Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Astronauts (front to back) Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders head to the launch pad for the Apollo 8 mission.
S PACE SCIENCE
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e gave the scarred side of the com- Mifflin, 1994), co- in Klugers telling of the lead-up to the first
mand module an affectionate slap, authored with Lovell. circumlunar flight. Apollo8 is best remem-
then turned around and walked If there is a weakness bered for two things. The first is the decision
away. That was Apollo8 commander Frank in this praisewor- to send a SaturnV rocket around the Moon
Bormans matter-of-fact response to the mis- thy book, it is that it after only a single Earth orbital flight one
sions end, as Jeffrey Kluger records in his emphasizes the roles of the gutsiest calls in NASAs history. After a
book Apollo 8. When the week-long flight of the astronauts over capsule fire during the 1967 Apollo 1 launch
returned to Earth on 27 December 1968, those of the thousands rehearsal, which killed astronauts Gus
Borman and fellow astronauts Bill Anders of engineers, techni- Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, NASA
and Jim Lovell did not publicly make much of cians, mission con- Apollo 8: The fell behind its schedule to land on the Moon
Thrilling Story of
having pulled off the first orbit of the Moon. trollers and number the First Mission to by the end of the decade. It had planned to test
The rest of the world felt differently, and crunchers who made the Moon Apollo hardware in the relatively safe confines
Apollo 8 is a valentine to NASAs extraordi- Apollo 8 possible. JEFFREY KLUGER of low Earth orbit, but to catch up, agency
nary achievement and the trio of astronauts Among these were the Henry Holt: 2017. leaders concocted a bravura scheme to regain
who made it happen. Kluger puts the latter, female mathematicians momentum by making Apollo8 a lunar fly-
especially Borman, centre stage, leaving such as those in Margot Lee Shetterlys book by. The experience and data acquired would,
NASAs engineers and politicos in the shade. Hidden Figures (William Morrow, 2016) and they reasoned, enable a landing and dem-
That is not surprising: Kluger is a veteran its film adaptation, as well as in Nathalia Holts onstrate US technological excellence.
space writer best known for Lost Moon: The Rise of the Rocket Girls (Little, Brown, 2016). This decision makes for a weighty story, but
Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 (Houghton The emphasis on astronauts is evident Kluger glosses over it and instead focuses on
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COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS
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and indoctrinate the young. He is right. avid Ansells passionately written politicization of health care. He sees the
But rituals serve a purpose. That is why TheDeath Gap presents a powerful countrys health system as another form of
most readers will enjoy the vicarious thrill case for social inequality as a cause of structural violence harm resulting from
of that flight to the Moon in the stellar disease and disparities in health. The social unjust social systems, such as poor-quality
company of Borman, Anders and Lovell. epidemiologist, physician and public-hospi- housing and emergency infrastructures. This
tal veteran invokes the concept of death gaps architecture, anchored by racism, classism
Roger Launius retired last year as to describe differences in life expectancy by and placeism (discrimination on the basis
associate director of the Smithsonian race, ethnicity, class and geography. of neighbourhood), fosters ill health in the
Institutions National Air and Space Ansell uses an approach that is gaining most marginalized and vulnerable groups,
Museum in Washington DC, and is now traction in health and medicine, casting such as poor black people in urban areas
principal of Launius Historical Services. health disparities in the United States as and rural working-class white people. For
e-mail: launiusr@gmail.com arising from the commodification and the most unfortunate, such assaults on
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