Destination Moon by Seymour Simon

In Destination Moon, prolific children's science writer Seymour Simon chronicles the events leading up to the American Moon landing in July of 1969. As expected the story opens with United States president John F. Kennedy's famous speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas on September 12, 1962. In that speech, Kennedy challenged America to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. This was the start of the space race between the United States and the Communist Soviet Union.

With each page featuring full colour photographs, Simon begins by explaining the importance of learning more about the Moon to aid in our understanding of the solar system and provides so he provides readers with some basic information about our closest neighbour in the solar system.

The space era was initiated by the launch of the Soviet Union and the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik in October of 1957. The American's followed with their Explorer satellite missions.The Explorer 3 mission confirmed the existence of the Earth's magnetic fields and their protective function against damaging cosmic rays.

Destination Moon describes Project Mercury which ran from 1958 to 1963. Its six missions were designed to place an astronaut into orbit and safely return him to Earth. The group of astronauts chosen for these missions were called the "Mercury Seven" and were chosen from military test pilots. The seven were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton.

Project Gemini which spanned the years 1961 to 1966, was the next step to the moon. Its purpose was to solve some of the problems associated with landing on the Moon. In an attempt to learn more about conditions on the Moon, NASA sent seven unmanned reconnaissance missions using the Surveyor spacecraft to the Moon. Surveyor also tested the use of retro-rockets to slow down a space craft so it could achieve a soft landing.

The objective of Project Apollo from 1963 to 1972, was to land man on the Moon. Simon takes his young readers through the obstacles engineers encountered as they planned the spacecraft that would take man to the Moon. Full colour photographs accompanied by detailed text explain the Lunar Module, the Eagle and its landing on Tranquility Base, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's moon walks and the challenge to return to Earth safely.

As 2019 is the fiftieth anniversary of the Moon landings, Destination Moon is yet another of many  books written for young readers offering them all the details of the race to the Moon and the historic landing on the Moon. Seymour Simon sets the stage in his Author's Note at the very beginning, by recounting his own personal experience of watching the moon walk on the night of July 20, 1969, an event I too remember very well even though I was only ten years old! Seymour Simon was a dad at the time whose two children "Robert and Michael, cheered as Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder of the Eagle and stepped out onto the surface of the Moon."

Seymour Simon includes plenty of factoids throughout his picture book. For example the contribution of the human computers, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan to the success of the early Mercury missions is highlighted. Adults will remember their story as told in the book and movie, Hidden Figures. There is an interesting section on how the Apollo mission impacted the families of the astronauts and mention also of the speech President Richard Nixon had prepared should the astronauts fail to leave the surface of the Moon. Thankfully that disaster never materialized.

The author employs simple text and explains some basic concepts such as escape velocity and rocket stages. Terms that may be new to readers such as seismometer and basalt are highlighted in bold blue text and are explained in the Glossary at the back. A timeline summary of the Race to Space can also be found at the back.


 A great gift for the budding young astronomer.

Book Details:

Destination Moon by Seymour Simon
New York: HarperCollins     2019

DVD: Apollo 11

"...We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too....
But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold."

President John F. Kennedy's speech at Rice Stadium, Houston, Texas, September 12, 1962

In 1962, Kennedy committed the United States of America to landing a man on the moon before the end of the 1960's.  On July 16, 1969 at 9:32 a.m., Apollo 11, the mission to accomplish that feat, was launched into space via a Saturn V rocket from the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida. Aboard were Commander Neil Armstrong, lunar module pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Command module pilot Michael Collins. Four days later, on July 20th, Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon and spent over two hours walking on its surface, while Collins orbited in the command module.

The documentary,  Apollo 11 follows the mission just prior to launch until splash-down on July 24, 1969 in the Pacific Ocean just west of Hawaii.  Apollo 11 is unique in that it relies on archival footage of the mission, from inside Mission Control, to camera footage shot by the astronauts themselves. NASA also located thousands of hours of uncatalogued audio from Mission Control.  This was combined with the archival footage to create a film that followed a timeline from the point of the Saturn V rocket being wheeled to the launchpad to the splashdown, quarantine, and the conclusion of the voyage.  In addition, director Todd Douglas Miller forgoes interviews and narration, instead choosing to chronicle the historic voyage giving viewers a unique insider perspective of the entire voyage.

Apollo 11 presents viewers with some of the most beautiful clear images of the moon landing, of the lunar module in space and of the docking of the lunar and command modules. There are many images of Buzz Aldrin and not so many of Neil Armstrong who held the camera most of the time while on the moon's surface.

To help viewers understand some of the more technical aspects of the voyage, animation of the orbital path around the Earth, the various burns to orient the spacecraft a certain way, the orbital path around the Moon and the separation and docking of the lunar module with the command module were created. An animation of the re-entry path was also created. Other interesting features include a few recordings of the physical condition of the astronauts during the launch and during the descent to the moon's surface. Interestingly during the launch Armstrong's heart rate was 110, while Buzz Aldrin's was a mere 88.

For those old enough to remember watching the launch and who followed Apollo 11 throughout its mission, the film brings back so many memories and emotions; excitement and awe, along with the ever-present fear that something might go seriously wrong. Indeed, the film especially captures the moments of anxiety the various teams at Mission Control experienced. Their relief was palpable for example when communication was re-established every time the command module re-appeared on the side of the moon facing Earth or during the nine minutes of blackout during re-entry at the end of the voyage. And no film about any event in this era would be complete without the voice of Walter Cronkite Jr., news anchor for CBS Nightly News who brought it all to millions of people back on Earth.

For those for whom the voyage of Apollo 11 was merely an event in history, this documentary is very much recommended. It might not have the thrills of modern movies and documentaries, but the complexity of the mission, the enormous number of people involved,  the risks undertaken and the courage to do so, and the fact that for the first time in history man stepped onto another world far from Earth, make Apollo 11 an important record of that accomplishment.

image credit:  https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/hires/a11_h_40_5949.gif