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The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon

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The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon

By: Todd Zwillich
Narrated by: Todd Zwillich, Angelo Di Loreto
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About this listen

The story of John C. Houbolt, an unsung hero of Apollo 11 and the man who showed NASA how to put America on the moon.

Without John C. Houbolt, a mid-level engineer at NASA, Apollo 11 would never have made it to the moon.

Top NASA engineers on the project, including Werner Von Braun, strongly advocated for a single, huge spacecraft to travel to the moon, land, and return to Earth. It's the scenario used in 1950s cartoons and horror movies about traveling to outer space.

Houbolt had another idea: Lunar Orbit Rendezvous. LOR would link two spacecraft in orbit while the crafts were travelling at 3,600 miles an hour around the moon. His plan was ridiculed and considered unthinkable. But this junior engineer was irrepressible. He stood by his concept, fired off memos to executives, and argued that LOR was the only way to success.

For the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11, hear the untold story of the man who helped fulfill Kennedy’s challenge to reach the moon and begin exploring the final frontier.

©2019 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2019 Audible Originals, LLC. Americas Professionals & Academics Science & Technology Science Fiction Interstellar Technology Self Help

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I enjoyed the in-depth look into John Houbolt and his career, the author had done his research well. I was already aware of John and his fight to get LOR pushed through the ranks of NASA but there was some interesting additional detail in here.

I have to agree with some of the other reviews, this book was let down by the audio editing. The background music was unnecessary, the other samples were quite irritating and not very well mixed in. It felt more like a podcast in places, which would be ok if it were a bit more polished, but the actual content and story was strong enough that it didn’t need all of the window dressing. Would have preferred a straightforward reading of the text.

Good listen overall though, especially for Apollo enthusiasts.

A really good story but flawed production

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This is a very interesting and enlightening book. I knew about John Houbolt and his absolutely pivotal role in the success of the Apollo program, but I didn't appreciate just how hard he had to struggle to be heard. 60 years on, it's hard to imagine any other mission mode for Apollo than LOR - it just seems so obviously the right way to do it! But hindsight is a wonderful thing and back then it was clearly viewed as cranky at best. Houbolt was clearly a very clever guy who saw very clearly how to solve the enormous challenge of landing men on the moon and thanks to his dogged perseverance it all worked! Well done to Todd Zwillich for telling this man's story - I suspect that most people (who are not Apollo nerds like me) were unaware of Houbolt and his efforts. It's a really nice production too - more than just a reading of an audio book, but with interviews with people who were there too. Highly recommended!

A really fascinating account of an unsung hero

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An excellent account of an unsung hero within NASA leading up to and during the Apollo moon landings. A fantastic story of John Houbolt realising and pushing for Lunar Orbit Rendezvous to achieve the Apollo moon landings. Seemed very well researched and the performance was spot on.

Brilliant!

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A side of the space programme I knew nothing about spoilt for me by the very irritating background music…….why oh why ???

An interesting listen

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Brilliant account of the resolute triumph over stubborn adversity. If you're right, you're right and that's what matters in the end for the greater good of mankind. We need maverick minds like this to progress as a species, but only if the means justifies the methods.

Braw

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i love nasa 'moon rush' engineering stories and enjoyed this a lot. short but i'm glad it wasn't padded out too much with sideline stuff.

good narrative of an intriguing short story

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Great story. Great subject matter. Well put together and well researched. But the sound mixing... overlaying recordings of speeches etc with someone trying to read the same speeches, trying and failing to match cadence and intonation just creates annoying interference.

If you're going to refer to a soundbite, play the whole thing. Not just the first ten seconds and then fade it out incongruously while speaking over the last few seconds. Frustrating.

Twinkly elevator music or militaristic sounding bugle calls make this whole thing sound like the menu screen from a Call of Duty game was on standby on high volume in the recording studio.
At one point I swear I heard the menu music from Kerbal Space Program.
A bit ridiculous sound mixing all round.

why all the music?

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I tend to love anything space related and it was no different here. It was enjoyable. I felt frustrated for him, embarrassed for him. I was incredibly surprised that his wife was unaware of what he was going through during it all. It really was a very different time.

Pretty interesting

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This audiobook could have been a pleasure to listen, and instead was ruined on multiple fronts. Just to name a few: the "podcast style" with unneeded background music, quotes with overlapping audio, and other apparently fancy effects made it seems like you are listening to a movie where they forget to put the video. A critical or a knowledgable listener would reflect on why some information are shared and other omitted, often against the main story. The only logical explanation is that the author is doing all the possible to turn the main character into a crackpot crybaby, never satisfied and always resenting nevertheless he received honours, some recognition and "only 50,000 USD" in prize (50 years ago!). If a written copy exists, buy that instead of this audiobook, it might be a little more worthy.

How to turn an unsung hero into a nut crybaby

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