Posted on Wednesday, February 06, 2013
Falling to Earth by Al Worden with Francis French
Finished reading February 5th, 2013
Rating 9/10
Falling to Earth is about Al Worden, his life and moon-flight. He flew on Apollo 15 as the command module pilot, aka he didn't get to walk on the Moon, instead he flew tens of times around the moon all alone while his crew-mates Jim Irvin and Dave Scott were down on the Moon somewhere near Hadley crater driving around with the first US lunar rover or gathering rock samples.
So if you'd read some other astronaut's biography who got to do the moonwalk, there would be differences.
The book is great and although the main emphasis is on the Apollo mission, then it has some deeper points as well. For example a lot of the earlier astronauts would work for NASA less than ten years, they'd get one or two missions, but for the rest of their life they seem to have the stamp "Flew in Space" on their forehead.
However, Worden only flew in space once, and he was fired from NASA a year after that because of an incident with some postal covers that caused a lot of publicity.
If you're not a fan of reading, here's a great video of an interview with Worden discussing "Falling to Earth":
Labels: Al Worden, Apollo 15, astronaut, book review