This post continues the series of posts describing books I read end-to-end and classified in accordance with some criteria. This time we are talking about books on space and space exploration. You may also check related posts: this, this, this, and this, I wrote previously.

• Books on Space and Space Exploration
  • Apollo program
    • Flight Directors
      • Flight: My Life in Mission Control by Christopher Kraft. This book is autobiography by Chris Kraft starting from his positions at NACA and ending being flight director on STS (aka Space Shuttle). It’s an easy ready since Chris Craft was capable of describing his life at NASA very vividly.
      • Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond by Gene Kranz. Gene Kranz was the Flight Director on Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 missions and was also depicted in the Apollo 13 movie.
    • Flight Controllers
      • Go, Flight!: The Unsung Heroes of Mission Control, 1965–1992 by Rick Houston, Milt Heflin, et al.  This book was a tedious one to read so I cannot recommend it.
    • Programmers aka Software Developers
      • Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir by Don Eyles. Don Eyles was responsible for programming Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), specifically, the Lunar Landing Part of it.
      • Left Brains for the Right Stuff: Computers, Space, and History by Hugh Blair-Smith. Hugh Blair-smith designed and implemented assembler for AGC and did other interesting stuff at MIT Instrumentation Lab.
    • Engineers
      • Safely to Earth: The Men and Women Who Brought the Astronauts Home by Jack Clemons. An interesting read by an engineer who was responsible for the algorithm of space capsule landing after returning from space.
    • Apollo Program by Scientists and engineers not affiliated with Apollo program
      • Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight by David A. Mindell. A very interesting book that talks about Human-Machine Interface applicable to Apollo program.
      • The Apollo Chronicles: Engineering America’s First Moon Missions by Brandon R. Brown. This book was written by the son of one of the engineers from Apollo Program. The book is about a ‘regular’ Apollo program engineer, one out of 400,000.
    • Astronauts
      • Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race by David Scott and Alexei Leonov. David Scott flew with Neil Armstrong on Gemini 8 and as a commander on Apollo 15.
      • Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys by Michael Collins. Michael Collins flew on Gemini 10 and was a Command Module Pilot on Apollo 11 that landed on the Moon for the first time.
      • The Last Man on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and America’s Race in Space by Eugene Cernan. Gene Cernan flew on Gemini 9A, Apollo 10, and landing on the Moon with Harrison Schmitt during Apollo 17, the last mission to the Moon in 1972.
    • Apollo program by Historians and journalists
      • Historians
        • A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin. This is a very detailed and comprehensive description of Apollo missions.
      • Journalists
        • Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon by Jeffrey Kluger. This book was co-written with Jim Lovell who flew on Gemini 7 and Gemini 12, Apollo 8, the first mission to the Moon, and Apollo13.
        • Apollo 13 by Jeffrey Kluge. This book was too co-written with Jim Lovell and as you might have guessed it’s about the most successful failure in NASA history.
  • Soviet Space Program
    • Rockets and People, Volumes 1,2,3,4 by Boris Chertok. This is a four volumes history of Soviet Space Program written by on of the Chief Engineers in the team of Chief Designer Sergei Korolev. These volumes are available for free courtesy of NASA.
  • General Space Exploration
    • Outer Planets and Deep Space Exploration
      • The Interstellar Age: Inside the Forty-Year Voyager Mission by Jim Bell. An interesting book about design, development and usage of Voyager 1 and 2 space craft, which are somewhere in the interstellar space right now.
    • Inner Planets Exploration
      • The Right Kind Of Crazy by Adam Steltzner. This book is about how Adam Steltzner went from a musician to a mechanical engineer, later to become chief engineer of Curiosity and Perseverance Mars Rovers.
    • Low Earth Orbit and the Moon
      • An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield. This book is a memoir by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. He’s best known for his cover of the David Bowes’ Space Oddity song. The song was recorded on board of the International Space Station (ISS).
      • Disaster Strikes!: The Most Dangerous Space Missions of All Time by Jeffrey Kluger. This book is about space missions that were not that successful to say the least.