The remarkable story of the trailblazers and the ordinary Americans
on the front lines of the epic mission to reach the moon. President
John F. Kennedy astonished the world on May 25, 1961, when he
announced to Congress that the United States should land a man on
the Moon by 1970. No group was more surprised than the scientists
and engineers at NASA, who suddenly had less than a decade to
invent space travel. When Kennedy announced that goal, no one knew
how to navigate to the Moon. No one knew how to build a rocket big
enough to reach the Moon, or how to build a computer small enough
(and powerful enough) to fly a spaceship there. No one knew what
the surface of the Moon was like, or what astronauts could eat as
they flew there. On the day of Kennedy's historic speech, America
had a total of fifteen minutes of spaceflight experience-with just
five of those minutes outside the atmosphere. Russian dogs had more
time in space than U.S. astronauts. Over the next decade, more than
400,000 scientists, engineers, and factory workers would send 24
astronauts to the Moon. Each hour of space flight would require one
million hours of work back on Earth to get America to the Moon on
July 20, 1969. More than fifty years later, One Giant Leap is the
sweeping, definitive behind-the-scenes account of the furious race
to complete one of mankind's greatest achievements. It's a story
filled with surprises-from the item the astronauts almost forgot to
take with them (the American flag), to the extraordinary impact
Apollo would have back on Earth, and on the way we live today.
Charles Fishman introduces readers to the men and women who had to
solve 10,000 problems before astronauts could reach the Moon. From
the research labs of MIT, where the eccentric and legendary pioneer
Charles Draper created the tools to fly the Apollo spaceships, to
the factories where dozens of women sewed spacesuits, parachutes,
and even computer hardware by hand, Fishman captures the
exceptional feats of these ordinary Americans. One Giant Leap is
the captivating story of men and women charged with changing the
world as we knew it-their leaders, their triumphs, their near
disasters, all of which led to arguably the greatest success story,
and the greatest adventure story, of the twentieth century.
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