Home             My Account             Shopping Cart             Logout

Search form

One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon (Compact Disc)

Staff Pick Badge
One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon By Fred Sanders (Read by), Charles Fishman Cover Image
$49.99

Staff Reviews


The first time man landed on the moon was in July 1969.  With the perspective that comes with 50 years of hindsight, Charles Fishman has written an excellent social history of what that event meant to the country and the world.  "One Giant Leap" delves into not only what the public knew about the voyage, but behind the scenes where no one was intended to go.  The boldness shown by John F. Kennedy when he set the goal of putting "a man on the moon in this decade" began to fade as the costs in both money and political capital began to mount.  The interest of the public began to lag as spaceflight became "routine".  Of course, the goal was reached, and Armstrong's one small step is still the greatest technical achievement in the history of mankind.

— Bill

Description


From New York Times bestselling author of The Wal-Mart Effect, Charles Fishman reveals the untold true story of the men and women charged with taking the United States to the Moon.President John F. Kennedy astonished the world on May 25, 1961, when he announced to Congress that the United States would land a man on the Moon by 1970. No group was more surprised than the engineers at NASA. On the day of the historic speech, America had a total of fifteen minutes of spaceflight experience--with just five of those minutes outside the atmosphere. In fact, Soviet canines had more spaceflight experience than US astronauts. To fulfill President Kennedy's mandate, NASA engineers had to invent space travel. When Kennedy announced his goal, no one knew how to navigate to the Moon. No one knew how to build a rocket big enough to fly to the Moon. No one knew how to build a computer small enough to put on that rocket. No one knew how to feed astronauts in space, and no one knew how astronauts would even use the bathroom in space. And NASA had just nine years to make it happen. In One Giant Leap, Charles Fishman introduces readers to the men and women tasked with putting a man on the moon. From the halls of MIT, where the eccentric and legendary digital pioneer Charles Draper created the two computers aboard Apollo 11, to the factories where hundreds of women weaved computer programs with copper wire, Fishman captures the sweeping achievement of these ordinary Americans. This is the captivating story of men and women charged with changing the world as we know it--their leaders, their triumphs, their near disasters, all of which led to arguably the greatest success story of the twentieth century.


Product Details
ISBN: 9781508286561
ISBN-10: 1508286566
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Publication Date: June 11th, 2019
Language: English

Free Media Mail shipping on U.S. orders over $75