A plethora of books are being released in 2019 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, arguably the greatest technical achievement in human history. Apollo to the Moon: A History in 50 Objects deserves to be noticed even among that crowded field. This remarkable book by Teasel Muir-Harmony, a curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, tells the story of the technical and human aspects of the Apollo program through a series of objects.
To accomplish that feat, Muir-Harmony uses both her own expertise and a few contributions from noted Apollo scholars. She also includes sections written by two key players in the first steps on our nearest neighbor. From the forward by Michael Collins, command module pilot on Apollo 11, to the closing comments of Buzz Aldrin, the lunar module pilot on the same mission, readers are in for a stunning ride through the familiar and the surprising.
Collins’s forward is especially notable, since he acted as director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum from 1972 to 1978. He was not only a part of the history-making event of Apollo 11, but he has a unique perspective on object curation and oversight. His forward adds gravitas to an engaging and significant book.
What will strike any reader who has a passion for the history of Apollo is the level of detail the author incorporates. The book’s 298 pages cover a broad chronology of the program and include both huge successes like the Mercury Freedom 7 capsule and failures like the Vanguard TV3 satellite. Muir-Harmony tells with great detail and historical context how each of the 50 objects played its part in putting humans on the Moon.
Not all of Muir-Harmony’s choices are obvious. One example of an object many others might never consider an Apollo artifact is the chair John F. Kennedy used during his televised debate with Richard Nixon in 1960. But as you read the author’s account of the story behind that world-changing discussion in front of 70 million Americans, you realize that it’s not just the artifacts that are important to the story, but the people behind them.
Apollo to the Moon brings some of those people to the forefront through what the author calls “Apollo VIP” sections. Nestled between the discussions of the objects, those sections highlight the achievements of notable figures involved in every step of the Apollo program. Some of the VIPs are obvious candidates—for example, Margaret Hamilton, the brilliant software engineer who was one of the key programmers on the Apollo guidance computer. But it is the less well-known figures like George Carruthers, a US Naval Research Laboratory engineer who worked on the far-UV camera and spectrograph that still sits on the lunar surface, whose stories will make readers eager to learn more.
Muir-Harmony describes each object’s point of manufacture, its materials, and its dimensions before diving into its historical background and her rationale for including it. The first artifact showcased in Apollo to the Moon is the pieces of the Wright flyer that the Apollo 11 crew took to the lunar surface. By starting with the Wright brothers, Muir-Harmony steps away from a focus on Apollo as an engineering feat, something she continues to do throughout the book, and instead taps in to the broader history and humanity of the missions. Neil Armstrong’s desire to honor the Wright brothers says as much about the man as it does about the objects. The Wright flyer probably carries as much significance for the first Moon landing as does the first Saturn V rocket.
Although the 1960s space programs Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo were largely politically motivated by the space race with the USSR, they nonetheless delivered outstanding science that we’re still studying. The example in the book is that of the Apollo Moon rocks. The author talks about the number of rocks returned from each mission and the information we gained from them. That chapter gives the reader a taste of how important those rocks have been to our scientific understanding about how the Moon was formed.
Apollo to the Moon closes with a nod to the “new space”—the modern space race largely being driven by commercial entities. The inclusion of Amazon CEO and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, who oversaw the remarkable recovery of the Apollo F-1 engines from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean and their subsequent restoration, is a fitting footnote.
My only criticism of this book is that it leaves you wanting more—more objects, more backstory, more VIP tales. Every page made me think of other objects and stories that deserved their own spotlights. I hope that the author expands on this book—perhaps taking inspiration from the British Museum’s ground-breaking “History of the World in 100 Objects” audio series broadcast by the BBC in 2010.
To say this is simply a book about objects would be doing it a great disservice. Apollo to the Moon reaches out to everyone—not just spaceflight historians or those interested in technical detail, but all those who want to know more about how, a half century ago, an impossible dream became reality. Although it has now been more than 50 years since humanity first reached our nearest celestial neighbor, we’re still marveling at its brilliance.
Nick Howes is the director of Aerolite Meteorites in Europe and an international speaker and conference organizer in the field of spaceflight history. He has written for publications including Sky and Telescope, Popular Astronomy, and the NASA website.
