Live TV From the Moon by Dwight Steven-Boniecki; Apogee Books; Burlington Ontario Canada; (softcover) $29.95; 2010.
When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin moonwalked into history back in 1969, a huge contingent of onlookers on Earth watched in amazement. That was made possible by compact TV cameras.
This book is a fascinating read, telling the tale of NASA and industrial-strength engineers that developed the TV system that flew on the Apollo missions. But more than that, the volume spotlights the role that TV cameras played in those early days of human space exploration, as well as advancing electronic news gathering.
The author has done an impressive job, assembling the history of the technology and the people that allowed living-room audiences to participate in space exploration.
Captured in the book is note of the tension within NASA and its management regarding live TV onboard space missions – a nuisance or necessity? The reader will also find new details about the Apollo 12 camera mishap that blind-sided public TV viewing of the mission.
Included with the book is an accompanying DVD that offers eye-candy bonus material, such as: The 2009 NASA webcast about the missing Apollo 11 telemetry tapes and the restoration project of the Apollo 11 lunar TV footage; Apollo 15, 16, and 17 mission lunar liftoffs as seen by the camera mounted on parked lunar rovers; and a rare Westinghouse documentary about the construction of the lunar TV camera courtesy of Stan Lebar – a pioneer engineer that unfortunately passed late last year.
As Steven-Boniecki notes, the records of Apollo are more valuable today than they were when being made, “for it is only through the television medium that new generations of space enthusiasts can be exposed to the fever and excitement of space exploration’s golden era.”
The author has done us all a service by writing this well-researched and unique book, one that does capture the enthusiasm and fervor of Apollo’s reach to the Moon.
For more information, go to:
http://www.cgpublishing.com/Books/9781926592169.html
By Leonard David