Friday Book Review: Rocket Men

Whoops, I forgot to move this post from the draft to published state. So here is my review of Rocket Men a couple of days later than intended.

When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. I would have liked to be a NHL hockey player but I knew I was good enough but maybe just maybe I could be one of those people going up on the space shuttle. After all Marc Garneau was going up on those shuttles and he was Canadian. One of my all time favourite family vacations included a trip to the Cape Canaveral, Florida where we watched a shuttle take off and visited the Kennedy Space Center where I got this shiny silver jacket with a NASA patch on the shoulder. I probably still have that jacket somewhere at home.

This leads me to Rocket Men The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon. It is an incredible story of the 9 years and 400,000 people it took to send three men (Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins) into space, landing two on the moon and getting them all back safe again.

This is a very interesting book detailing the vast amounts of effort it required from to land men on the moon. It goes into details describing the men of the Apollo 11 mission and how it affected their lives. It truly is amazing how flimsy the lunar lander was, basically a metal cage wrapped in tin foil, and how Armstrong and Aldrin nearly were stuck on the moon only saved by some quick thinking an a felt tipped pen. Which is where I'm guessing The Simpsons get their inanimate carbon rod joke from.

For fans of space this is an excellent book to go out and buy but if you are just casually interested I suggest borrowing it from your local library.