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Hardcover
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Charles A. Lindberg
The years that have passed since Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins piloted the Apollo 11 spacecraft to the moon in July 1969 have done nothing to alter the fundamental wonder of the event: man reaching the moon remains one of the great events—technical and spiritual—of our lifetime.
In this remarkable book, Michael Collins conveys, in a very personal way, the drama, beauty, and humor of that adventure. He also traces his development from his first flight experiences in the air force, through his days as a test pilot, to his Apollo 11 space walk, presenting an evocative picture of the joys of flight as well as a new perspective on time, light, and movement from someone who has seen the fragile Earth from the other side of the moon.
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| An old favorite |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I previously owned this book in a battered, much read, paperback. This new one is bigger, which makes the included photographs much better. It's my favorite history of the Apollo flights.
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| A geekfest for non-geeks-- and that's a compliment |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I picked this book up based on a recommendation in Gene Weingarten's Washington Post column. I can't remember what Gene said exactly, but it had to do with people who were unexpectedly good writers, providing insight into important moments in history. Which is exactly what Carry the Fire is: a candid, funny, moving story of a bunch of "test pilot engineers" and thousands of un-named unsung heroes (including the glue-pot ladies who made sure the space suits didn't leak) managing to put two men on the moon in 1969.
I am not a technical person, but I do like a good adventure story, and I am willing to accept the premise that I must learn a little science in order to enjoy the adventure. Michael Collins pulled me along into the sciences of navigation, physics, geology, etc. all with the goal of getting to the moon, and I was happy to be along for the ride.
He claims to be a non-emotional kind of guy, which makes the emotions of this book all the more moving: facing and conquering the claustrophobia attendant on being in a pressure suit, delivering the worst of all possible news to one of the Apollo I wives, contemplating the very real possibility that something would happen to strand Eagle on the moon, and he would have to return to Earth alone-- all of these episodes left me sleepless on the evenings on which I read them.
Lastly, I will share that I am the child of one of those thousands of people who made Michael Collins' space flight possible. I did not appreciate at the time my dad's role (or his engineering brain) which made him part of history-- I only saw a guy who went off to work at the Cape every day. I remember the day when I arrived home from school to find him at home ahead of me-- the first time ever-- washing the car, on the edge of tears. For many years, that remarkable scene was my primary impression of the disaster that was Apollo I-- something so catastrophic that my dad would come home from work early. This book helps me to frame my dad's workaholism and long absences in my childhood as part of the larger mission-- one which took many men away from their families to do something almost impossible, "in peace for all mankind."
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| Everything Mike Collins' autobiography ought to be |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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This is a fantastic book. It has just the right amount of technical detail, human personalities, background information, and no-nonsense pilot talk. Definitely one of the best aviation/aerospace-related books I've ever read. This one is a keeper. Mike Collins writes well, is funny, and tells it how it was. I've got no complaints whatsoever. 5.0/5.0.
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| Still Carrying The Fire... |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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"Carrying The Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys" is a reprint of Michael Collins' thoughtful, bluntly honest autobiography, first published in 1974 after his retirement from the space program. This new edition was issued to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing in July 1969, and contains a new preface and afteword by the author.
Michael Collins was a member of the elite fraternity of men who were jet fighter pilots, test pilots, and astronauts. But Collins was something more, a candid, reflective man with a wry wit and the writing skills to capture his experiences.
Collins briefly relates his youth and his early experiences in the US Air Force. A turning point is the decision to try out for test pilot, followed by another decision to try out for astronaut. Collins was in the fourth selection group of astronauts, the men who helped carry out the Gemini and Apollo programs. Collins himself flew the Gemini 10 and Apollo 11 missions. He very effectively captures a sense of space flight as a still new and dangerous endeavor, using what now seems like incredibly primitive equipment. Collins has plenty of anecdotes about himself and his fellow astronauts, while offering some worthwhile perspective about the value of space flight.
"Carrying the Fire" is very highly recommended as one of the very best of the many accounts of manned space flight.
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| Please don't trip while carrying the FIRE! WHOOPS! |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Being careful not to trip and fall
while carrying the fire. By Michael Collins
Passionate people have a way of attracting other passionate people into their realm of life goals, and Michael Collins is one such person. Being a man of high intelligence and high ambition, he set his sights on becoming one of the best test pilots of new and emerging aviation technology, and quite by fate and happenstance; he found his life trajectory changing when rocket science was in its infancy. By becoming a rocket man - an American Astronaut, Collins fulfilled his duties to the fullest and is therefore to this day, one of the most famous and admired men the world over. Rocketry and space travel is a highly technical and evolving science, and it found a perfect match with the intellect, the mind and the personality of one Michael Collins. Even though he isn't an artist, nor is he a poet or a painter, through is ability to solve complex scientific problems and having an analytical mind, Collins participated in man's greatest technological experience while bringing his special flavoring to the mix.
Collins didn't sit down to write his autobiography until 13 or 14 years after he splashed down in the South Pacific with his amicable friends, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Rather, he lived his life to the fullest and every day there were people keeping his mind occupied and challenged. Collins readily admits that after his Apollo 11 Moon Mission, nothing in his life could compete with all the training, debriefing and rehearsing that he was required to do for the Mission. Nothing could be in the vicinity of the level of excitement he experienced during his moon mission. He had the presence of mind even on the first days post Mission, when he was confined to a medical quarantine, that he would never step foot in space ever again. He was wise to mentally separate his life away from the US Space Program, and so he could withdraw with some measure of dignity and respect; to pursue new channels. Unfortunately, the other two astronauts were not as fortunate.
Collins has an incredible memory as is evidenced by reading all 478 pages of his story.
I remember the lift-off as if it were yesterday, but if you weren't yet born, you can see the whole thing on YouTube these days; which I highly encourage everyone to do!
I read this wonderful book over the course of 4 days; the amount of time that it took for the Apollo 11 crew to reach the lunar surface. Collins gave much detail of the huge amount of work that it took for the Apollo 11 Mission to get off the ground; he reminds us that close to 400,000 people played a part in it and every part was essential. On page 284, he gives a detailed description of what the Saturn V lift-off looked like, what it felt like - and it made me feel as if I were one of the privileged few who were there in Florida to witness it. But he then backtracked and fully explained a lot of the dry, technical procedures that made lift-off possible on that fateful day, July 16th, 1969.
I remember where I was during those times. My family and I had just moved into the town of Downey, which was a hot NASA town that summer. I was 10 years old and was to begin the 5th grade in the fall. Our new house was about 5 miles away from North American; this huge engineering marvel of a warehouse where the entire think-tanking of the moon missions was done, and a lot of the complex construction of the mammoth Saturn V Rocket took place....it was conducted on a frantic but controlled pace! City Leaders talked of nothing else! North American was a huge place; it was something like 2700 acres located smack dab in the middle of Downey; a mostly working-class predominantly Caucasian inhabited town. The front of it was located on Lakewood Blvd, and the back of the plant ran all the way to Bellflower Blvd. It was flanked to the south with Imperial Highway and to the north ran Stewart & Gray Road. I remember passing by the plant numerous times during that summer; the parking lot was packed to the brim with all sorts of cars - all the people (mostly men in short sleeved dress-shirts and a tie) scurried in at all odd hours, day and night. It was a 24/7/365 operation! They never gave tours to anybody, claiming that their progress was already behind where they wanted to be and it was a matter of national pride and national security that all outsiders be kept out of the building and out of the way! As a fifth grader, I could understand their rationale, but it still hurt because people were very curious about the Moon Mission. This attitude of NASA came back later to haunt the entire Apollo Program; because we taxpayers looked at the Apollo engineers and administrators and even the lovable astronauts as being somewhat arrogant. They made us proud, but they also made us feel left out. OUCH!
I remember being glued to our black & white TV that fateful day of July 16th, 1969. This was the day the huge Saturn Rocket blasted off of Cape Kennedy in Florida, and I remember Walter Cronkite telling us all the details and he looked so proud! The moon landing happened at 9:26 EDT 4 days later: and we watched it run and re-run on the tube all day and all evening long! How I wished we had some fireworks to light and explode that night! It was so exciting!!! When human technology planted those Apollo Astronauts on the surface of the moon, it was a matter of national pride. We were so scared that the Eagle would find itself parked in a sea of quicksand, and that something otherworldly would make an appearance to our new National Heroes while they were freshly landed on the moon, but nothing weird happened, which was a relief! This is when Neil Armstrong swung open the door of the Eagle and took his sweet time descending down the stairs of the Eagle and stepped foot on the dusty moon surface. We heard him say through static transmission, "This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," and my entire family whooped and went crazy with screaming and yelling; a delirious expression of all the joy and relief we as a family and we as a nation felt. I kept a scrapbook of the entire mission as it unfolded, having had the fiercest crush on the fly-over man, Mike Collins! I just thought he was the best of the best; doing the toughest job of the entire mission - keeping the orbiting spacecraft running and ready for the other two spacemen playing on the moon. I only could imagine what Collins was going through being all alone for a day and half out there, especially was he flew over the spooky and mysterious dark side of the moon. I was convinced there was no braver man in the universe that could do what he was doing in space.
In the end of his amazing journal, Collins squares off with the one thing that tortures him and his fellow Apollo 11 Moon Crew to this day. He is absolutely sick to hell of answering this one question, so if you were ever to have the honor to meet Mr. Collins in the flesh, please DO NOT ASK HIM THIS: "What did it feel like to land on the moon?" or "What did it feel like to orbit around the moon but not land on it?"
Also be warned to NOT SEEK AN AUTOGRAPH from him because he has signed millions of autographs in his lifetime and he thinks that there must be a specially assigned desk in Hell for all autograph seekers, (except for children that is, because they don't know any better.)
In the last few pages, (there are no designated chapters in Collins' book) Collins attempts to explain the psychology of himself and the other two partners he flew with all those years ago on the most awesome journey a man could ever take. Collins is dry; he thrives on being mechanically explicit or he loves to talk mission talk, but even when he tries to explain his emotional address, we are left still wondering why he hides behind so many walls. After reading his summization of himself, I can see that he is in earnest trying his level best to describe his inner psyche to the readers of this fine book, but he is unable to let loose with his best intentions. He demonstrates a lot of arrogance and likes to cuss and swear to the nth degree throughout this book, but when left to describe his friends Aldrin and Armstrong, he is gentle and shows great compassion for them. I am glad to know that he places his utmost priority towards his family and he keeps the flames of his love going strong. I admire a man who loves his family and puts them first on his list.
In the end, we will ask our silly Earthbound questions and may never truly understand what it is like to circle so closely to the moon and see the Earth hanging in the blackness of a vast and enormous universe, but I believe I have come closer to understanding the mind of Mr. Michael Collins and realizing that he is just another mortal, blessed with extraordinary luck most of all. I am glad to have read his book and will likely re-read it sometime soon; he writes so well and is so stable and grounded in his thinking. I recommend this book to everyone who was alive during those fateful years that APOLLO flew from the Earth to the Moon and back again.
It was an epic journey!
The old North American Rockwell Plant still stands where it stood in 1969 in Downey. It was bought out by Boeing in 1999, where the Space Shuttle Program took over our national space adventures. Half of the plant is now occupied by a movie production company, who calls itself Downey Studios. The huge million gallon pool where Apollo conducted its zero gravity experiments was used to film the movie blockbuster, The Titanic. The other half of the old Apollo Plant is vacant and has been left to ruin. What is left is the cobwebs and echoes of an epic adventure. But there is still much activity going on in the abandoned warehouse.... to this day. I pass by the place every weekend when I go check up on my old Pop, who still lives in the house that I grew up in Downey. He's doing okay, but the plant is in a state of decay, broken windows and peeling paint. What once was such a humming busy place, full of natural city and national pride is now just a ramshackle remnant of its former glory days. There are trucks parked behind those huge blue painted plant doors and there are men who are moving things out of the big rooms there. They've been steadily removing items for many years now; I've kept a close eye on it during my runs out to Downey to check up on my old Pop. I have no idea what they're moving or where they're going with it. City leaders have been promising a museum to rise from these ruins, but 40 years later, we are still waiting to see it. The old Administration Office still stands and on the floor is the emblem of past successful projects that took place in that old warehouse, the Vultee Emblem still proudly adorns the tiny floor of that old office. I remember the day that President Nixon came to Downey, with his big car and all the Secret Service. The driveway was a tiny circle driveway and it still stands there today; things were much simpler and to the point back then.
I hope that you read this book especially if you live in Southern California and can remember those early days of space exploration - this book is a lively and descriptive story of that era. You are GO for a visit to the bookstore!
Please also visit [...] to see the tiny space museum that is there today. They make it sound so big - Oooh, the Columbia Space Science Museum and one would be so impressed until you laid your eyes upon it...it's just a tiny trailer on the site of the old Rockwell Plant. Tiny, insignificant and blah....It doesn't do the program one ounce of justice, but it's all we have as of this date. Stay safe everyone!
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