Terry Sunday

This book first came out in 1988, the 20th Anniversary year of the Apollo 11 moon landing. It was a horrible book. It was filled from cover to cover with stupendous technical, historical and factual errors of unprecedented magnitude that made it a subject of scornful derision among the knowledgeable spaceflight enthusiasts who reviewed it at the time. Now, in Apollo 11’s 50th Anniversary year, “For All Mankind” rears its ugly head again. Apparently Mr. Hurt and the publisher are eager to capitalize on the hype that accompanies the occasion and earn a few more bucks by misinforming readers. While described as “updated with a new introduction,” I have no reason to believe that any of the hundreds of egregious errors have been corrected. I say this because at least three spaceflight experts that I know of have offered to review the new edition for accuracy for free and with no strings attached. But the publisher never even responded to the offers. I have breaking news for Mr. Hurt and Atlantic Books—a “new introduction” is not going to fix the problems with “For All Mankind.” Unless the book has been completely rewritten from start to finish (unlikely), it will continue to reign unchallenged in its exalted position as one of the two worst spaceflight books ever written. The number of major errors in the first edition of “For All Mankind,” which I assume remain in the reissue, is astounding. Where were the fact checkers??? It’s obvious that Mr. Hurt knows absolutely nothing about the technology that got us to the moon. It’s beyond me why someone with so little knowledge of rocketry and spaceflight would undertake a book of this nature. Don’t believe me? Here’s a little sample (as Dave Barry would say, “I swear I’m not making this up”): On the technique used to ignite the Saturn V’s five first-stage F 1 rocket engines: “A five-hundred-volt charge was shot through the ground cable on the launchpad, and into the trunk of the Saturn 5, where its spark ignited a mixture of highly flammable turboprop gases.” That is so wrong that I don’t know where to start to correct it. Or how about this one, explaining why rockets work in space (where there is no air to “push against”): “The theory of jet propulsion…was a method for tapping the power of the entire universe...[t]he rocket got its power by exchanging the finite momentum generated by its own motors for the infinite momentum generated by the gravitational forces of the solar system.” That should make anyone who even slept through a high school science class cringe. And where are the astronauts while all this “momentum exchanging” is going on? “They literally had to hang upside down from the rafters with their feet locked in titanium clamps bolted to a crossbeam directly above their heads.” Does this conjure up images of the intrepid Apollo astronauts blasting into orbit like so many bats in a church steeple? It’s hard to describe just how bad “For All Mankind” is. It’s inconceivable to me that such a massively flawed, scientifically and technically inaccurate book could find its way to print as the purported story of perhaps the most significant scientific achievement in history. It’s even more inconceivable to me that Atlantic Books would shamelessly foist this train wreck of a book on the reading public at exactly the time when factual accounts of the Apollo missions are most needed. If you have a morbid fascination to see how badly an author who clearly knows nothing about his subject can mangle the facts, check “For All Mankind” out of a library. Otherwise, don’t waste your time.