Monday 22 June 2009

Andrew Smith: Moon Dust, The Men Who Fell to Earth.

Like Andrew Smith I am a child of the 1960's. I can remember my family crowded around a snowy black and white television to watch Neil Armstrong take humanity's first ever steps on an alien world. Thirty years later I stood beside the giant Saturn V rocket in the Cape Kennedy Space Center and that remains one of the most inspiring memories of my life. We live in an age when many otherwise sensible folk swear the moon landings never happened and most under the age of 40 couldn't care less whether they did or not but I believe that the moon landings were mankind's greatest ever adventure.

In "Moon Dust" British American Smith documents his personal quest to track down the remaining moon astronauts and find out what happened to them and to probe their thoughts feelings about the moon landings. This is not a book about what happened or they got to the moon. This book about why they went and what it means today and whether or not we should ever go back. Terrific stuff.