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annashiv's review
2.0
Not particularly interesting. I mostly enjoyed the stuff that wasn't actually about the guy this was supposed to be about. Gotta say I'm not impressed with these audible originals that are basically just long journalistic pieces or podcasts.
orsuros's review
4.0
A great story of how a man changed the Nasa missions. I enjoyed the balanced coverage of showing equal parts hero and stubbornness.
littleroseygirl's review
3.0
Fascinating account of controversies behind the science that got us to the Moon.
jfkaess's review
4.0
A completely unknown (to most of us) engineer who is almost completely responsible for the fact that we landed on the moon and came back safely before the end of the 60's and why we beat the Russians there. His idea of sending up a command module to circle the moon while having a lunar module to actually land on the moon and then rendezvous with the command module and return to earth was extremely controversial and and opposed by almost everyone else who instead wanted a single vehicle to land on the moon, blast off and return to earth. It would have weighed far too much and would take far too much fuel to be a workable solution for the 1960's and the Russians likely would have beaten us. This is a great story of the engineer who sacrificed his career to make it happen.
laurazdavidson's review
4.0
Really interesting behind-the-scenes look at the adoption of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR) as the method of getting to the moon and back during the space race of the 1960s. Best Audible Original I've heard so far.
darthshep's review
4.0
I love these types of books that give us a peek behind the curtain of what went down during the planning of the moon mission.
ryanpfw's review
4.0
Recommended. Houbolt was an admitted pain in the ass, despite being right a lot, and I did feel the shades of gray in this one. A central point here which I hadn’t given a lot of thought to was that Kennedy’s insistence of a moon landing rushed the projected pace of NASA, was capable of proceeding without building an infrastructure, and may have contributed to an “abandonment” of space in the mid-70s.
I’m sure many books do this very well, but this was a first for me.
I’m sure many books do this very well, but this was a first for me.
apryde6226's review
3.0
This is the story of the guy who pushed for, argued and fought for Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR). Just like any large bureaucratic organization, NASA has a lot of folks who were more interested in position and CYA than in what was the best solution to the goal of getting to the moon before the end of the 60s.
John Hobolt rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, because of his passion for LOR. They didn't want to give him credit for it, even when it was selected over other options like Direct Assent or Earth Orbit Rendezvous.
It was an interesting book, in a lot of ways. However, it also comes across as an "I told you that I was right" story.
John Hobolt rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, because of his passion for LOR. They didn't want to give him credit for it, even when it was selected over other options like Direct Assent or Earth Orbit Rendezvous.
It was an interesting book, in a lot of ways. However, it also comes across as an "I told you that I was right" story.
qalminator's review
4.0
The information presented in this is quite interesting, but superficial enough to make me wonder if I'm really getting the full story. The views presented here as strangely dismissive make me wonder what else was going on behind the scenes. Still, it was fascinating to see that what we think of the "the" way to get to the moon was one of many ideas, and not at all the most prominent until time became a crucial issue.
It was also of interest to me that the original plans for getting to the moon involved building permanent infrastructure to make continued exploration easier to manage. Now that people are discussing going to Mars, people are having similar discussions about balancing time and permanence (and I rather hope they go for permanence this time).
That said, the presentation itself was a bit amateurish in places. Music would fade in and out at odd moments, not always feeling like it fit. In the midst of a speech by JFK, the narrator started reading the words over the JFK recording. Interviews would fade in, starting at low enough volume that I often missed the first few words. Then there were the letter-excerpts. I understand not wanting to read them in full, but the way the snippets were cut together was bizarre and hard to follow. Also, there was a sense that this was put together expecting there to be commercial breaks in between sections, as there was a bizarre amount of repetition of ideas, sometimes even in adjacent paragraphs.
Still, I would count this as one of the better Audible Originals I've picked up (as one of the monthly freebies), taking the tally to:
Good: 2
Mediocre: 1
Bad: 2
(Side note: both of the bad ones were in the thriller genre; the good and mediocre ones were all non-fiction)
It was also of interest to me that the original plans for getting to the moon involved building permanent infrastructure to make continued exploration easier to manage. Now that people are discussing going to Mars, people are having similar discussions about balancing time and permanence (and I rather hope they go for permanence this time).
That said, the presentation itself was a bit amateurish in places. Music would fade in and out at odd moments, not always feeling like it fit. In the midst of a speech by JFK, the narrator started reading the words over the JFK recording. Interviews would fade in, starting at low enough volume that I often missed the first few words. Then there were the letter-excerpts. I understand not wanting to read them in full, but the way the snippets were cut together was bizarre and hard to follow. Also, there was a sense that this was put together expecting there to be commercial breaks in between sections, as there was a bizarre amount of repetition of ideas, sometimes even in adjacent paragraphs.
Still, I would count this as one of the better Audible Originals I've picked up (as one of the monthly freebies), taking the tally to:
Good: 2
Mediocre: 1
Bad: 2
(Side note: both of the bad ones were in the thriller genre; the good and mediocre ones were all non-fiction)