Apollo 13

Hi all,

The book that I have been reading for the last few weeks is Apollo 13, by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger. I have finally finished reading all of the 397 pages, which I finished yesterday evening.

Apollo 13 is about the 13th Apollo Mission - the third mission, which was to land on the moon. Some technical problems happened on the way to the moon, and the land in was aborted. The crew just had to get back to earth alive, with very limited resources, which were steadily decreasing each minute. 

The main topic of the book is space travel and exploration. To me, honestly, I don't believe that this is the most important mission that us as the human race, should be concentrating on. I think before we should go cavorting around the universe, the problems on earth should be resolved. It is good to gain knowledge, but to gain knowledge and using so many recourses and people to do that, I don't believe is necessary. On earth we are having problems with pollution and conserving our earth recourses. We are spending more money on space travel than our earth, and I am not convinced this is the best thing for us and our children and centuries decades beyond.

In this book I actually learned a lot about space travel and the actual procedure. It is a long grueling process to become an astronaut, and another long grueling process to train for a flight .You need to be prepared for anything, so the training is very strenuous and the crew needs to be prepared for everything. I also learned that when a mission goes to space, the ship has to be reinforced with surplus of everything – a lunar landing needs at least 3 full fuel tanks – even though you might not need it.

I found the whole idea of space exploration puzzling, and I was confused a few times about the machinery. The book uses a LOT of technical terms for parts of the spacecraft and the people in NASA and the operations and maneuvers they attempted. I sometimes had to go back a few pages to just make sure I knew what they were doing, or what they were attempting to do to save the mission.

I want to learn more about space exploration, and the other Apollo missions which were successful. I would love to find out how the mission was supposed to go, and how it would of worked. Since the book was quite scary considering the chance of failure, I would love to know if there was the same stress with all the other missions. Another question I have is about the past of the other two members of the mission – Jack Swigert and Fred Haise. We found out a lot about Jim Lovells past, but I don't know anything about the other crew member’s histories, and families and experiences which led up to the mission. I think it would help understanding their actions within the journey. 

Thank you for reading :)