werner von braun

I found this out about werner von braun and considered it was very absorbing.





With the 40th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing, a number of books are being published about what remains the greatest voyage of exploration in history. Two books illustrate how images tell the story of Apollo better than words.

Missions to the Moon by Rod Pyle, Forward by Gene Kranz, is a big, coffee table sized book that recounts the effort to send human explorers to the Moon from the dreams of lunar flight by such writers as Jules Verne through the race to the Moon between the Soviets and the United States, the missions of Apollo, and with a little hint of the current lunar race, joined now by such countries as China, Japan, and India.

Missions to the Moon includes, in little slip cases throughout the book, facsimiles of documents from the first age of lunar exploration. These documents include a copy of a cover letter of an FBI report from 1948 on one Werner von Braun, a hand drawn diagram of the lunar orbit rendezvous plan for taking Apollo to the Moon, the initial Apollo 11 mission report written just after the flight had concluded, a list of proposed landing sites for Apollo lunar missions written in late 1969, including missions that never flew, through Apollo 20, and more besides.

Missions to the Moon is not meant to be a comprehensive history of lunar exploration or of Apollo. It is stuffed full of attractive pictures and makes a good reference for the casual reader.

Moon 3D by Jim Bell is slightly smaller in size, but is also a book about Apollo that tells the story more in pictures than in words. The twist in Moon 3D is that several of the pictures, taking both by robotic probes and by the astronauts themselves, have been digitally altered to appear in 3D. A pair of blue/red glasses are provided in the book for viewing the 3D enhanced pictures.

The idea of rendering lunar photos in 3D is a good one. It reminds one of the film produced by Tom Hanks, Magnificent Desolation, that simulated some of the lunar surface exploration in 3D. The result was spectacular, a hundred times more awe inspiring than the real thing on film or videotape.

The quality of the 3D photos are somewhat hit or miss, though. Some come out wonderfully. Others, such as some of the pictures of just lunar landscapes, do not show the 3D effect as readily. The fact that the 3D glasses are built into the book, requiring one to manipulate the book just so in order to view through them proves somewhat awkward as well.

Sources: Missions to the Moon by Rod Pyle, Sterling, July 7th, 2009

Moon 3-D: The Lunar Surface Comes to Life, Jim Bell, Sterling, June 2nd, 2009