Glory days

Buzz Aldrin's "Magnificent Desolation" makes riveting reading even though it is 40 years since he walked behind Neil Armstrong to become the second man on the moon.

Buzz Aldrin8217;s 8220;Magnificent Desolation8221; makes riveting reading even though it is 40 years since he walked behind Neil Armstrong to become the second man on the moon. His account of landing the lunar module on the Sea of Tranquillity on July 20th 1969,and how close the team came to aborting the mission,remains a great tale. Moreover,he provides an answer of sorts to the question that has dogged him: what does it feel like to be second? 8220;Believe it or not8221;,he writes,8221;I hadn8217;t particularly wanted to be the first man on the moon.8221;

Mr Nelson has conducted extensive interviews with members of the Apollo space programme and combed through NASA archives,newly declassified CIA documents and oral histories. The result is a fascinating and definitive history of the race to the moon. The two superpowers,America and the Soviet Union,were determined not only to prove their technological prowess but also to win the hearts and minds of the world.

The Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite,Sputnik 1,on October 4th 1957. NASA,the American space agency,was set up within a year and President John Kennedy took up the challenge that Americans should be the first to set foot on the moon. The Russians responded by sending off Yuri Gagarin in 1961 to be the first man in orbit. But,watched by an estimated 500m people on television,the astronauts who stepped onto the moon8217;s pockmarked surface were American.

Mr Nelson8217;s book contains compelling portraits of the astronauts: the American heroes of the age. He documents their military test-pilot backgrounds,their all-American wholesomeness,their intelligence Mr Aldrin had a doctorate from MIT 8211; and their self-serving egos. Mr Aldrin describes the rockiness of his own post-moon life: alcoholism,depression,two failed marriages and a sad end to his air-force career. He claims however to have found redemption with a third wife and a new calling as a space advocate.

Both books provide some little-known facts. We learn from Mr Nelson that William Safire,President Richard Nixon8217;s speechwriter,had prepared a Rupert Brooke-inspired eulogy in case something went wrong 8220;There is some corner of another world that is forever mankind8221;. And we learn from both that Mr Armstrong8217;s first job on landing on the moon was to grab a rock. Thus,if there were an emergency and they had to leave quickly,there would be at least one lunar sample.

The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009