Reviews for The Cassini-Huygens Mission

The average rating for The Cassini-Huygens Mission based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-09-05 00:00:00 John Althaus I've read a lot of good books about the Apollo program, and even a few pretty bad ones. This book, Taking Science to the Moon: Lunar Experiments and the Apollo Program, by Donald A. Beattie, came as quite a surprise. I wasn't even aware of this book until last fall. I figured because of its specialized subject that it was probably a fairly obscure footnote to the library of Apollo. There simply aren't many books devoted to the coordination of science experiments in the Apollo program, outside of official NASA history documents. This is not a subject publishers would consider sexy enough for the mainstream market. So yes, it is obscure, but the surprise is that it's an excellent addition to the history of Apollo. Donald Beattie played a number of key roles at NASA headquarters in putting together science projects for the Apollo moon program. It is the most authoritative book about Apollo science I've read to date, and perhaps the only way to beat it is by going even deeper and consulting official NASA histories. The first third of the book is devoted to internal meetings, politics and planning during Apollo's early years. I got the sense that much of Beattie's documentation was from actual meeting minutes he retained from his tenure with NASA, so you truly get an inside-the-meeting view. You can see how decisions are made, how proposals are argued and vetted, and how the different NASA centers interacted. It took me awhile to get used to Beattie's writing style. His language is dry and bureaucratic, but he's also very matter-of-fact and no-nonsense. A couple of the early chapters were slow-going, partly because they seemed to skip ahead to cover post-Apollo planning. That really threw me off for a while, because I wondered, why was he addressing post-Apollo planning so early in the book? Was he getting things out of order? Well, it turns out that they really did start planning for post-Apollo work before 1963. NASA was always thinking ahead. As the book progressed, I could tell Beattie was an effective, experienced, objective writer of internal documents. He explains that he sometimes wrote explanatory memos and technical proposals for the signatures of senior management, implying that these were important documents for decision making. The stakes were high, and these were not matters to be taken lightly. Everything had to be right. The second third of the book is devoted to getting the science projects together--how NASA interacted with the thousands of project investigators to coordinate their work for the missions. Here, we see increased involvement from the astronaut crews and how their training was critically important to the science planning. Perhaps most enlightening about this section is Beattie's criticism of the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC, now called the Johnson Space Center) in Houston. MSC was frequently a thorn in the side of NASA HQ and the other NASA centers. MSC asserted a great amount of control throughout the Apollo program and was reluctant to give any ground to science, whether it compromised operational safety or not. Beattie also describes a number of managerial changes at MSC which made its relationship with NASA HQ and the U.S. Geological Survey like a roller coaster ride. Beattie and his colleagues sought better working relations with MSC but weren't always successful. Even so, all his assessments are fair. He never lets personal opinions, institutional rivalries or tensions get in the way of being objective. The moon was the goal on a short deadline, and they had to work together to do it; they had no time for petty jealousies. Only at one point does Beattie write about himself at length: he applied to join one of NASA's first scientist-astronaut classes. As a geologist and former navy pilot, Beattie was highly qualified, but for whatever reason was not accepted. Otherwise, he shines the light on others, and his selflessness serves the book well. I will admit I got a bit confused, though, as Beattie made job changes within the NASA family and I began to lose track of his associations and responsibilities. It's a minor quibble, but it ultimately doesn't detract from his focus on the program. The final third of the book is devoted to the lunar missions and how the science projects turned out. Beattie explains how the astronauts trained and performed with the experiments, how experiments were improved, and how problems were solved for subsequent missions. He is generous in his praise for all the Apollo astronauts, who worked hard to make the most of the science projects. He feels everyone did the best they could do and got excellent results under high pressure. Of special note is the fact that it was Donald Beattie who first proposed that the discarded Saturn S-IV-B stages and LM ascent stages be deliberately targeted for impacts on the lunar surface, so those impacts could be recorded by the seismic instruments left by the Apollo moonwalkers. That is a significant contribution to the science of the Apollo program, and Beattie deserves recognition for it. I thought I wanted to give this four stars, taking away one star for the slow-going in the initial chapters. But to be honest, Beattie scores high marks for his fairness, thoroughness, and consistency, and as I finished the book, he had earned my complete trust. My big takeaway from the book was how important science really was to the Apollo program, and how hard these people worked to 'get it right.' Beattie makes a very good case for a science program that did excellent work under enormous stress. There are some in the scientific community who mistakenly believed NASA 'didn't care' about science when America went to the moon, and that it was all about making footprints and planting flags. This book effectively refutes that notion. It's true that MSC was biased toward getting their spacecraft and astronauts to the moon and back safely, and if that meant science took less of a priority, MSC was okay with that, but to conclude that they didn't care about science is unfair. Taking Science to the Moon earns a rightful place among the best dozen books I've ever read about Apollo. It is a credit not only to the author's work but to the work of all those who participated in the Apollo program. Outstanding.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-12-22 00:00:00 Rodney Bennett This book does a nice job describing the people and the political processes involved in getting scientific experiments onto the Apollo missions. It also relays a number of interesting anecdotes from the astronaut training and overall program development. Most of the book's focus however is on the politics. I would have liked more technical depth in the discussion of the experiments and underlying scientific issues.