Review: Safely to Earth - Jack Clemons
Review by Harold O. Wilson
Safely to Earth
By Jack Clemons
2018, University of Florida Press, ISBN: 978-0-8130-5602—9; 264 pages
This past summer, July 20, 2019, marked the 50th anniversary of the day Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon. In support, Command Module Pilot Mike Collins orbited overhead. Jack Clemons’ book, Safely To Earth: The Men and Women Who Brought the Astronauts Home, reminds us of the special character, commitment, and intelligence of the men and women who worked to achieve President Kennedy’s ten year goal of putting a man on the moon and bringing him and his two mates home safely. Clemons is a former lead engineer working on NASA’s Apollo Program. He was also senior engineering software manager on the Space Shuttle Program and part of the mission control backroom team that supported the NASA flight controllers on both the return of the Apollo 11 crew from the first moon landing and the rescue of the Apollo 13 crew.
In this well written technical description of the development of the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs, Clemons has also given us a very personal view of the men and women at NASA who developed both programs. “Failure is not an option” was the attitude at NASA when Clemons joined the program in 1968. Unfortunately this culture grew out of the tragedy of the Apollo1fire in 1967 that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. The independent investigation that was undertaken found that the tragedy could have been prevented. It shouldn’t have happened. NASA worked diligently, Clemons writes, to change their culture from top to bottom of the organization. No longer would one of their own die because someone who was supposed to be supporting them had lost single-minded focus on safety and meticulous attention to every detail.
Even though Clemons goes on to describe in brilliant and engaging terms the technical development that made the Apollo and Shuttle programs successful, the subtext of his book is really the commitment to excellence of the thousands of NASA engineers and support staff that mirrored the nation’s commitment to achieve Kennedy’s goal of a man on the moon before the end of the decade.
Was it all worth it—the huge cost of both programs and the needless loss of fourteen astronauts? Of course there is no way to put a cost on the loss of human life but there are values that accrue to the future that are beyond measure. Clemons tells us, Beyond all the science and technology research, and placement of numerous commercial, military, and civilian payloads and satellites in orbit, these two achievements alone, ISS [The International Space Station] and Hubble, were realized only because the Space Shuttle was there to bring them into existence. These are marvels never before witnessed, and only barely imagined, in the long history of humanity. How does one place a value on the immeasurable? These two programs literally opened the door to a future beyond imagination.
Why go to the moon? Beyond the technology there was also an intangible gift from Kennedy’s goal. Even though the nation was being torn apart by the war in Vietnam and in the throes of the civil rights movement, we were still bound together as one people by this common venture. Kennedy himself gave the answer:
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win…
In his excellent book, Clemons has caught not only the technological capacity of the nation but the vigor and spirit of that time as well; a time in which the nation dared to dream big dreams and then set itself the improbable task of making them a reality.
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