One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon

Written by Charles Fishman

Narrated by Fred Sanders

The New York Times bestselling, “meticulously researched and absorbingly written” (The Washington Post) story of the trailblazers and the ordinary Americans on the front lines of the epic Apollo 11 moon mission.

President John F. Kennedy astonished the world on May 25, 1961, when he announced to Congress that the United States should land a man on the Moon by 1970. No group was more surprised than the scientists and engineers at NASA, who suddenly had less than a decade to invent space travel.

When Kennedy announced that goal, no one knew how to navigate to the Moon. No one knew how to build a rocket big enough to reach the Moon, or how to build a computer small enough (and powerful enough) to fly a spaceship there. No one knew what the surface of the Moon was like, or what astronauts could eat as they flew there. On the day of Kennedy’s historic speech, America had a total of fifteen minutes of spaceflight experience—with just five of those minutes outside the atmosphere. Russian dogs had more time in space than US astronauts. Over the next decade, more than 400,000 scientists, engineers, and factory workers would send twenty-four astronauts to the Moon. Each hour of space flight would require one million hours of work back on Earth to get America to the Moon on July 20, 1969.

“A veteran space reporter with a vibrant touch—nearly every sentence has a fact, an insight, a colorful quote or part of a piquant anecdote” (The Wall Street Journal) and in One Giant Leap, Fishman has written the sweeping, definitive behind-the-scenes account of the furious race to complete one of mankind’s greatest achievements. It’s a story filled with surprises—from the item the astronauts almost forgot to take with them (the American flag), to the extraordinary impact Apollo would have back on Earth, and on the way we live today. From the research labs of MIT, where the eccentric and legendary pioneer Charles Draper created the tools to fly the Apollo spaceships, to the factories where dozens of women sewed spacesuits, parachutes, and even computer hardware by hand, Fishman captures the exceptional feats of these ordinary Americans. “It’s been 50 years since Neil Armstrong took that one small step. Fishman explains in dazzling form just how unbelievable it actually was” (Newsweek).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Jun 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781508286547

Charles Fishman

Charles Fishman is the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller One Giant Leap, A Curious Mind (with Brian Grazer), The Wal-Mart Effect, and The Big Thirst. He is a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award, the most prestigious prize in business journalism.

Reviews for One Giant Leap

[bragan_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

First off, it's probably good to be clear on what this book isn't. It's not a simple history of the Apollo space program. If you're looking for an account of what happened on the various space missions, especially one that's at all focused on the astronauts, this isn't the book you want. (I wholeheartedly recommend Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon for that.)This one, I think, assumes you know the general outline of how it all went, and chooses to focus instead on aspects of the moon missions that don't necessarily get a lot of attention and on putting the program in context, both the context of its own time and of what it means to us today.To that end, Fishman talks a lot about the politics of the time, how Kennedy approached the decisions involved in his directive to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, and in the way that the moon program was inextricably linked with the politics of the Cold War.He also goes into a lot of detail about how the computers used on the spacecraft where designed and built, while putting forth the idea that NASA's use of the then-new technology of integrated circuits was instrumental in pushing the development of computers forward, meaning that whether or not Apollo truly heralded the dawn of the Space Age, it was important in ushering in the Digital Age to an extent that's not usually sufficiently appreciated.And he talks a fair amount about Apollo in the popular consciousness, then and now, the ways in which we think about the legacy of the program, the ways in which, perhaps we should think about it, and whether, in the end, it counts as a success or a failure. (Spoiler: he goes for "success," arguing that those who call it a failure based on the fact that it didn't ultimately lead to the glorious future in space that a lot of people were hoping for really aren't looking at things the right way.)As someone who's had a long fascination with the early days of spaceflight in general and the Apollo program in particular, I found this an interesting addition to my store of knowledge of and thinking about the topic. After having read so many books on the subject, it's always good to come across one that has new things to say and tells me a few things I didn't already know.

[gshuk_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the best books I have read on this topic. I really like how he puts the politics, technology and cost in perspective. Time flew by as I read this.

[othemts · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

50 years after the United States first landed people on the moon and returned them safely to Earth, the story of the Apollo program in the popular imagination is compressed.  The general story is that three courageous men flew into space and two walked on the moon and planted a flag. There have been moments in popular culture that offered glimpses into the bigger story - the movie Apollo 13 which showed the nerds at Mission Control as the real heroes rather than the jocks in space, and more recently the book and movie Hidden Figures that brought greater awareness to Black women performing calculations by hand for the early space program.The goal of One Giant Leap is to broaden the understanding of the Apollo Program, getting a better sense of the tens of thousands of people who worked millions of hours over 11 years to get those two men to the moon (and then repeat if five more times). NASA had people working on the project in all 50 states, a sign of both the scale of the project and the need to divide up government spending to gain wide support.  Fishman also asks the question of whether flying men to the moon was worth the cost and effort, and provides some interesting answers. Going to the moon was never popular, as it polled poorly throughout the 1960s.  People, now and then, asked whether that money and effort would be better spent solving a problem on Earth. Fishman wisely notes that budgets generally don't work in a way where funding for Apollo could've been easily redirected to, say, ending poverty, but also that a discrete project with an defined end goal is actually easier to pull off than more dynamic problems such as ending poverty, racism, and war, and they need not be mutually exclusive.  Fishman also notes that despite the high cost of the Apollo Program, it did achieve its goal within the stated time, unlike other government programs that do not receive similar criticism. The Vietnam War, which occurred roughly contemporaneously with the Apollo Program, cost six times as much, lead to hundreds of thousands dead, and destroyed much of the country it was supposed to save.One person surprisingly not that much interested in exploring space was John F. Kennedy.  His famous "we go to the Moon" speech (analysed in depth in this book) came in the context of the embarrassment felt at the USSR beating the US to every key space exploration milestone and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Within in two years, Kennedy was looking to cut NASA funding and set a more leisurely timeline toward landing on the Moon as long as it looked like the Soviets weren't going to get there first (and perhaps a bit selfishly, since NASA original promise of landing on the Moon by 1967 was pushed back, JFK saw no need to push a big program that wouldn't even come to fruition until after his potential second term was over).  Kennedy's assassination ironically saved the Apollo Program as it made a true believer in the space program, Lyndon Johnson, the President, and Kennedy's "we go to the Moon" speech became an impetus to complete the mission in his honor.Looking back on Apollo, people wonder what it's legacy is since no humans have ever returned to the Moon and it did not usher in a Space Age.  Fishman offers that the true legacy of Apollo is not the Space Age, but the Digital Age.  In order to navigate the lunar module to the Moon and then rendezvous with the command module, the Apollo Program needed innovations in interactive computing and integrated circuitry. These advances sped up the development of computers that have revolutionized all aspects of society over the past 50 years.  Apollo also stood as a model of innovative project management. Even the more mundane nature of later space programs like the Space Shuttle and the International Space Program is a sign of the success of Apollo as it has made space exploration routine. If there's one critique of the book is that the narrative doesn't flow as the author jumps around from topic to topic and could've spent more time diving into particular issues.  Nevertheless, the topics and anecdotes he shares are interesting, and include:the key role of Bill Tindall, an aerospace engineer with the ability focus in on minute details, and who's memos - called Tindallgrams - became must-read material within NASANASA almost forgot to pack a flag on Apollo 11, and a great analysis of the cultural importance of the flag planting ceremony on the Moonhow the lunar rover aided greater exploration of the Moon on later missions

[jfe16 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A behind-the-scenes look at the race to complete the mission to the moon with a focus on the engineers and the “ordinary Americans” who made the dream a reality. Each hour of spaceflight required one million hours of work on Earth to put astronauts on the surface of the moon. When President Kennedy announced the goal in 1961, America had a grand total of fifteen minutes of spaceflight to its credit. And only five of those minutes were above the atmosphere of our home planet. NASA suddenly had a very few years to figure out how to make spaceflight work. No one knew what the moon was like. No one knew how to make computers small enough to fit inside space capsules. No one knew how to build a rocket that would get men to the moon. It would take more than 400,000 engineers, scientists, factory workers to send astronauts to the moon. This book is a tribute to those men and women.A bibliography for further reading is included.Highly recommended.