Exploring the Cosmos: An Astronaut's Journey of Discovery

Cliente Amazon: Ottimo libro

Italy on Oct 09, 2023

Sherry: I read this book years ago. It is readily apparent why Michael Collins was qualified to be an astronaut. He gives us a detailed day by day of his training, including little known facts and amusing stories. I purchased this copy to re-read and share.

United States on Sep 30, 2023

Lufa1133: I'm not quite sure what I expected as a well reviewed story of the space race and is said to be one of the best. I did enjoy it but not as much as other space books I've read. It may be of its time but not quite pushing the right buttons for me.

United Kingdom on Aug 15, 2023

Mark Dyer: This is a superb book, written by someone whose understanding covers the whole range from the skills and complexities of flying the craft (of course) to the characters of the people and himself (not all of the participants in The Program were that self-aware), and has the writing skills to communicate the whole lot.

What is the audience is that will find it fascinating? I think if you were 2/3rds interested in the films “Apollo 13” and “First Man” then it’s worth a shot.

I was first struck by the sheer complexity of each and every constituent process of getting from the launch-pad to the moon’s surface and back again. Clearly, I already knew that one didn’t just “point in the general direction, aim off a bit for deflection then press the big red button” but the rehearsals and contingency planning (to name but two) increased my respect a hundred-fold. For example: having 18 scenarios for how the LM would approach the CM from the moon’s surface and notes on how to calculate each rendezvous necessity ahead of time.

The book is very well written, witness the change in style to add excitement amd pace as MC describes the time leading up to the...

United Kingdom on Nov 18, 2020

A. Callow: I bought this book as I had heard that Michael Collins’ ‘Carrying the Fire’ was the best book available covering the Apollo missions to the moon and whilst I have nothing to compare it to, I can certainly believe the claim. Collins is an excellent writer and his book conveys the feelings of a humble and humorous individual who frankly has little to be humble about as like all Astronauts he had to be exceptional just to be selected as part of the 3rd Astronaut intake (having failed in his bid to be taken on in the 2nd – proving persistence is a virtue).
The book was written in 1974, Collins having retired from Nasa in January 1970, just a few months after Buzz Aldrin. I suppose there is not much challenge left to a man who had flown to the Moon though I had always felt it must have been disappointing for Collins to have gone all that way and not set foot on the surface. I now know different, Collins was offered further flights and it is likely he would have commanded Apollo 17 had he opted to remain with Nasa though this book reveals just how tough, in particular on the families of the Astronauts, and dangerous the job was. Today we look back on Apollo and tend to forget...

United Kingdom on Feb 12, 2018

Kevin Orrman-Rossiter: An enduring image of an ‘astronaut’ was created for the public by NASA, Time magazine, and Tom Woolf’s The Right Stuff. These caricatures of the original seven American astronauts, the so-called Mercury-7, chosen to assert American supremacy over the communist threat of Sputnik have seemingly endured way past their use by date. A resurgence in interest in ‘astronauts’ was made almost single-handedly in the English speaking world by the Canadian Colonel Chris Hadfield. His much publicised exploits, through the media of YouTube, as commander of expedition 35 aboard the International Space Station made obvious a change from May 5, 1961 when Alan Shepherd rode Freedom 7 into the history books.

In his autobiographical An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, the now retired Hadfield provides one of the most readable and honest stories of his journey from being a glider in the Royal Canadian Air Cadets in 1975 to commanding the international space Station in 2013 - after ‘only’ 21 years of astronaut training. He candidly describes the effort and training to get to being a modern astronauts - studying, practicing, learning, waiting, preparing for the worst - then...

United States on Apr 13, 2014

Dirk Turgid: Michael Collins has a genuine gift with prose; he describes precisely and with flair, has a deadpan wit that can be as dry as the desert and as innocent as a lamb, and is simply the finest writer of the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo astronauts. His book gives a first-hand account not only of the selection process that he endured, but the hectic, colorful, Astro-A-Go-Go world of Houston in the Sixties.

He somehow resists the urge to turn his story into self-adulation, bully pulpit, or tedium; an urge that seemingly overpowered many of his fellow astronauts when they 'wrote' their own books. His 'reporter's eye' and droll wit is especially surprising in someone that is a military academy graduate, career officer (he retired with great distinction as a lieutenant general), and a trained engineer.

Collin's description of the training and flight of Gemini 10 with 'Corned Beef' John Young is vivid and arresting. His narration of his space walk is so entrancing that it settled the question -- at least, for me -- what it was truly like 'up there'.

Apollo 11, the Big Enchilada, is one of the book's finest segments. Collins gives readers such a sense of belonging to the mission...

United States on Jan 11, 2013

Paul Harris: Simply magnificent! As I've spent the last few days tearing through this engrossing book, I've been mindful of how I might be able to review it once I'd reached its end. Now that I have done so I find that I don't really know quite how to express what it is about Michael Collins' writing that moved me so much - except that I know this is most definitely one of the best memoirs I've ever read. It is truly a one-off, as the events it describes are so unique (most obviously the historic Apollo 11 mission) that they could only have been written by one of the members of 1960s NASA space program who was actually 'there'.

Collins' writing is very laid back and as informal as it is informative. I rarely read books (for pleasure at least) with quite so much scientific content: rocket propulsion, trajectories, inter-planetary navigation, and so forth, but he puts these topics into words that I found no problem in understanding. Not that these subjects really dominate the narrative - his tale is told in a very personal and humourous style. For an astronaut (& fighter pilot for that matter!) Collins is incredibly humble and self-effacing - he repeatedly reminds the reader of how...

United Kingdom on Sep 08, 2011