Moondust : [in search of the men who fell to Earth

Between 1969 and 1972, 12 men traveled a quarter-million miles to the moon and returned safely. In this powerful, intimate story, journalist Smith sets out to find these men and discover how that experience changed their lives. Smith, a boy living in a nondescript California subdivision at the time of the Apollo missions and caught up in the endless possibility of space flight, journeys to the halls of power in Washington, D.C., and the backwoods of Texas in search of these mythical figures of American know-how. He finds Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, still cool and confident, a plainspoken man who never let on how close that mission came to disaster. In Gene Cernan, the last man on the Moon, he finds an imperious, driven, highly successful businessman. If all of the men share one affliction, it's fame. Once at the center of the world's attention, these mostly ordinary men with some extraordinary gifts and luck have lived their lives being asked the same question—What was it like "up there"? In an artful blend of memoir and popular history, Smith makes flesh-and-blood people out of icons and reveals the tenderness of his own heart. __________ В 1969-1972 годах 12 человек отправились на Луну и благополучно вернулись на Землю. Журналист Смит решил найти этих людей и узнать, как это событиг изменили их жизнь. Смит колесит по всей Америке в поисках этих легендарных людей. Он находит Нейла Армстронга - первого человека на Луне, по-прежнему невозмутимого, уверенного в себе и откровенного, который и не пытается скрывать, что его полёт едва не кончился катастрофой. Он знакомится с Юджином Сернаном - последним человеком на Луне, властной, движимой личностью и крайне успешным бизнесменом. Смит сочетает мемуары с популярным рассказом, превращая легендарных личностей в обычных людей из плоти и крови. Образцы страниц (http://fastpic.ru/view/3/2009/1023/5cb44b5816e40a382a65350aada5c92d.jpg.html) (http://fastpic.ru/view/3/2009/1023/90d98633b3638e58aa2a00c01bdc3ec8.jpg.html) The Apollo Moon landings have been called the last optimistic act of the twentieth century. Twelve astronauts made this greatest of all journeys, and all were indelibly marked by it. In Moondust, journalist Andrew Smith reveals the stories of the nine still living men caught between the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Earth's collective dreaming: Here, we relive the flashbulbs, the first shocking glimpse of Earth from space, the sense of euphoria and awe. This was the first global media event, after all, and the astronauts were its superstars.

They had been schooled by NASA for every eventuality in deep space but were completely unprepared for fame. On their return, they struggled to balance notoriety with a spaceman's frugal paycheck. These perfect specimens of mind and body were, ultimately, only human beings thrust into an impossibly intense spotlight. Possibilities bloomed, and marriages crumbled under the strain.

And it wasn't just the astronauts who'd changed; the world was changing, too. As the Apollo program wound down, the wild and happy experimentations of the sixties gave way to the cynicism and self-doubt of the seventies, and the Moonwalkers faced what was, in some ways, their greatest challenge: how to find meaning in life when the biggest adventure you could possibly have was a memory. Some traded on past glories; others tried to move on. Some found God; some sought oblivion; some reinvented themselves and discovered a measure of happiness in a completely unexpected place. Andrew Smith sees them through the eyes of the boy who flung down his bike on a summer evening to hear Neil Armstrong utter his fateful words -- and through the eyes of a grown manbalancing myth against reality and finding the truth infinitely richer and more moving.

A thrilling blend of history, reportage, and memoir, Moondust rekindles the hopeful excitement of an incandescent hour in American history and captures the bittersweet heroism of those who risked everything to hurl themselves out of the known world -- and who were never again quite able to accept its familiar bounds.

In 1999, Andrew Smith was interviewing Charlie Duke, astronaut and moon walker, for the Sunday Times. During the course of the interview, which took place at Duke's Texan home, the telephone rang and Charlie left the room to answer it. When he returned, some twenty minutes later, he seemed visibly upset. It seemed that he'd just heard that, the previous day, one of his fellow moon walkers, the astronaut Pete Conrad, had died. The more Charlie spoke the more Andrew realised that his grief was something more than the mere fact of losing a friend. 'Now theres only nine of us,' he said. Only nine. Which meant that, one day not long from now, there would be none, and when that day came, no one on earth would have known the giddy thrill of gazing back at us from the surface of the moon. The thought shocked Andrew, and still does. Moondust is his attempt to understand why.The Apollo moon programme has been called the last optimistic act of the 20th Century. Over a strange three year period between 1969 and 1972, twelve men made the longest and most eccentric of all journeys, and all were indelibly marked by it. In Moondust Andrew sets out to interview all the remaining astronauts who walked on the moon, and to find out how their lives were changed for ever by what had happened. 'Where do you go after you've been to the moon?' In addition to this question that would prove hugely troubling to many of the returned astronauts, they also had to deal with the fantasies of faceless millions at their backs, for this was the first truly global media event. The walkers would forever be caught between the gravitational pull of the moon and the earth's collective dreaming. The Apollo Moon landings have been called the last optimistic act of the twentieth century. Twelve astronauts made this greatest of all journeys, and all were indelibly marked by it. Journalist Smith reveals the stories of the nine still living men caught between the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Earth's collective dreaming: we relive the flashbulbs, the first shocking glimpse of Earth from space, the sense of euphoria and awe. This was the first global media event, and the astronauts were its superstars. They had been schooled by NASA for deep space but were completely unprepared for fame. Marriages crumbled under the strain. The wild and happy sixties gave way to the cynicism and self-doubt of the seventies, and the Moonwalkers faced their greatest challenge: how to find meaning in life when the biggest adventure you could possibly have was a memory.--From publisher description.A portrait of the twelve men who journeyed to the moon draws on interviews with the nine surviving astronauts who walked on the moon to determine how their lives had been transformed by the experience and its aftermath.

The Apollo lunar missions of the 1960s and 1970s have been called the last optimistic acts of the twentieth century. Twelve astronauts made this greatest of all journeys and were indelibly marked by it, for better or for worse. Journalist Andrew Smith tracks down the nine surviving members of this elite group to find their answers to the question "Where do you go after you've been to the Moon?"

A thrilling blend of history, reportage, and memoir, Moondust rekindles the hopeful excitement of an incandescent hour in America's past and captures the bittersweet heroism of those who risked everything to hurl themselves out of the known world — and who were never again quite able to accept its familiar bounds.

A portrait of the twelve men who journeyed to the moon draws on interviews with the nine surviving astronauts who walked on the moon to determine how their lives were transformed by the experience and its aftermath After a water bug suddenly leaves her pond and is transformed into a dragonfly, her friends' questions about such departures are like those children ask when someone dies. Aimed primarily at children this book uses the allegory of metamorphosis to assist in understanding death. N THE MORNING of July 9, 1999, I set out to meet Charlie and Dotty Duke in the bar of a London hotel. Down below the surface of a quiet pond lived a little colony of water bugs. Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 12, 2009).