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Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon
Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon
Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon
Ebook164 pages1 hour

Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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“This behind-the-scenes look at the first Apollo moon landing has the feel of a public television documentary in its breadth and detail” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
 
Here is a rare perspective on a story we only thought we knew. For Apollo 11, the first moon landing, is a story that belongs to many, not just the few and famous. It belongs to the seamstress who put together twenty-two layers of fabric for each space suit. To the engineers who created a special heat shield to protect the capsule during its fiery reentry. It belongs to the flight directors, camera designers, software experts, suit testers, telescope crew, aerospace technicians, photo developers, engineers, and navigators.
 
Gathering direct quotes from some of these folks who worked behind the scenes, Catherine Thimmesh reveals their very human worries and concerns. Culling NASA transcripts, national archives, and stunning NASA photos from Apollo 11, she captures not only the sheer magnitude of this feat but also the dedication, ingenuity, and perseverance of the greatest team ever—the team that worked to first put man on that great gray rock in the sky.
 
Winner of the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award
 
“An edge-of-your-seat adventure . . . Lavishly illustrated . . . This exhilarating book . . . will captivate.” —Chicago Sun-Times
 
“Thimmesh gives names and voices to the army that got Neil Armstrong and company to the moon and back. The result is a spectacular and highly original addition to the literature of space exploration.” —The Horn Book
 
“This beautiful and well-documented tribute will introduce a new generation to that triumphant time.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 26, 2006
ISBN9780547349695
Author

Catherine Thimmesh

Catherine Thimmesh is the award-winning author of many books for children, including Girls Think of Everything and Team Moon, winner of the Sibert Medal. Her books have received numerous starred reviews, appeared on best books lists, and won many awards, including the IRA Children's Book Award and Minnesota Book Award. She lives in Minnesota with her family. www.catherinethimmesh.com. 

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Rating: 4.176829396341463 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Team Moon is a Historic nonfiction book written by Catherine Thimmesh. It is about the Apollo 11 flight to the moon and back. It also talks about many of the “challenges” that they faced. The book begins by telling you everything that it took to make the space craft. The Apollo 11 had a nickname, The Eagle. Neil Armstrong and Buzz were the first men to walk on the moon in 1969. During their trip to the moon they had some MAJOR problems; they didn’t know if they would make it home alive. Steven Bales, the mission controller for guidance and navigation did a wonderful job at helping them with their first major problem, “challenge one”. The book also takes you through the countdown of the miles they have left until the reach the moon. The flight direction of “the eagle” was Gene Kranz. Running out of fuel was a main concern to them. They finally arrived back home eight days later. I would recommend this book to a high school science class. There are several activities that you could teach your students. This book would be great when teaching the solar system. It would also be a great history lesson as well. You could make your students do research and do a time line of the eight days that they were in space. This book was ok. It taught me a lot that I did not know about the flight to space and back. At first I thought it wasn’t going to be interesting until I kept reading. While reading I would get nervous when I would read about the “challenges” that they faced. I would never be able to do that; I would have a heart attack. But overall, it is a great book for teaching about the Apollo 11.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Loved this one! The well-written, snappy prose, paired with excellent and relevant photos, tells an engaging story of the Apollo 11 mission as a whole, from dreams to design to success. Provides excellent back matter with related information, resources, and avenues for further exploration.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a book that I can see me putting in my classroom library. I have Moon Shot currently and I have seen students spending days admiring each and every non fictional picture and chart. This book contains both informational text and photos that tell the story of how the Apollo 11 mission became a reality.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A great read right now, since our final shuttle mission lifted off July 8th. When most people think of the original moon landing, they think of Neil Armstong and his famous quote as he stepped onto the surface of the moon for the first time: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." But who worked to get the three astronauts there, and how did they do it? Team Moon is the fascinating story of so many different little-known parts of the Apollo missions: the computer programmers and mathemeticians, who worked to foresee and solve problems ahead of time, and to solve the ones no one could foresee as they came up during the mission. Check out the photos of the computers they had to work with, and you'll start to understand why they chose to work with paper and pencil sometimes! There were several hundred testers and seamstresses who worked on developing the right combinations of fabrics and materials for the spacesuits to protect the astronauts. The engineers and chemists who worked on the fuel and engines for the rocket and vehicle design were an integral part of the mission also. There were photographers who trained the astronauts to use the movie and still cameras to capture the first steps on the moon, and there were those who designed the parachutes and those who went out to rescue the astronauts once they landed safely back in the ocean. The photos and layout of this book are outstanding, and it is a fantastic choice for everyone!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It’s July 1969, moments after the Lunar Module Eagle had separated from the Command Module Columbia, and 33, 500 feet above the surface of the moon. The Eagle is just beginning its decent."Suddenly, the master alarm in the lunar module rang out for attention with all the racket of a fire bell going off in a broom closet. “Program alarm,” astronaut Neil Armstrong called from the LM (‘LEM’) in a clipped but calm voice. “It’s a twelve-oh-two.”…Translation: We have a problem! What is it? Do we land? Do we abort? Are we in danger? Are we blowing up? Tell us what to do. Hurry!"The speech for President Nixon to deliver in the event the astronauts died on the moon had already been written. Fortunately, other back-up plans were in place. Back on earth at mission control in Houston, the Flight Controller looked to mission controller for guidance and navigation, who intern was in touch with the computer programmer in the back room, meanwhile the Capsule Communicator (CapCom) recalled a similar alarm in a simulated training mission. The LM’s computer was momentarily too busy. Twenty seconds from the call from Eagle the CapCom relayed the message to proceed with the landing as long as the alarm was not constant. Eleven minutes later Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land a spacecraft on the moon. The subtitle says it all, 400,000 people were working with the astronauts, everyone in Mission Control, the engineers working for the contractors that built the Eagle, the Columbia and the parachute system that would return them to earth, the computer programmers, the seamstresses who sewed the spacesuits for the moonwalk, and the radio telescope operators in Australia battling 70 mile an hour winds to capture the television signal and transmit it to an anxious planet. Thimmesh has carefully selected stories of people behind the headlines and presented them in a marvelously illustrated chronicle of the near-crisis by near-crisis events from lift off to splash down during the first moon landing. The Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association awarded the author the 2007 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal for the most distinguished informational book published in English during the preceding year.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This beautiful book gives a play-by-play of the first moon landing with Apollo 11. We've all heard of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. Maybe we've also heard of Michael Collins (the third member of the crew, who flew the ship but did not walk on the moon). But did you have any idea that there were 400,000 other people behind the scenes of the first moon landing? I didn't. Team Moon goes into detail about problems that the astronauts encountered on their trip and the people who rushed to solve them. It includes information about engineers who had to quickly determine why alarms kept going off in the ship and whether they should abort the moon landing, the people who kept the Australian satellite dish steady through high winds so that the images would reach the public on TV, and many others. Information is also provided about the people who worked developing equipment that would help the astronauts. It tells about the seamstresses that helped put together the space suits, the space suit tester, the people who invented the lunar module (the part of the ship that actually touched down on the moon). This book is packed full of information, but short chapters and stunning photos (complete with captions) make it a delight to take in. Very cool book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Story of the Apollo moon landing. Interesting, a little wordy at times, cool pictures.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is a very detailed look at all of the people that were involved in the extensive process of having a man land on the moon. Of course there were many people involved, but I had no idea that there were close to 400,000. This book is written very kid friendly, other than the many lists of accronyms, names, and codes.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Really cool story about the building of Apollo 11. I had no idea how much is involved in building, launching, and bringing home a space shuttle.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    President John F. Kennedy set the goal: put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. America met the goal. But it was with the efforts of hundreds of thousands of people that this goal was met. Team Moon looks behind the act of a man walking on the moon to the work of all the people who got him there and then got him safely back home.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I found this very hard to read. Layout was confusing, I was never really clear what we were talking about or where I was supposed to look on a page. And many pages had white text on grey backgrounds, which I found extremely difficult to read. Switched back and forth betwwen narrator and quotations, but was unclear which was the main text.

Book preview

Team Moon - Catherine Thimmesh

Copyright © 2006 by Catherine Thimmesh

All rights reserved. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2006.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

hmhbooks.com

Front cover images of Earth © ESA / PLI / CORBIS; moon © Denis Scott / CORBIS

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Thimmesh, Catherine.

Team Moon/by Catherine Thimmesh.

p. cm.

1. Project Apollo (U.S.)—Juvenile literature. 2. Apollo 11 (Spacecraft)—Juvenile literature. 3. Space flight to the moon—Juvenile literature. I. Title: Team Moon. II. Title.

TL789.8.U6A582546 2006

629.45'4—dc22

2005010755

ISBN: 978-0-618-50757-3 hardcover

ISBN: 978-0-544-58239-2 paperback

eISBN 978-0-547-34969-5

v3.1119

For the kids of all those thousands and thousands of people who worked on Apollo. For the sacrifices you made—the birthday parties, ballgames, and bedtime stories that your parents had to miss because the moon was calling, and demanding their time. It must have been hard sometimes. But look at what they did! Thanks for sharing them with the world when we needed them most.

And for TeamMoon—all four hundred thousand of you—scattered around the United States, the globe; some, sadly, passed on. At age two and a half, I missed the main event. But hardly an evening goes by that I don’t find myself momentarily transfixed by that glowing sphere in the sky. I’m arrested and awestruck at first by its sheer beauty; and then, by an awareness—trying to suppress both smile and tears—My God, they actually did it! All I can say is thank you.

To the memory of Max Faget, NASA chief engineer and space guru, who would not allow his ailing health to disrupt his generosity of spirit and agreed to speak with me during my research to share his enormous knowledge of Apollo in hopes of inspiring the kids of today.

Beyond Imagination

It was mind-boggling. The television itself had been a flat-out miracle when it began to dominate the scene a mere twenty years previous. And now, that technological wonder of wonders was going to trump itself. Because very soon, if all went according to plan, it would transmit pictures of an actual man, on the actual moon. In 1969, on July 20 (in one part of the world) and July 21 (in the other part), half a billion people on the blue-marbled globe clicked on their TV sets—flush with anticipation—eager to watch as Apollo 11 would attempt to put man on the moon for the first time in all of history. The moon!

A crowd of workers from Grumman—the company that built the lunar module—squeeze together in Plant 3 at Bethpage, New York, to witness the launch of Apollo 11. (photo courtesy Grumman History Center)

And now, at this defining moment, the world had come together—like nothing ever before—not only to wish the astronauts Godspeed, but to bear personal witness to this incredible event. On that day, people gathered: in homes and schools and businesses; in restaurants and shops; and on sidewalks and streets and in parks. They were eager to be a part, however small, of something so out-of-this-world big. If there was a TV in the vicinity, it was on. And people sat. And watched—wide-eyed, waiting.

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. . . . These brave men, Neil Armstrong and [Buzz] Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

Despite rain, thousands of New Yorkers attend a moon-in at Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, watching the live moon telecast projected on a big screen, enthusiastically waiting for Neil Armstrong to set foot on the moon. (photo courtesy of Corbis)

A small television at an outdoor sidewalk café in Milan, Italy, draws a large crowd of spectators for the momentous landing. It didn’t matter that Neil and Buzz were Americans. They were mankind’s representatives, they were men from the planet Earth. [So said the plaque they would leave on the moon.] (photo courtesy AP/Wide World Photos)

Rest in peace? On the moon? Thankfully, no; those ominous words (penned in top secret for President Nixon) were never spoken. But while millions upon millions of people were spellbound and starry-eyed with moon mania (sitting, watching, waiting), those people behind the scenes fretted over more problems and concerns and plans for emergencies than the rest of the world could ever know. The Fate Has Ordained speech was to be delivered in the event that the worst possible scenario came to pass. The speech’s very existence proved that, beneath all the excitement, those people running the show never for a moment lost sight of the all too real dangers they were choosing to run into head-on. And though millions of eyes were focused front and center on the astronauts and the spacecraft, much of the action would, in fact, be taking place on the sidelines.

When those millions of people tuned in hoping to witness the moonwalk, one thing they wouldn’t see (or at best might just catch a glimpse of) were the nonastronauts, those beyond the glare of the limelight. The regular folks whose efforts made an impossible mission possible in the first place. All the people behind the scenes whose ideas and expertise, imagination and inventiveness, dedication and focus, labor and skill, combined in one great endeavor—on the grandest of grand scales—and conspired to put man on the moon. Yes, three heroic men went to the moon; but it was a team of four hundred thousand people that put them there. They were the flight directors, controllers, planners, and engineers; the rocket designers and builders and technicians; the managers, supervisors, quality control and safety inspectors; the programmers, electricians, welders, seamstresses, gluers, painters, doctors, geologists, scientists, trainers, and navigators . . .

Apollo 11 is their story too.

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