Counting Down to Apollo — A Personal Record of the Space Race — Est. 1962

Counting Down to Apollo

One American's account of watching humanity reach the Moon

Resources

The places I go when I want to know more. Primary sources, archives, and records of what actually happened.

NASA Primary Sources

  • NASA Image and Video Library — images.nasa.gov — The definitive archive of NASA photographs. Every Apollo mission. Crew portraits, launch photographs, lunar surface imagery, spacecraft diagrams. All public domain. I use this constantly.
  • NASA Technical Reports Server — The mission reports, the post-flight analyses, the anomaly reports. Extremely technical, but worth reading even if you only understand half of it.
  • Apollo Lunar Surface Journal — The complete transcripts of what the crews said on the surface, annotated by historians. You can follow along minute-by-minute.
  • Apollo Flight Journal — The same, but for the entire mission from launch to splashdown. Every voice transmission, every telemetry event.

Books I’ve Read

  • Carrying the Fire — Michael Collins — The best astronaut memoir ever written. Collins was in the Command Module while Armstrong and Aldrin were on the Moon. He writes about what that was like — orbiting alone, out of contact, wondering. He’s a beautiful writer.
  • First Man — James Hansen — The authorized biography of Neil Armstrong. Exhaustively researched. The quietest man in American public life, and one of the most remarkable.
  • Lost Moon — Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger — The story of Apollo 13, told by the commander. I read this in one sitting and then walked outside to breathe fresh air.
  • The Last Man on the Moon — Gene Cernan and Don Davis — Cernan tells his story from Gemini 9 through Apollo 10 through Apollo 17. The last man to walk on the Moon. He says he hopes it won’t always be true.

Astronaut Biographies

The Twelve Men Who Walked on the Moon

  1. Neil A. Armstrong — Apollo 11, Sea of Tranquility — July 20, 1969
  2. Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. — Apollo 11, Sea of Tranquility — July 20, 1969
  3. Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr. — Apollo 12, Ocean of Storms — November 19, 1969
  4. Alan L. Bean — Apollo 12, Ocean of Storms — November 19, 1969
  5. Alan B. Shepard Jr. — Apollo 14, Fra Mauro — February 5, 1971
  6. Edgar D. Mitchell — Apollo 14, Fra Mauro — February 5, 1971
  7. David R. Scott — Apollo 15, Hadley-Apennine — July 31, 1971
  8. James B. Irwin — Apollo 15, Hadley-Apennine — July 31, 1971
  9. John W. Young — Apollo 16, Descartes Highlands — April 21, 1972
  10. Charles M. Duke Jr. — Apollo 16, Descartes Highlands — April 21, 1972
  11. Eugene A. Cernan — Apollo 17, Taurus-Littrow — December 11, 1972
  12. Harrison H. “Jack” Schmitt — Apollo 17, Taurus-Littrow — December 11, 1972

The Three Who Died in Apollo 1

Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White II, Roger B. Chaffee. January 27, 1967. We remember them.