Review - Dark Side of the Moon

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Review - Dark Side of the Moon - Gerard DeGroot

I ought to say straight away that the three stars awarded to this book don't reflect on the quality of the writing or the point the author makes, both of which are excellent. It's just, to be honest, there's very little science here. It's about political history. No less fascinating for that, but it makes it impossible to rate the book highly as a popular science title.

In fact, in essence, "there's very little science here, it's about political history" is also the key point of Gerard DeGroot's book, subtitled "the magnificent madness of the American Lunar quest." The who moon race wasn't about science, it was about making political history, getting there before the Russians, restoring America's pride, and perhaps supremely, fulfilling a prediction made by an assassinated president in a way that would probably never have happened had he lived.

The book takes on a quick tour of the origins of America's space expertise, extracted from Nazi Germany at the end of the Second World War (told in much more detail in Deborah Cadbury's Space Race) but mostly it concentrates on the decisions taken along the way from the early shocked response to Sputnik to the fading interest in moon landings after the admittedly world-shattering first time. (DeGroot makes this point markedly. Who can remember anything achieved by Apollo missions other than Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 (and that only for going wrong)?)

It's fascinating to see the strained arguments as to why it was important to go to the moon - many of the about defence, while seeming to totally miss the point that missiles based on Earth had a vastly quicker response time than anything on the moon. Time and time again the message is hammered home that manned missions in space had practically no value, compared with the huge extra expense of keeping human beings alive. The people who wanted to go to the moon, and beyond to the planets, with manned expeditions wanted to do so for the same vague "because it's there" feeling as mountain climbers. It's a noble achievement. But no one could justify spending such a huge amount of money on the warm feeling of achieving something difficult, so spurious justifications had to be produced about the Russian threat and the scientific benefit. A fraction of the money could have achieved much more for science than the manned space effort, leaving vast funds for more useful purposes.

DeGroot highlights the silliness of the achievement school of exploration that takes people up Everest or walking to the North Pole. After all, if you want to do something really difficult, try balancing a pin on its point. It has about as much use and is also very difficult. But the real heavy weight of his message - and you do sometimes reel under the impact as it is pounded home time and time again - is the unnecessary expenditure on manned flight and the requirement to save face. What's particularly interesting is his assertion that Kennedy was not enamoured with space, and would probably have quietly dropped the whole programme - but once he was killed, there was no turning back.

Although there's nothing unexpected in here, DeGroot makes his point well and reveals the true depths of the twisting and turning required to justify the unjustifiable.

Reviewed by Brian Clegg

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