John Rocco - How We Got to the Moon: The People, Technology, and Daring Feats of Science Behind Humanitys Greatest Adventure

Copyright 2020 by John Rocco

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

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Note: All measurements in this book are quoted in Imperial units, rather than metric units, just as they were used during the time of Apollo. Many acronyms are introduced throughout, as that was the shorthand language of the engineers. This text conforms to the NASA Style Guide for NASA History Authors and Editors, with some adaptations for use with young readers.

All art is created by John Rocco except for : Jack Garmans notes courtesy of NASA.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rocco, John, author.

Title: How we got to the moon : the people, technology, and daring feats of science behind humanitys greatest adventure / John Rocco.

Description: First edition. | New York : Crown Books for Young Readers, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Audience: Ages 10 and up | Audience: Grades 4 and up | Summary: This beautifully illustrated oversized guide to the people and technology of the Moon landing by award-winning author/illustrator John Rocco is a must-have for space fans, classrooms, and tech geeks. Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019040738 (print) | LCCN 2019040739 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-525-64741-6 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-525-64742-3 (library binding) | ISBN 978-0-525-64743-0 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Project Apollo (U.S.)Juvenile literature. | Space flight to the moonJuvenile literature.

Classification: LCC TL789.8.U6 A5811459 2020 (print) | LCC TL789.8.U6 (ebook) | DDC 629.45/4dc23

Ebook ISBN9780525647430

The illustrations in this book were created using pencil, watercolor, and digital painting.

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This book,
from launch to splashdown,
is for Hayley.

CONTENTS

Its not a miracle. We just decided to go.

Jim Lovell, astronaut

Between 1968 and 1972, we sent men in giant rocket ships to go to and explore the Moon. This project was called Apollo. For the first time in humankinds history, we left our planet and traveled to another celestial body. This effort is considered one of the greatest technological achievements of the human race. We didnt have cell phones, microcomputers, or the internet. What we did have was a goal: to put a man on the Moon and bring him back safely.

Pressing a foot into the lunar dust became the finish line in a race between two superpowersthe United States and the Soviet Union. Four hundred thousand people, in companies spread all over the United States, worked around the clock to help achieve this goal. To the men and women working on Apollo, it was more than an exploration of this new frontier called space; it was a race for survival. The American way of life was at stake.

The pages that follow attempt to explain how we did it, the challenges we faced along the way, and the ingenious solutions we came up with to get it done. The engineering of the Apollo missions may seem impossibly complex, but I assure you, every bit can be boiled down to the basic building blocks of science and mathematics.

Along the way, you will meet many people, though they represent only the tiniest fraction of the Apollo workforce. Some of them are well known while others are not, but each was an important contributor in this grand adventure.

This is the story of how we got to the Moon.

Children, inspired by the excitement of spaceflight, have come to appreciate the wonder of science, the beauty of mathematics, and the precision of engineering. Young minds in our country and around the world now believe they can do great things. And they can, if they apply themselves as intensely as the Apollo workforce did four decades ago.

Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 commander, on the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing

To understand how we got to the Moon and why we decided to go there, we must first travel back in time: This story begins in the year 1957, a dozen years after the end of World War II. Two superpowers have emergedthe communist Soviet Union and the democratic United Statesboth trying to prove to potential allies and the world that their ideas, politics, military, and way of life are superior.

Both sides possess nuclear bombs that could level entire cities, and they know using these bombs could devastate all of humanitybut they also know having these bombs gives them power, so each side continues to develop bigger and more terrible weapons. The two countries fight not on the battlefield, in a hot war, but with threats and technological achievements in what comes to be known as the Cold War.

As part of this effort, both countries are developing powerful new rockets. These rocketsborn from the minds of German scientistscan be used to carry weapons higher, faster, and farther.

It becomes a race to prove technological superiority and global domination. Its pace is dazzling and frightening, and it will all come together, all its promise and threat, in a metal sphere about the size of a beach ball.

Sputnik

October 4, 1957

It all starts with a beepbeepbeep. People all over the world pick up the faint signal on shortwave radios, and Americans are listening with both fascination and terror.