The Last Man on the Moon

Cernan, Eugene and Don Davis. The Last Man on the Moon. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1999. Print.

First Sentences:

Friday, January 27, 1967, was another balmy southern California winter day with temperatures in the low seventies, but a blizzard might as well have been hammering the North American Aviation plant in Downey.

Inside the altitude chamber, where Tom Stafford, John Young and I were buckled into a titanium container not much larger than a kitchen table, there wasn't any air, much less any weather.

Description:

Ever wonder exactly what kind of person joins NASA with the expressed purpose to walk on the moon? Wonder what sort of qualifications and training such an astronaut needs both prior to joining the space program and then throughout the program? And what it is like to actually fly in space, suiting up, squeezing into the spacecraft, blasting off, space-walking, and finally walking (and driving a moon buggy) across the lunar surface?

Well, rest easy. Astronaut Eugene Cernan with Don Davis provide all the details of Cernan's
journey as a space traveller in his autobiography, The Last Man on the Moon. From his life before joining NASA to his training for three Gemini and Apollo missions and then walking on the moon, The Last Man has it all.

What makes this book special is the narrative voice of Cernan who calmly lets readers into his mind for every step of the way. Readers follow along as he masters the flight simulators, pilots a lunar landing craft, walks in space (a very dangerous, life-threatening two-hour experience for Cernan), and drives the famous moon buggy. There are also his show-off non-space escapades that nearly killed him and worse yet threatened to remove him from his assigned Apollo mission.

We feel his frustration when, suited up and sitting in his Gemini 9 capsule, the blast-off is postponed with less than two minutes to ignition -  twice. We feel his exhaustion during his spacewalk when he was barely able to return to the spacecraft. And there is his sadness when three fellow astronauts are killed in a launchpad fire, when two other astronauts die in a jet crash, and when a Russian cosmonaut is crushed on re-entry after his parachutes fail to deploy. A death also meant Cernan was bumped up to fill the empty Gemini seat. He later learned that his pilot on this flight, just before blast-off, had a secret briefing regarding the possibility of locking Cernan out of the capsule during his spacewalk if things went haywire and the mission was in jeopardy.

Last Man is full of such details that bring Cernan's experience to life: blasting off with one hand on the D-ring ejection lever; experiencing in-flight nausea (as most astronauts did) but fearing to admit it to NASA in case they remove him from future flights; and the feel of wearing a space suit:

My legs were pushed into those stiff, metal-shrouded pants, and my arms were jammed into the sleeves of that protective cocoon. I tried to flex my fingers and became aware again of the lack of dexterity in the suit, even when it was deflated. It was thicker ... because of the extra layers of insulation needed to protect me from the extreme temperatures I would encounter during my spacewalk.

In 1972 Cernan became the last person to walk on the lunar surface as NASA funds and public interest waned. But what he and 400,000 others in NASA and private industry did to propel their spacecrafts and the men inside on each step over many years towards the moon is an accomplishment all mankind should be proud of. With Cernan's personalized narration of this journey, we can all experience one man's part of this glorious program.

And don't forget, as comedian Bill Dana pointed out, "every one of Gemini's 1,367,059 parts was made by the lowest bidder."

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Smith, Andres. Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth

Interviews with the surviving astronauts who actually walked on the Moon. 
 (previously reviewed here)

Tyson, Neil DeGrasse. Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier

Short reflections by the number one space expert Tyson on a multitude of space-related and exploration questions. (previously reviewed here)