Virtual Lm: A Pictoral Essay Of The Engineering And Construction Of The Apollo Lunar Module (Apogee Books Space Series)

Rating:
Summary: A terrific book about the lunar module.
Review: Great detailed photos of the ( incredibly small ) interior.
Plus, the bonus CD has more than 1,000 pages of LM checklists
and detailed pilot manuals. After you read them, you
wiill be able to train to fly a LM !!!!!

Rating:
Summary: The natural complement to Virtual Apollo
Review: If you enjoyed Scott Sullivan's Virtual Apollo you'll savor this book just as much. Whether you have an engineering mind and/or a passion for spacecraft you will enjoy being taken into the nuts and bolts of the Lunar Module. Sullivan's precise and meticulous renderings of the LM peel the spacecraft away like layers of an onion allowing you to grasp the brilliant ingenuity of its design. A must have addition to the library of any space enthusiast.

Rating:
Summary: An Amazingly In-Depth Study Of Grumman's Spaceship
Review: This book on the Apollo Lunar Module is an absolute necessity for any space history collection. This is a companion to Sullivan's earlier book of the same format on the Apollo CSM. If you have read his CSM book, you know how detailed it is, and amazingly this volume is even more detailed.

The book has a general history of Apollo and the LM program, with particular emphasis on the flight mode quandary, and the ultimate decision to use Lunar Orbital Rendezvous (LOR) for expediency, a move that in retrospect seems obvious, but dramatically altered the Apollo program.

This book is a mostly a compendium of incredibly detailed drawings of all components of the LM in extreme detail. The book is so detailed that there is no way a person can absorb all the information in one reading. Both the H and J series spacecraft are detailed, as is the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV, which in my opinion is Boeing's single best piece of engineering work ever.) This volume also comes with a CD of numerous images and files of great interest to an Apollo historian, including Adobe files of the Apollo Operations Handbook for the Lunar Module (volumes one and two), which basically comprise the flight manual for the LM. Think twice before you start to print these two documents, by the way, as they are about 1,800 pages long in combination.

My only complaint about this book is that the entire book (including the text) is printed in landscape format, which makes it much more difficult to read as text is fairly close to the spine. I also sometimes disliked the use of false-color drawings (used to illustrate different materials or complex mechanisms), but Sullivan did an admirable of using color photographs to show the same areas on various Lunar Modules. This book is an Apollo treasure trove, and space program enthusiasts will love it.