during the Apollo program by talking to Moonwalkers." The book is as much about Smith's own thoughts and feelings as it is Apollo or any of the individual astronauts, their family members or others he interviews. While that is not a bad thing in and of itself, he aggravates the situation by approaching his topic much like a Moon landing itself.
Just as a lunar mission required orbiting the Moon before a landing, Smith seems to write in a similar fashion. For example, Smith tells us in one chapter that he is setting out to visit Dotty Duke, Charlie's wife, to obtain a spouse's view of the Apollo program and the impact of the Moon landing on the Moonwalker and his family. Before we get to Dotty, though, we sit through a conversation with Andrew Aldrin, a son of the second man on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin. Once that is completed, we move to a description of the town in which the Dukes live and the hotel in which Smith is staying.
This, somehow, then leads into a discussion of the problems associated with urinating and defecating in zero gravity and Smith tracking down the astronaut who reportedly took enough Imodium that he wouldn't have to defecate during his eight-day trip to and from the Moon. Somehow then using women's menstrual cycles as a segue, we shift to the recollections of the first wife of Scott Carpenter, who flew the second manned orbital flight but never was an Apollo astronaut. We then hear comments from a few other wives of astronauts before ending up in the Dukes' living room, with sufficient description of its contents and what the Dukes are wearing. We finally end up hearing from Dotty (and Charlie) more than halfway through the chapter.
Article comments
1 - Pat Cummings
This book review has been selected for Advance.net. You'll be able to find this and other Blog Critics reviews at such places as Cleveland.com’s Book Reviews column.
2 - Paul Cooper
I think having read the book that it brings into sharp relief for me the question: was it worth it? To me the answer that Andrew implies and I now see more clearly is that it depends on whether the outcome rather than the act itself prevails and makes a difference longer-term. E.g was Vietnam worth it? No (in my opinion) because the outcome did not prevail finally. The jury is currently out on Iraq. For Apollo I give the same answer as for Concorde. No because in the end they were technological dead ends. Both in effect were accomplished two decades too early. And because the outcomes did not then become sustained (e.g. the moon was not used as a stepping stone to planet exploration - recalling as per Arthur C. Clark that energy-wise the moon is halfway to the planets) Apollo must be viewed, alas, as ultimately a one-time stunt that may have actually stopped more longer approaches prevailing.
I'm also so sad about the failure of Deke to send someone other than straight techos to the moon for the first journey. What a shame that Pete and Al Bean weren't first. Instead we got a crew of machines (okay - I acknowledge that they had a hard job to accomplish) and the population switched off.
I note also that Andrew didn't really refer to Gagarin - I wonder if anyone recalls his own description of his return to earth from orbit? Wow I remember it to this day - "I was in a ball of fire plunging earthward!" Poetic.
And all this son-father stuff in the book rings true. My dad for example seems to want me to believe it was all hoax - it's like all dads want to burst the bubble on our precious innocent memories of those days. Why? Perhaps because they didn't really feel the emotional wonder of it - it's like only boys and some girls younger around 10 - 13 really felt it - take a look at the boy in the film "The Dish" and you see how I felt at the time. Amazing. Never to be forgotten. Not just a blip in our parents busy lives. For me it was a major life epoch. And then nothing was followed up. What a waste. That's the tragedy.
And Neil just doesn't seem to get it if he only wants to talk about future space in the abstract - Andrew is right, people want to connect again to the feeling of the time and help make some sense of the effort and the achievement. And what about the fact that Buzz apparently took not one photo of Neil on the moon (I have heard because he was angry that Neil was first to step down) - and then the irony that their actual faces are never seen because of the mirrored gold visors - so in fact these days every photo of Buzz is assumed to be that of Neil! Talk about poetic justice. Wow no wonder Buzz melted down.
Overall a good and thought provoking book that left me feeling sad I must confess. Paul