Monday, July 27, 2009

When We Left Earth (09): The Lost and Forgotten Missions

David J. Shayler; Apollo: The Lost and Forgotten Missions (Springer-Praxis; 2002; ISBN 1-85233-575-0; cover from a NASA photograph).

In this volume Shayler concentrates on two forgotten or overlooked bits of Apollo program history: missions that were flown but are ignored and missions that were planned but later scrapped. For example, he looks at all the test missions for Apollo such as the "boilerplate" tests of the escape system. He examines two "failures", one successful (Apollo 13) and one not (Apollo 1). And he looks at Apollo missions that were canceled, both the wide-ranging "Apollo Applications" missions (the only one that was flown was Skylab) and the missions to the Moon that were cut (anything beyond Apollo 17). Highly recommended.

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