NASA Apollo 11 : An Insight into the Hardware from the First Manned Mission to Land on the Moon

On July 20, 1969, US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. The Apollo 11 mission that carried them and fellow astronaut Michael Collins on their epic journey marked the successful culmination of a quest that, ironically, had begun in Nazi Germany thirty years before. This is the story of the Apollo 11 mission and the ‘space hardware’ that made it all possible. Author Chris Riley looks at the evolution and design of the mighty Saturn V rocket, the Command and Service Modules, and the Lunar Module. He also describes the space suits worn by the crew, with their special life support systems. Launch procedures are described, ‘flying’ the Saturn V, navigation, course correction ‘burns’, orbital rendezvous techniques, flying the LEM, moon landing, moon walk, take-off from the moon, and earth re-entry procedure. Includes performance data, fuels, biographies of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, Gene Kranz and Werner von Braun. Detailed appendices cover all of the Apollo missions, with full details of crews, spacecraft names and logos, mission priorities, moon landing sites, and the Lunar Rover.

Dr. Christopher Riley is a broadcaster and filmmaker specializing in history and science documentaries. In 2004, he won the Sir Arthur Clarke award for the BBC1 blockbuster series Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets. His film In the Shadow of the Moon: The Story of the Apollo Astronauts, won the World Cinema Audience Award in 2007.

Phil Dolling is an award-winning executive producer who has worked for the BBC on many television programs, including Tomorrow's World, Space, Human Instinct, James May's 20th Century, and Earth: The Power of the Planet. He was also in charge of the coverage of the Total Eclipse in 1999. Phil has also written books and articles on the science and technology of the 20th century.