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As a child, David Woods was enchanted by the Apollo missions and it never really
left him. With the arrival of the internet, his interest blossomed.
For making NASA's history books available on the web, I
received a Special Service Award from NASA in 1997. A year later the first pages
of my next project, the
Apollo Flight
Journal (AFJ), appeared. The AFJ is an annotated transcript of the
Apollo flights that follows the lead of the ALSJ. As I learned more and more
about the flights, I was struck at how my admiration and astonishment for these missions
never waned. On the contrary, it continued to grow. It is my hope that this is the kind of book that the space geeks will tell the newbies about to get them up to speed on the incredible Apollo missions. I certainly wish I had something like it in the 1990s when my interest in Apollo reawoke. It revisits the early history of Apollo and runs through what each flight achieved. The major part of the book then follows a virtual flight, explaining each stage from launch to splashdown. Throughout, it draws upon the experiences and words of the crews to help tell the story of the missions, their equipment and the procedures that had to be strictly followed if success was to be gained. The advantage of this approach is that the personalities of the crews shine though as they describe the problems and the sheer wonder of flying to the Moon and as a result, it humanises the book. For the book’s cover, I borrowed a
style from
pulp SF magazines where a large banner (usually a word
beginning with ‘A’ (Amazing, Astounding)) would sweep across the top of the page
above a
drawing of a fabulous spaceship flying above some luridly-coloured world. In the
new edition, designer Stewart Ramsay has taken my efforts of the first edition
to a new level, all to assure the reader than this is not a dry, technical tome,
but rather a collection of tales of fantastic technology allied with human
bravery and ingenuity – stories from a time when science fiction dreams were
realised in front of our eyes.
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© W. David Woods 2011-2013. Site Design by Kevin J. Woods. |
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I am part of that stratum in society who watched the
Apollo Moon landings as youngsters and if the truth be told, the enchantment
has never really left me. The arrival of the internet in the 1990s blew pure
oxygen over the embers of this fascination and I began to get involved in the
portrayal of Apollo on this new medium. At the core of this was the
