Moonbound: Apollo 11 and the Dream of Spaceflight

By Jonathan Fetter-Vorm

On a summer night in 1969, two men climbed down a ladder onto a sea of dust at the edge of an ancient dream. When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first set foot on lunar soil, the moon ceased to be a place of mystery and myth. It became a destination.

Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of that journey, Moonbound tells the monumental story of the moon and the men who went there first. With vibrant images and meticulous attention to detail, Jonathan Fetter-Vorm conjures the long history of the visionaries, stargazers, builders, and adventurers who sent Apollo 11 on its legendary voyage.

From the wisdom of the Babylonians to the intrigues of the Cold War, from the otherworldly discoveries of Galileo to the dark legacy of Nazi atrocities, from the exhilarating trajectories of astronauts—recounted in their own words—to the unsung brilliance of engineers working behind the scenes, Moonbound captures the grand arc of the Space Age in a graphic history of unprecedented scope and profound lyricism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jun 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781466899353

Jonathan Fetter-Vorm

Jonathan Fetter-Vorm is an author and illustrator. His Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb was selected by the American Library Association as a Best Graphic Novel for Teens in 2013. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Reviews for Moonbound

[books9n9pickles · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Dang it. I wanted to finish 2021 with a sprint through a backlog of graphic novels to clear space on my shelves, but here I am so impressed by Moonbound that I don't want to let it go.

I expected a linear walk through the Apollo 11 mission, from conception to after effects. Given that its publication was timed for the 50th anniversary of the mission (in 2019), I expected something pretty uplifting and focused on the feel-good. Given that it's published by Hill and Wang, a division of the "serious" literary publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, I expected some pretty deep and esoteric facts about the science behind the journey and the philosophical implications of spaceflight and exploration.

But while Moonbound does have some of these things, it's also much more.

We start the book with the moon landing, with the pages in full color. From there, the chapters alternate between full-color pages about the moon mission (and, later, what did and did not come after) and "flashbacks" in shades of a single color that explore the history behind humanity's relationship to the moon and the science that might get us there, from ancient beliefs to Renaissance and Jules Verne's science and speculation, to the experiments and atrocities that built the first large-scale rockets, to the unsung people and forgotten might-have-beens behind the U.S. space program. There are women, people of color, Nazis and their victims, Soviets and their situationally whiplashed scientists. So many U.S. stories about our space program focus only on us; author/illustrator Fetter-Vorm makes clear that our program did not and could never have existed in inspirational isolation from the world or from socio-political forces.

I should be clear that this is primarily a history book, not a science book, so my fears that I would get lost in engineering jargon were not met. At the same time, Fetter-Vorm doesn't neglect the fundamental physics of spaceflight; science nerds should go somewhere else for details, but history nerds will know enough to appreciate both the simple elegance and technological complexity of navigating gravity. (He also differentiates science and engineering, which makes me feel a tad guilty categorizing this book as "science", but I kind of use that tag as a STEM catch-all.)

It's impossible not to be inspired by the size of the U.S. space program, its dedication to its mission, the forthright attitude of the astronauts to their job, and, of course, the whole going-where-no-man-has-gone-before. At the same time, Fetter-Vorn doesn't let us forget everything lost along the way: the human toll of the Nazi rocket-building program, the casually cruel Soviet attitudes toward its scientists, the repeated "losses" of firsts to the Soviet program (and dang, I didn't realize that they sent Gagarin to space only one month before the U.S. got Shephard up there), the squandering of human potential when NASA dismissed women and people of color. He also touches on how controversial the space race actually was and, because the book was published so recently, is able to briefly talk about the current outlook for spaceflight going private.

All in all, I enjoyed this book far more than I expected to and I highly recommend it for anyone who knows a little and wants to know more without getting bogged down on technical details.

Quote Roundup

p. 44) Note to self: look up Johannes Kepler's The Dream, which Fetter-Vorm describes as the first work of science fiction.

p. 84) "The V-2 rocket was a novel, if not particularly [relatively] deadly, weapon. Actually, in one way, it was quite deadly. For every one person killed by V-2 strikes, two workers died on the assembly line at Mittelwerk."
I'd known that Werner von Braun was a Nazi but I'd never heard about the Nazi V-2 program.

[darthdeverell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jonathan Fetter-Vorm’s Moonbound continues his works of historical summary in graphic novel format, including previous works Battle Lines and Trinity, each of which helps expand historical knowledge with the accessibility of the visual format for both academics and lay audiences. Fetter-Vorm alternates between the events of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and the history of astronomy – with particular attention to astronomy examining the Moon – as well as the Moon’s place in culture, from religious iconography to early science-fiction. Fetter-Vorm begins in the earliest mythologies of humanity before transitioning to the Renaissance with Johannes Kepler. From there, he shows how the science that made the Moon landing possible built upon centuries of knowledge and the work of hundreds – if not thousands – of mathematicians, engineers, and more. Fetter-Vorm warns, “In the decades since [1969], nostalgia has obscured just how divisive the Apollo program actually was” (pg. 233).

Complicating the narrative of space exploration amid the other issues of the 1960s, Fetter-Vorm writes, “Although the Apollo Program coincided with the Civil Rights movement, NASA was slower than the rest of the country to integrate” (pg. 152). Discussing the place of the Moonshot against the backdrop of the Cold War and domestic strife, Fetter-Vorm argues, “Going to the Moon was never about the Moon itself. Going to the Moon was a quest. And like any quest, the quarry was largely symbolic” (pg. 157). Tying his narrative threads together, linking Apollo to the earlier role of the Moon in mythology and popular culture, Fetter-Vorm writes, “Working backward, if there’s one day a month when the light is just right, and if it takes three days to get from the Earth to the Moon, then that’s your launch window. The world that Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were preparing to leave looked little like it did in the time of Johannes Kepler, and yet, in one essential way, three centuries had changed nothing: to the Moon, and its age-old arc across the heavens, these men were inescapably bound” (pg. 190). The result is a work that will appeal to historians, comic book aficionados, and particularly teachers looking for an accessible way to delve deeply into this topic with their students. A great third book from Fetter-Vorm!

[mzonderm · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of spaceflight. Those who are already well-read may not learn much that's new, but even if you already know it all, you'll be drawn in by the visuals. Fetter-Vorn's illustrations are first-rate, clearly showing the expressions on the faces of his characters. The best is their wonder at the stars and the universe, whether studying it through a telescope, or through the window of a spacecraft. If you're looking for an introduction or an overview, you can't ask for much more than this.

Yes, Fetter-Vorn tells the familiar story of Apollo 11, but interspersed with the chapters that walk us through the moon landing step by step are chapters that relate the history of astronomy from the early myths of different cultures to Kepler and Galileo, the development of rockets, the space race, and much more. The reader gets not just what feels like an insider's view of the Apollo 11 mission, but a good education that goes down smoothly along the way.

[jfe16 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This graphic history is the story of the first men who first traveled from Earth to the moon. Wrapped into their story are the stories of the visionaries, the stargazers, the adventurers. Meticulously detailed, readers will see how the people and events that came before made Apollo 11 possible. Explore the mission, the destination, the history; meet rocket builders and engineers who toiled behind the scenes, helping to make the mission a success. Here, in this unique graphic history, are the events, the people, and the legacy of man’s first steps on another world.

Highly recommended.