I am thoroughly astounded by the frankness and thoroughness of the report compiled by NASA after the Apollo 1 disaster. According to Moon Shot a replica was built and burned to try to find the problems and the source of the fire. “It shook up many of those involved so badly they went home to stare at walls.” The final report on the Apollo 1 incident was 3,300 pages long and weighed nineteen pounds. From my experience at Space Camp, I know that analyzers found over one thousand major design flaws.

Unbeknownst to me before I read Moon Shot, the Soviets suffered a similar tragedy around the same time with the loss of Soyuz 1 (Soyuz means union). Vladimir Komarov was the cosmonaut that died as a result of multiple failures of various systems within his craft, the final ones being the failure of both parachutes and the cushioning retro-rockets. As was the case with numerous Soviet landings, his body was found by farmers after they worked for an hour to put out the fires that blazed following his crash landing.

When I read about how the Soviets took to Apollo 8 officially announcing that the United States had beat them with a man to the moon, I was astounded a how well Lev Kamanin worded his disappointment in his diary:

“‘For us this [day] is darkened with the realization of lost opportunities and with sadness that today the men flying to the moon are named Borman, Lovell, and Anders, and not Bykovsky, Popovich, or Leonov.’”

            -From Moon Shot by Shepard, Slayton, Benedict, and Barbee

It was very controversial, but the reading by the Apollo 8 crew on Christmas of 1968 will never be forgotten. In fact, one woman filed a lawsuit against the astronauts for reading from the Bible. The important part that the reading from Genisis emphasized was that when God created the Earth, he called his creation good.

I appreciate how much groundbreaking work the Apollo 9 crew did in their experimentation with the first space craft designed to fly only in the vacuum of space. The LM was quite an interesting craft and Jim McDivitt’s first reaction to the craft sums up its appearance:

“‘Holy Moses, we’re really going to fly that thing? It’s a very flimsy craft – like a tissue-paper spacecraft. If we’re not careful, we could easily put a foot through it.’”

-From Moon Shot by Shepard, Slayton, Benedict, and Barbee

When I read about how Alan Shepard found his cure for Ménière’s syndrome, I was ecstatic. In the same way, I hope that in my lifetime they will finally develop the technology to, for all with bipolar disorder, cure the illness, or at least put it into permanent remission.