Building Moonships: The Grumman Lunar Module (Images of America: New York)

This is a book that chronicles in photos and illustrations the development, construction and flights of the Apollo Lunar Module, the spacecraft that took man to the Moon. This review is for the hard cover edition.The book is more or less divided into three major sections in 7 chapters - the initial design and development of the LM, how the LM is constructed through final installation in the Saturn V rocket and a few images each of the manned LM missions as well as a few photos of LMs that never flew and are in museums as well as Grumman LM mission patches.For the hard-core Apollo program tech junkie, the book contains numerous technical illustrations and photos, some quite rare of various Lunar Modules during construction and testing at the Grumman facility in Bethpage, NY and Cape Kennedy. The book is image-based, that is it's line drawings, illustrations and photos, usually 1 or 2 images per page with a brief description of each image. All images are in black and white, there are no color photos. The author goes to admirable lengths to credit various key figures in photos mostly at the Grumman facility. As the book is strictly about the Lunar Module, there is very little information about the rest of the Apollo Saturn spacecraft and rocket. It would have been nice to have some info, perhaps a one page description of the specifics of each mission with illustrations regarding the changes in the flight-ready LMs from spacecraft to spacecraft. The LM was constantly evolving in small and significant ways from Apollo 5 all the way through the final mission, Apollo 17. No two flown LMs were exactly alike.What hurts this book is the production. A good number of the images, especially line drawings and technical illustrations are poorly scanned and reproduced often at too small a scale for the detail in the images resulting in pictures that are often too light and near-impossible to make out. It's also printed on near-laserjet quality paper which doesn't help the quality of the images. The book size is about 7" x 10".Overall, this book is a handy budget visual reference regarding the Lunar Module hampered by lack of color images and poor reproduction of some technical illustrations.

I found the book and it's photos/drawings a great insight into the build of the great American moonship! I learned a lot about the craft and it's contractors than I had known. I enjoyed studying the drawings and comparing them with the photographs. I've seen the actual LM up close and thought they were very flimsy but failed to realize that they were built to fly in the vacuum of space around and on the moon. Good Stuff!!

Excellent intro to history of the Lunar Module, enjoyed the book thank you.Loved how the PM was developed!May God continue to bless the families of the folks who developed these fabulous machines.

When I received this book I was disappointed. I really expected something else.I wanted a well documented manual digging into the "behind the scene" of such an enterprise of building a LEM.Instead, all I got was a booklet of pictures with notes. Not a single story, not a single tale or interview, nothing written.It's just a collection of pictures, period.Then after someway I changed my mind because those pictures are something rare, but I don't think this book is indispensable. Eventually is a nice to have book, but it costs too much for what you get.What's more, some of those pictures are not fine printed (you'll see picture boundaries cut off at the borders of the page et similia).All in all there's nothing much to say: if you want a series of (rare and good) black and white pics about the LEM construction and concept, each one coupled with a brief note about the image, and you think the price is fine for you, go for it.

This tool me an hour to read, not worth it,save your money but something else's wasted time wasted money,, worthless

Lots of great pictures, and accompanied by interesting captions, this is a must read for the space nuts among us. Well done!

This is a must have for the serious space flight history buff. Although light on text, this photographic history is rich in information about the development and preparation of the Lunar Modules produced by Grumman at Bethpage, New York. As a space flight historian, I was surprised that included in this small book were a number of photographs that I had never seen before. For something of this size it packs a great deal of space flight history into a small book. Highly recommended.

I grew up during the early Space Age and the Golden Age of Space Exploration and always had dozens of questions about the nuts and bolts of the Luna Module. This book answered them all 40 years later. Buying this book is the next best thing to going to the moon. At last I know exactly what the layout of the crew compartment was like. After getting a feel for how cramped it was, I gained even more admiration for the astronauts who lived and slept for up to three days on the moon in this aluminum can.

Awesome insight into the making of the lunar lander.

If you want understand better the lunar program and see good picture to have a good overview about the successful project this is the book!

月着陸船細部の写真が欲しくて、中身も分からないまま発注しましたが、内容は十分満足できるものでした。 白黒写真のみですが、初期のデザイン画から、試行錯誤のモックアップ、製造途中の写真など、見応え十分です。 内部構造の写真を見ると、こんなに複雑で華奢な機械に乗って月に行くとは……と、感嘆せずにはいられません。 写真には、それぞれ簡単な英語の説明が加えられています。コックピットの写真を見ながら読んでいると、自分も月着陸船の中に乗り込んでいるような気がしてきます。　また、月着陸船と、その製作に携わった人々との記念写真が何点かあり、この機械を作り上げた人々の誇りと満足感が伝わってきました。　満点にしようかと思いましたが、カラー写真がないことと、文章の量があまりに少なくて、すぐ読み終わってしまうのが不満、ということで星４つです。　月着陸船に興味がある方なら、入手されて後悔はないと思います。

月着陸船の内部構造や製造工程に関して詳しく書かれています。当時の米国の技術者達の意気込みが伝わって来ます。

Rather than a detailed textbook, this is a collection of excellent pictures showing the different stages of construction and deployment of the LM.It compliments other books about this subject very WELL.