Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest

by Gerard J. DeGroot

Book Overview

A selection of the History, Scientific American, and Quality Paperback Book Clubs

A meticulously researched study that argues the futility of NASA's expensive and dangerous race to the moon

For a very brief moment during the 1960s, America was moonstruck. Boys dreamt of being an astronaut; girls dreamed of marrying one. Americans drank Tang, bought "space pens" that wrote upside down, wore clothes made of space age Mylar,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814719953
• ISBN13: 9780814719954
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: New York University Press
• Length: 321 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Contrarian Story

Finally a book that takes a contrarian position against commonly held myths, propagana, and science fiction. Readers should focus on the book's overall message, then reflect on how it relates to today's space programs. The author pokes many big holes in our country's hero worship and dares to point out that the emperor has no clothes. Not surprisingly, the author is attacked by critics on details, not the overall message.

Has some errors but makes an important point

I was surprised to find several factual errors in a book written by an academic. That's actually quiet unacceptable for somebody in his position and I wish he had done a bit more research because these errors undermine the main point which I think is very important: "putting a man on the moon is lunacy". Please don't get me wrong here. I think that the moon program is certainly one of the top technological achievements of the 20th century. It still find it hard to believe today that so much was achieved in so little time and that all those astronauts are back on earth to die from old age and lung cancer. It's simply incredible. I love technology and certainly space technology. But I love science even more and we have to be honest: the moon program was not about science. Science was just a side show. There was no scientific reason to put a man on the moon in the sixties and there is none today. And there was certainly no economic reason to go to the moon. Yes, there was some "spin-off" but if one looks at the dollar for dollar return, the moon race was a bad investment of historic proportions. This is the main merit of this book. It shows how NASA and the moon race was driven by politics, power and money and how it was sold to the public that payed for it. History is repeating itself today. There is another moon shot on the political agenda and this book helps to put everything into perspective. I would love to see a permanent base on mars if it could be done cheaply. But the reality is that the amount of money needed is astronomical. The US economy is almost foreign owned with a double deficit and everybody is in debt. Making even more debt is proposed the get out of the recession. Is a new moon shot really what we need? This book helps tremendously at avoiding a huge mistake. That's the reason I gave it 4 stars ( 5 is out because of the factual errors ).

Fly me to the Moon...

DeGroot delivers and engaging piece of revisionist history that all supporters of manned space flight should read. After seeing the other reviews you might wonder how this view can be justified. DeGroot's premise is a basic one: In conceiving the effort to get to the Moon as a "race" with the Soviet Union, the exploration of space became, for the US, an event with a beginning and and end. That end came in 1969 when Apollo 11 landed on and returned from the Moon. After Apollo, there was no purpose defined for the space program and the program drifted. And, indeed, continues to drift to this day. This is not an argument, as the other reviews here display, that finds much resonance with supporters of manned space flight. Yet, DeGroot's question is as relevant now as some were asking at the time of Apollo: Why do we need men to go into space? DeGroot does not offer much in the way of reasons. Unfortunately, by not attempting a serious answer to this question DeGroot's analysis is left short. DeGroot says in the Preface that he came looking for "something hopeful and uplifting" and for "the heroes of my youth". To a significant degree he removes that space program from its context and fails to give full credit to the program as one thing that was going right in and for the US in the 1960s. Yes, DeGroot got Apollo 9 wrong. This is a pretty obvious mistake to make, but it is only three or four paragraphs and does not detract from his argument. Revisionist history should challenge one's assumptions and this DeGroot does. When we can convincingly answer DeGroot's questions we will have put manned space flight on a sound footing. Read, enjoy, think.

A Hugely Important Book

This book is going to make a lot of people very angry. That is as it should be; the field of space history has for too long been dominated by those people who start from the assumption that going to the moon was a wonderful thing. In this excellent, highly readable and very entertaining book, DeGroot asks the difficult questions about why the Americans went to the moon, and why they quit doing so. We seem to have forgotten that, during the Sixties, the Vietnam War was more popular than the moon mission, at least when Americans were asked whether the venture was worth the cost. It is because various people at NASA and in the government were able to deflect attention away from the cost that the missions went ahead. The program cost $35 billion, which is about $2,000 for every man, woman and child in America at the time. Did they get their money's worth? One scientist at the time pointed out that that amount of money could have given every teacher in America a 10% raise, while giving 100 colleges a grant of $100 million each and still have plenty to spare for other life enhancing purposes. So was it worth it? Ask yourself an honest question: how has your life improved because of Armstrong's small step? We need to ask these kind of questions - No, Shout Them - because NASA is at it again, trotting out all those lovely stories about new frontiers and the need to explore. How about new frontiers on earth? Anyone heard of global warming, poverty, AIDS? Why can't we explore those problems? Why don't we just simply spend the money on educating our kids? Read this book, then tell a friend about it, and watch out when NASA starts talking about going back to the moon. If there was really any use in being there, we would never have left.

Be prepared for some suprises!

I never realised that John Kennedy was not really interested in space. All those fine words were clearly just fluff to give noble purpose to a cynical plan to get a jump on the Russians in the space race. Apollo had nothing to do about space exploration -- Kennedy knew that, Johnson knew that, von Braun knew that, everybody except the American people knew that. This is a fine book from a fine author (see the reviews of Professor De Groot's previous award-winning books) and a very timely one, given that NASA is trying to use the same justification for another trip to the moon. Staggering sums of money are involved - last year NASA put the figure at $104bn for a single return trip. That kind of money is desperately needed for tackling some of the very serious social, medical and environmental problems that face the United States but which the current administration seems strangely reluctant to recognise.