Solid science and thoroughly enjoyable, 28 Oct 2008
Phil Plait once again manages to convey a hefty dose of solid scientific knowledge in an entertaining and real page-turner fashion. Covering pretty much every sci-fi end-of-the-world threat from outer space he educates and entertains with stories of supernovae, black holes, gamma bursts and the like.

Along with the scientific explanations there is a common thread of pragmatic risk appraisal without the usual sensationalism. Even the benefits of many of the risks are discussed, such as the generation of heavier elements by supernovae.

Death from the Skies is both enjoyable and educational, and you are unlikely to be disappointed.

Solid science and thoroughly enjoyable, 28 Oct 2008
Phil Plait once again manages to convey a hefty dose of solid scientific knowledge in an entertaining and real page-turner fashion. Covering pretty much every sci-fi end-of-the-world threat from outer space he educates and entertains with stories of supernovae, black holes, gamma bursts and the like.

Along with the scientific explanations there is a common thread of pragmatic risk appraisal without the usual sensationalism. Even the benefits of many of the risks are discussed, such as the generation of heavier elements by supernovae.

Death from the Skies is both enjoyable and educational, and you are unlikely to be disappointed.

How stupid i am - for buying this book!, 22 Nov 2008
How stupid i am - for buying this book!

I enjoy the odd conspiracy books, and the odd alien/ufo book too, mainly to laugh at the loons i have to admit, but still they can be entertaining.

Not this book however. One thing is the constant use of italics and "quotes" where they are not needed - the pages are so heavy with them that sentences actually become hard to read. Another problem is the flimsy conspiracy evidence, mainly that on important occasions, any one of several stars could be 19.5 or 33 degrees above or below the horizon as seen from any one of dozens or 'ritual sites' on the earth, moon or mars. I'm sure you could make any date or time fit that pattern. Maybe I was born during an important conjunction?

It also seems that events are re-presented during the book, changing just a little each time they are mentioned until they fit nicely into the authors belief system. For example at the start of the book it's noted that Buzz Aldrin takes communion (a catholic religious rite) on the moon. Doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Later it's said that communion is based on and earlier ritual used by the Egyptians, which seems reasonable. Pretty soon though we get references to Egyptian rituals on the moon, and by the end of the book the authors are saying that Aldrin is a Horus worshipper whose first act on the moon was to perform his ancient rituals.

The biggest problem though is the author's ego. The book is full of self-promotion, and I'd say nearly half the book is devoted to putting down the authors critics, even going so far as to point out his critics spelling mistakes. It really is very petty, especially as one of the authors slides misspells night as 'nite' a few pages later.

If you still want a copy of this book, you'll find mine in the bin tomorrow morning if you're quick.

A loon writes..., 02 Nov 2008
I've read many books about UFOs and the like, and have considerable sympathy for the subject. This, however, is a rather embarrassing example of the lunatic fringe - in which it is revealed how NASA is just part of some giant unclear conspiracy to cover up all kinds of stuff to do with Mars, the Moon, alien civilisations, Egyptology, fourth-dimensional physics, oh and also a bunch of other conspiracies and sinister organisations.

The main author, one Richard Hoagland, writes of himself in the third person throughout, as if giving a gloss of drama and objectivity, yet this is a self-serving document, recounting the history of his brilliant ideas and his lame, biased or malign detractors, peppered with overuse of italics and shudder quotes in case you don't get the message.

But it is the wild extrapolations from extremely flimsy evidence that make this book just embarrassing and annoying to read. For Hoagland, blurry photographs of the Moon or Mars are a kind of Rorschach inkblot test: to his eye, ordinary rocks are 'mechanical debris' from some advanced but now-extinct interplanetary civilization. A rock with two dents in it is a 'robot's head' (and I suspect that a significant proportion of rocks look more like a robot's head than the example we are given). Mountains are 'pyramids'; a blurry row of rocks is a 'sphinx'. Inevitably, the not particularly face-like 'Face on Mars' gets much attention. These objects are rather more irregular than an advanced civilization ought to be able to produce - actually they look just like rocks and mountains - but this of course is explained by 'erosion' (even though no erosion takes place on the moon, not having an atmosphere or surface water).

Add to this a heavy dose of unconvincing geometry: draw enough straight lines on a photograph and you find some of them seem to connect these mysterious objects - or rather, they do if you draw enough lines and make enough use of wiggle room, such as saying a line connects to an object when actually it goes a bit to the side. (Ley lines, anyone?)

Then measure the angles produced, and with a bit more jiggling you can come up with something close to numbers that don't have any mathematical significance, like, say, e/pi, or e/root 5 - but why not more obvious constants like e or 5? Well, we are told, this is obviously an alien 'message' about hyperdimensional physics which tells us that the planets all contain a fourth-dimensional spinning pyramid or something...

Other photographs of the moon landings have even more bizarre interpretations: anything looking like a scratch on the negative is actually a 'buttress' supporting one of many giant glass domes over craters; these domes are naturally invisible in the photos (being made of glass), but hey, they're obviously there, aren't they? (Hoagland's inability to get any scientific journals to publish such results are naturally all part of the conspiracy.)

But wait, there are more dots to be connected. It's all something to do with not only the Masons, but also the Nazis (I kid you not). As shown by all kinds of things which turn out to be mysteriously symbolic: e.g. a particular moon launch occurs on the anniversary of Hitler's birthday (a date which after all only arises once every year). Quite why NASA would choose a launch date on such a cryptic yet symbolic basis, rather than - say - to do with the relative position of the earth and moon, is not clear; perhaps to send a secret message? To whom, and why? Some NASA announcement occurs three years to the day after JFK's assassination - all very suspicious and symbolic, so clearly is another secret message telling us we're-not-quite-sure-what. After all, the anniversary of JFK's assassination only comes round every year. (Come to think of it, isn't almost every day the anniversary of some more or less important historical event?)

NASA also uses strange symbolism in its official patches for space suits etc - for example, the Apollo program patch has a big letter A on it, secretly denoting (in the mind of Hoagland) not Apollo but Asar, an ancient Egyptian word for Osiris, i.e. the constellation Orion, which has something important to do with Egyptian mythology and hence pyramids and YOU SEE HOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE.

Quite how this book made it to the New York Times bestseller list is a mystery to me, and one rather more disturbing than the contents of this deranged and tedious book.

Intriguing, uncovers many layers of Conspiracy..., 11 Aug 2008
Richard Hoagland was present at JPL in 1969 as the crew of Apollo eleven was on it's way back to Earth. He saw a shady character, accompanied by high ranking NASA officials, distribute leaflets during a press conference stating that the entire moon landing had been faked on a soundstage in Nevada. This, according to Hoagland, was the genesis of the Apollo Conspiracy mythos. Logically this would make the Apollo Conspiracy a Hoax Hoax. Therefore one cannot help wondering what a Hoax Hoax Hoax would be.

Hoagland himself quotes one of his intelligence sources as saying that, "the lie is different at every level". There is no doubt that NASA is concealing something because many of the photographic materials it supplies are obviously tampered with. Hoagland states that NASA (Never A Staight Answer!) is a military organisation rather than as most people think, a civilian one. Therefore they are answerable only to the Pentagon and not to the taxpayer.

Hoagland is committed to the ancient astronauts idea. He believes that the ruins he has detected on the Moon and Mars, are many thousands of years old and probably pre- date human civilization on Earth. He apparently disregards the evidence that humans still interact with with extra- terrestrials. There is no mention in his book of the fact that the Moon, and possibly the entire solar system were created, from basic planetery raw materials, by beings far beyond our technological capacity, beings for whom time means nothing. I believe therefore that everything in our environment is controlled by these entities, whom humans often mistake for Gods.

NASA must have known since it's inception that the moon is artificial, as it's period of orbit is exactly equal to it's period of rotation; also it covers the Sun exactly during solar eclipses. I am convinced that Socrates knew this. I do not agree with Hoagland that there has been only one "time before", there have probably been many; Humankind has reached out to other worlds in the past, and may not actually originate on Earth.

In many of the Apollo photographs of the Moon, Hoagland sees huge glass domes reaching high above the lunar surface, and the remains of supporting rebars, I cannot say that I see this from the reproductions in the book, but there do seem to be atifacts and "arcology" there. Perhaps there are still humans or extra- terrestrials living within the moon, based on it's far side.

Hoagland believes in the notorious "Face on Mars". Of course, if it is truly artificial, then it certainly does not resemble any monolith on Earth, being over a mile in length and apparently honeycombed with rooms and walls; The Face itself is only visible from a high altitude. At the end of the book there are some reproductions of photographs taken by the recent Mars Reconnaissance Orbitor which according to Hoagland reveal an ancient "Headquarters" in The Face. I find it surprising that the orbital photos from Mars appear to be of higher resolution than those from the Moon.



D+ poor effort, must try harder.., 19 Apr 2008
I think the face on mars looks like a collapsed hill, and just a trick of light. The author is obsessed by it. All this astonishing alien artifacts on the moon and mars are present within Richard Hoagland's imagination, and are not present in any of the pictures. What the re-examination of the lunar landing photos probably show is the original hidden background detail of the inside of the studio where they filmed the lunar landings. There's a colour photo of the moon in this book, taken from the Apollo space craft, and according to the author, it's evidence of millions of domes of glass on the moon, as it shows a glow around the moon, which is not possible from space. The more obvious explanation for this is that the photo was taken from a telescope on the earth, and then claimed for the Apollo astronauts.
What is proven in this book is that NASA are habitual liers, and have been covering up something which is far more interesting...evidence of life on mars. What the agenda is, is not explored very well here.
The first chapters about multi-dimentional space is out of the scope for a lay-person and is a stuggle to get through.
What would make for a much better book, by another author, would be an exploration of the mars anomalies, the green-blue sky which NASA have tweeked into red, and fossil evidence on mars. Also an investigation into why NASA are compelled to lie about everything, and why should anyone trust anything they say, including that they went to the moon, when there is so much evidence to show that they didn't, and which Hoagland claims he and his associates have proved to be a false conspiracy, and he hasn't proved it at all. If NASA can fake the colours of mars, why cant they fake the supposed robot head as well, and anything else they feel like?

"Let's go fly a kite..", 08 Mar 2008
"up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear". Quoting Mary Poppins may be a strange way to begin a review but in my opinion this author has been up where the air is clear (and perhaps a bit too thin) for far too long.
Every single half-baked conspiracy is covered in torturous depth with pictures that (try as I might) failed to convince me there are glass cities on the moon.
If you are a real paranoid X-Files freak, this is the book for you!

Solid science and thoroughly enjoyable, 28 Oct 2008
Phil Plait once again manages to convey a hefty dose of solid scientific knowledge in an entertaining and real page-turner fashion. Covering pretty much every sci-fi end-of-the-world threat from outer space he educates and entertains with stories of supernovae, black holes, gamma bursts and the like.

Along with the scientific explanations there is a common thread of pragmatic risk appraisal without the usual sensationalism. Even the benefits of many of the risks are discussed, such as the generation of heavier elements by supernovae.

Death from the Skies is both enjoyable and educational, and you are unlikely to be disappointed.

How stupid i am - for buying this book!, 22 Nov 2008
How stupid i am - for buying this book!

I enjoy the odd conspiracy books, and the odd alien/ufo book too, mainly to laugh at the loons i have to admit, but still they can be entertaining.

Not this book however. One thing is the constant use of italics and "quotes" where they are not needed - the pages are so heavy with them that sentences actually become hard to read. Another problem is the flimsy conspiracy evidence, mainly that on important occasions, any one of several stars could be 19.5 or 33 degrees above or below the horizon as seen from any one of dozens or 'ritual sites' on the earth, moon or mars. I'm sure you could make any date or time fit that pattern. Maybe I was born during an important conjunction?

It also seems that events are re-presented during the book, changing just a little each time they are mentioned until they fit nicely into the authors belief system. For example at the start of the book it's noted that Buzz Aldrin takes communion (a catholic religious rite) on the moon. Doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Later it's said that communion is based on and earlier ritual used by the Egyptians, which seems reasonable. Pretty soon though we get references to Egyptian rituals on the moon, and by the end of the book the authors are saying that Aldrin is a Horus worshipper whose first act on the moon was to perform his ancient rituals.

The biggest problem though is the author's ego. The book is full of self-promotion, and I'd say nearly half the book is devoted to putting down the authors critics, even going so far as to point out his critics spelling mistakes. It really is very petty, especially as one of the authors slides misspells night as 'nite' a few pages later.

If you still want a copy of this book, you'll find mine in the bin tomorrow morning if you're quick.

A loon writes..., 02 Nov 2008
I've read many books about UFOs and the like, and have considerable sympathy for the subject. This, however, is a rather embarrassing example of the lunatic fringe - in which it is revealed how NASA is just part of some giant unclear conspiracy to cover up all kinds of stuff to do with Mars, the Moon, alien civilisations, Egyptology, fourth-dimensional physics, oh and also a bunch of other conspiracies and sinister organisations.

The main author, one Richard Hoagland, writes of himself in the third person throughout, as if giving a gloss of drama and objectivity, yet this is a self-serving document, recounting the history of his brilliant ideas and his lame, biased or malign detractors, peppered with overuse of italics and shudder quotes in case you don't get the message.

But it is the wild extrapolations from extremely flimsy evidence that make this book just embarrassing and annoying to read. For Hoagland, blurry photographs of the Moon or Mars are a kind of Rorschach inkblot test: to his eye, ordinary rocks are 'mechanical debris' from some advanced but now-extinct interplanetary civilization. A rock with two dents in it is a 'robot's head' (and I suspect that a significant proportion of rocks look more like a robot's head than the example we are given). Mountains are 'pyramids'; a blurry row of rocks is a 'sphinx'. Inevitably, the not particularly face-like 'Face on Mars' gets much attention. These objects are rather more irregular than an advanced civilization ought to be able to produce - actually they look just like rocks and mountains - but this of course is explained by 'erosion' (even though no erosion takes place on the moon, not having an atmosphere or surface water).

Add to this a heavy dose of unconvincing geometry: draw enough straight lines on a photograph and you find some of them seem to connect these mysterious objects - or rather, they do if you draw enough lines and make enough use of wiggle room, such as saying a line connects to an object when actually it goes a bit to the side. (Ley lines, anyone?)

Then measure the angles produced, and with a bit more jiggling you can come up with something close to numbers that don't have any mathematical significance, like, say, e/pi, or e/root 5 - but why not more obvious constants like e or 5? Well, we are told, this is obviously an alien 'message' about hyperdimensional physics which tells us that the planets all contain a fourth-dimensional spinning pyramid or something...

Other photographs of the moon landings have even more bizarre interpretations: anything looking like a scratch on the negative is actually a 'buttress' supporting one of many giant glass domes over craters; these domes are naturally invisible in the photos (being made of glass), but hey, they're obviously there, aren't they? (Hoagland's inability to get any scientific journals to publish such results are naturally all part of the conspiracy.)

But wait, there are more dots to be connected. It's all something to do with not only the Masons, but also the Nazis (I kid you not). As shown by all kinds of things which turn out to be mysteriously symbolic: e.g. a particular moon launch occurs on the anniversary of Hitler's birthday (a date which after all only arises once every year). Quite why NASA would choose a launch date on such a cryptic yet symbolic basis, rather than - say - to do with the relative position of the earth and moon, is not clear; perhaps to send a secret message? To whom, and why? Some NASA announcement occurs three years to the day after JFK's assassination - all very suspicious and symbolic, so clearly is another secret message telling us we're-not-quite-sure-what. After all, the anniversary of JFK's assassination only comes round every year. (Come to think of it, isn't almost every day the anniversary of some more or less important historical event?)

NASA also uses strange symbolism in its official patches for space suits etc - for example, the Apollo program patch has a big letter A on it, secretly denoting (in the mind of Hoagland) not Apollo but Asar, an ancient Egyptian word for Osiris, i.e. the constellation Orion, which has something important to do with Egyptian mythology and hence pyramids and YOU SEE HOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE.

Quite how this book made it to the New York Times bestseller list is a mystery to me, and one rather more disturbing than the contents of this deranged and tedious book.

Intriguing, uncovers many layers of Conspiracy..., 11 Aug 2008
Richard Hoagland was present at JPL in 1969 as the crew of Apollo eleven was on it's way back to Earth. He saw a shady character, accompanied by high ranking NASA officials, distribute leaflets during a press conference stating that the entire moon landing had been faked on a soundstage in Nevada. This, according to Hoagland, was the genesis of the Apollo Conspiracy mythos. Logically this would make the Apollo Conspiracy a Hoax Hoax. Therefore one cannot help wondering what a Hoax Hoax Hoax would be.

Hoagland himself quotes one of his intelligence sources as saying that, "the lie is different at every level". There is no doubt that NASA is concealing something because many of the photographic materials it supplies are obviously tampered with. Hoagland states that NASA (Never A Staight Answer!) is a military organisation rather than as most people think, a civilian one. Therefore they are answerable only to the Pentagon and not to the taxpayer.

Hoagland is committed to the ancient astronauts idea. He believes that the ruins he has detected on the Moon and Mars, are many thousands of years old and probably pre- date human civilization on Earth. He apparently disregards the evidence that humans still interact with with extra- terrestrials. There is no mention in his book of the fact that the Moon, and possibly the entire solar system were created, from basic planetery raw materials, by beings far beyond our technological capacity, beings for whom time means nothing. I believe therefore that everything in our environment is controlled by these entities, whom humans often mistake for Gods.

NASA must have known since it's inception that the moon is artificial, as it's period of orbit is exactly equal to it's period of rotation; also it covers the Sun exactly during solar eclipses. I am convinced that Socrates knew this. I do not agree with Hoagland that there has been only one "time before", there have probably been many; Humankind has reached out to other worlds in the past, and may not actually originate on Earth.

In many of the Apollo photographs of the Moon, Hoagland sees huge glass domes reaching high above the lunar surface, and the remains of supporting rebars, I cannot say that I see this from the reproductions in the book, but there do seem to be atifacts and "arcology" there. Perhaps there are still humans or extra- terrestrials living within the moon, based on it's far side.

Hoagland believes in the notorious "Face on Mars". Of course, if it is truly artificial, then it certainly does not resemble any monolith on Earth, being over a mile in length and apparently honeycombed with rooms and walls; The Face itself is only visible from a high altitude. At the end of the book there are some reproductions of photographs taken by the recent Mars Reconnaissance Orbitor which according to Hoagland reveal an ancient "Headquarters" in The Face. I find it surprising that the orbital photos from Mars appear to be of higher resolution than those from the Moon.



D+ poor effort, must try harder.., 19 Apr 2008
I think the face on mars looks like a collapsed hill, and just a trick of light. The author is obsessed by it. All this astonishing alien artifacts on the moon and mars are present within Richard Hoagland's imagination, and are not present in any of the pictures. What the re-examination of the lunar landing photos probably show is the original hidden background detail of the inside of the studio where they filmed the lunar landings. There's a colour photo of the moon in this book, taken from the Apollo space craft, and according to the author, it's evidence of millions of domes of glass on the moon, as it shows a glow around the moon, which is not possible from space. The more obvious explanation for this is that the photo was taken from a telescope on the earth, and then claimed for the Apollo astronauts.
What is proven in this book is that NASA are habitual liers, and have been covering up something which is far more interesting...evidence of life on mars. What the agenda is, is not explored very well here.
The first chapters about multi-dimentional space is out of the scope for a lay-person and is a stuggle to get through.
What would make for a much better book, by another author, would be an exploration of the mars anomalies, the green-blue sky which NASA have tweeked into red, and fossil evidence on mars. Also an investigation into why NASA are compelled to lie about everything, and why should anyone trust anything they say, including that they went to the moon, when there is so much evidence to show that they didn't, and which Hoagland claims he and his associates have proved to be a false conspiracy, and he hasn't proved it at all. If NASA can fake the colours of mars, why cant they fake the supposed robot head as well, and anything else they feel like?

"Let's go fly a kite..", 08 Mar 2008
"up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear". Quoting Mary Poppins may be a strange way to begin a review but in my opinion this author has been up where the air is clear (and perhaps a bit too thin) for far too long.
Every single half-baked conspiracy is covered in torturous depth with pictures that (try as I might) failed to convince me there are glass cities on the moon.
If you are a real paranoid X-Files freak, this is the book for you!

Top-notch science book and a good intro to heavyweight cosmological topics, 08 Aug 2008
I really enjoyed reading this book, and have just started reading it again. I'm a big fan of Jim Al-Khalili's work, and the attempts he makes to explain seriously heavy cosmological ideas to everyday people.

What I think he does extremely well in this book is to help you build a difficult-to-understand concept in your mind, without a single mind-bending equation. This is all the more amazing, given that a sizeable portion of the information contained in this book is based on theory rather than proven fact.

The only thing that didn't work for me in this book was the attempts at humour. I really like the conversational style, as it really aids your understanding of the information, but the jokey comments remind me of seminars I've been to in the past where the listeners laugh at the speaker's jokes just to be kind and save embarrassment.

But anyway, apart from that, the book is faultless and it thoroughly deserves five stars. I would suggest reading it, even if you aren't interested in this subject. I think it would also work really well as an audiobook too.

An excellent read, not too technical and humorous to boot, 18 Feb 2008
I thought this book was excellent. I've been fascinated by this subject for years and have attempted (and failed) to read Hawking, Einstein et al because I just found them too complicated and too filled with equations to make sense. I have 2 hons degrees so I don't think I am that stupid (I hope not!) but I just found Hawking and the like to be unreadable- their concepts are not explained in laymans terms and unless you are an expert in quantum mechanics its like wading through treacle. This book, however, was perfect for a dunce(!) like me and the author gave practical examples and diagrams for most of the complicated concepts such as how black holes work and the concept of time. The style of writing is also very accessible and smattered with the author's own personal thoughts and witty observations which I liked as it made it seem more like we were having a conversation rather than him talking at me about subjects that i don;t understand. For example, in the time travel section he uses the film "The Terminator" to illustrate the time travel paradox which having seen the film, was really helpful and I actually understood what he was saying (yay!).

The book inevitable throws up more questions that answers but this is the nature of cosmology and science in general I think. There are some fascinating insights into the possibility of time travel and the fact that according to the laws of gravity, it is technically possible and I was blown away by the idea of Planck time (a measurement of time that is so small, there are more planck units in a single second than there are seconds since the universe began). The concept of infinity was also brilliantly explained and it made me realise that the universe in which we live is more mysterious and unfathomable than I ever realised possible. An excellent book which makes this subject understandable. I actually feel more intelligent having read it!!

Fascinating book, accessible to all., 09 Jan 2005
To someone (like myself) who has little or no knowledge of physics, this book is a REAL eye-opener. It is incredibly exciting, and has a deal of humour to boot.

Some parts DO require concentration to get your head around, and I must admit on one or two occasions being slightly lost. Thankfully though 99% of the book was quite easy to follow.

Primarily the book is focused on giving the reader an overview of Einstein's Theories of Relativity, and in particular how these could be applicable to time travel.

My only slight criticism is that the author does seem to concentrate on building/using time machines from a practical viewpoint, as though the reader is a Sc-Fi fan.

Before reading it I thought the universe was born billions of years ago with the Big Bang, and that I was at a certain point in time, and it would carry on ad infinitum after I die. Not necessarily so according to modern physics!

A very small sample of amazing information that I learned was:

Time could start running backwards if the Universe stops expanding and starts contracting.
Time slows down the quicker you go (near the speed of light time almost stops, or speeds up to infinity depending on your viewpoint).
Gravity doesn't pull objects, but bends space itself so objects 'fall' into it.
Gravity bends time and slows it down. Very heavy gravitation can almost stop time.
That the 'present' depends on where you are in space (and your speed), and that all future & past events may co-exist.

The book also touches on Quantum Mechanics, which is even weirder i.e. particles appearing from nowhere and being in 2 places at the same time.

Fantastic, 08 Aug 2002
I find myself coming back to this book over and over again. Everytime you read it you learn something new. The author's writing style is informal, and he explains the various concepts in the book very clearly, with lots of examples and occasional diagrams. Overall, an absoluetly fascinating book to go along with A Brief History of Time.

An absolutely excellent book, 16 Aug 2001
A brilliantly written book for both scientists and non-scientists alike. Unlike most science texts, this one is gripping and informative, written in a clear easy style. Superb.

Solid science and thoroughly enjoyable, 28 Oct 2008
Phil Plait once again manages to convey a hefty dose of solid scientific knowledge in an entertaining and real page-turner fashion. Covering pretty much every sci-fi end-of-the-world threat from outer space he educates and entertains with stories of supernovae, black holes, gamma bursts and the like.

Along with the scientific explanations there is a common thread of pragmatic risk appraisal without the usual sensationalism. Even the benefits of many of the risks are discussed, such as the generation of heavier elements by supernovae.

Death from the Skies is both enjoyable and educational, and you are unlikely to be disappointed.

How stupid i am - for buying this book!, 22 Nov 2008
How stupid i am - for buying this book!

I enjoy the odd conspiracy books, and the odd alien/ufo book too, mainly to laugh at the loons i have to admit, but still they can be entertaining.

Not this book however. One thing is the constant use of italics and "quotes" where they are not needed - the pages are so heavy with them that sentences actually become hard to read. Another problem is the flimsy conspiracy evidence, mainly that on important occasions, any one of several stars could be 19.5 or 33 degrees above or below the horizon as seen from any one of dozens or 'ritual sites' on the earth, moon or mars. I'm sure you could make any date or time fit that pattern. Maybe I was born during an important conjunction?

It also seems that events are re-presented during the book, changing just a little each time they are mentioned until they fit nicely into the authors belief system. For example at the start of the book it's noted that Buzz Aldrin takes communion (a catholic religious rite) on the moon. Doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Later it's said that communion is based on and earlier ritual used by the Egyptians, which seems reasonable. Pretty soon though we get references to Egyptian rituals on the moon, and by the end of the book the authors are saying that Aldrin is a Horus worshipper whose first act on the moon was to perform his ancient rituals.

The biggest problem though is the author's ego. The book is full of self-promotion, and I'd say nearly half the book is devoted to putting down the authors critics, even going so far as to point out his critics spelling mistakes. It really is very petty, especially as one of the authors slides misspells night as 'nite' a few pages later.

If you still want a copy of this book, you'll find mine in the bin tomorrow morning if you're quick.

A loon writes..., 02 Nov 2008
I've read many books about UFOs and the like, and have considerable sympathy for the subject. This, however, is a rather embarrassing example of the lunatic fringe - in which it is revealed how NASA is just part of some giant unclear conspiracy to cover up all kinds of stuff to do with Mars, the Moon, alien civilisations, Egyptology, fourth-dimensional physics, oh and also a bunch of other conspiracies and sinister organisations.

The main author, one Richard Hoagland, writes of himself in the third person throughout, as if giving a gloss of drama and objectivity, yet this is a self-serving document, recounting the history of his brilliant ideas and his lame, biased or malign detractors, peppered with overuse of italics and shudder quotes in case you don't get the message.

But it is the wild extrapolations from extremely flimsy evidence that make this book just embarrassing and annoying to read. For Hoagland, blurry photographs of the Moon or Mars are a kind of Rorschach inkblot test: to his eye, ordinary rocks are 'mechanical debris' from some advanced but now-extinct interplanetary civilization. A rock with two dents in it is a 'robot's head' (and I suspect that a significant proportion of rocks look more like a robot's head than the example we are given). Mountains are 'pyramids'; a blurry row of rocks is a 'sphinx'. Inevitably, the not particularly face-like 'Face on Mars' gets much attention. These objects are rather more irregular than an advanced civilization ought to be able to produce - actually they look just like rocks and mountains - but this of course is explained by 'erosion' (even though no erosion takes place on the moon, not having an atmosphere or surface water).

Add to this a heavy dose of unconvincing geometry: draw enough straight lines on a photograph and you find some of them seem to connect these mysterious objects - or rather, they do if you draw enough lines and make enough use of wiggle room, such as saying a line connects to an object when actually it goes a bit to the side. (Ley lines, anyone?)

Then measure the angles produced, and with a bit more jiggling you can come up with something close to numbers that don't have any mathematical significance, like, say, e/pi, or e/root 5 - but why not more obvious constants like e or 5? Well, we are told, this is obviously an alien 'message' about hyperdimensional physics which tells us that the planets all contain a fourth-dimensional spinning pyramid or something...

Other photographs of the moon landings have even more bizarre interpretations: anything looking like a scratch on the negative is actually a 'buttress' supporting one of many giant glass domes over craters; these domes are naturally invisible in the photos (being made of glass), but hey, they're obviously there, aren't they? (Hoagland's inability to get any scientific journals to publish such results are naturally all part of the conspiracy.)

But wait, there are more dots to be connected. It's all something to do with not only the Masons, but also the Nazis (I kid you not). As shown by all kinds of things which turn out to be mysteriously symbolic: e.g. a particular moon launch occurs on the anniversary of Hitler's birthday (a date which after all only arises once every year). Quite why NASA would choose a launch date on such a cryptic yet symbolic basis, rather than - say - to do with the relative position of the earth and moon, is not clear; perhaps to send a secret message? To whom, and why? Some NASA announcement occurs three years to the day after JFK's assassination - all very suspicious and symbolic, so clearly is another secret message telling us we're-not-quite-sure-what. After all, the anniversary of JFK's assassination only comes round every year. (Come to think of it, isn't almost every day the anniversary of some more or less important historical event?)

NASA also uses strange symbolism in its official patches for space suits etc - for example, the Apollo program patch has a big letter A on it, secretly denoting (in the mind of Hoagland) not Apollo but Asar, an ancient Egyptian word for Osiris, i.e. the constellation Orion, which has something important to do with Egyptian mythology and hence pyramids and YOU SEE HOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE.

Quite how this book made it to the New York Times bestseller list is a mystery to me, and one rather more disturbing than the contents of this deranged and tedious book.

Intriguing, uncovers many layers of Conspiracy..., 11 Aug 2008
Richard Hoagland was present at JPL in 1969 as the crew of Apollo eleven was on it's way back to Earth. He saw a shady character, accompanied by high ranking NASA officials, distribute leaflets during a press conference stating that the entire moon landing had been faked on a soundstage in Nevada. This, according to Hoagland, was the genesis of the Apollo Conspiracy mythos. Logically this would make the Apollo Conspiracy a Hoax Hoax. Therefore one cannot help wondering what a Hoax Hoax Hoax would be.

Hoagland himself quotes one of his intelligence sources as saying that, "the lie is different at every level". There is no doubt that NASA is concealing something because many of the photographic materials it supplies are obviously tampered with. Hoagland states that NASA (Never A Staight Answer!) is a military organisation rather than as most people think, a civilian one. Therefore they are answerable only to the Pentagon and not to the taxpayer.

Hoagland is committed to the ancient astronauts idea. He believes that the ruins he has detected on the Moon and Mars, are many thousands of years old and probably pre- date human civilization on Earth. He apparently disregards the evidence that humans still interact with with extra- terrestrials. There is no mention in his book of the fact that the Moon, and possibly the entire solar system were created, from basic planetery raw materials, by beings far beyond our technological capacity, beings for whom time means nothing. I believe therefore that everything in our environment is controlled by these entities, whom humans often mistake for Gods.

NASA must have known since it's inception that the moon is artificial, as it's period of orbit is exactly equal to it's period of rotation; also it covers the Sun exactly during solar eclipses. I am convinced that Socrates knew this. I do not agree with Hoagland that there has been only one "time before", there have probably been many; Humankind has reached out to other worlds in the past, and may not actually originate on Earth.

In many of the Apollo photographs of the Moon, Hoagland sees huge glass domes reaching high above the lunar surface, and the remains of supporting rebars, I cannot say that I see this from the reproductions in the book, but there do seem to be atifacts and "arcology" there. Perhaps there are still humans or extra- terrestrials living within the moon, based on it's far side.

Hoagland believes in the notorious "Face on Mars". Of course, if it is truly artificial, then it certainly does not resemble any monolith on Earth, being over a mile in length and apparently honeycombed with rooms and walls; The Face itself is only visible from a high altitude. At the end of the book there are some reproductions of photographs taken by the recent Mars Reconnaissance Orbitor which according to Hoagland reveal an ancient "Headquarters" in The Face. I find it surprising that the orbital photos from Mars appear to be of higher resolution than those from the Moon.



D+ poor effort, must try harder.., 19 Apr 2008
I think the face on mars looks like a collapsed hill, and just a trick of light. The author is obsessed by it. All this astonishing alien artifacts on the moon and mars are present within Richard Hoagland's imagination, and are not present in any of the pictures. What the re-examination of the lunar landing photos probably show is the original hidden background detail of the inside of the studio where they filmed the lunar landings. There's a colour photo of the moon in this book, taken from the Apollo space craft, and according to the author, it's evidence of millions of domes of glass on the moon, as it shows a glow around the moon, which is not possible from space. The more obvious explanation for this is that the photo was taken from a telescope on the earth, and then claimed for the Apollo astronauts.
What is proven in this book is that NASA are habitual liers, and have been covering up something which is far more interesting...evidence of life on mars. What the agenda is, is not explored very well here.
The first chapters about multi-dimentional space is out of the scope for a lay-person and is a stuggle to get through.
What would make for a much better book, by another author, would be an exploration of the mars anomalies, the green-blue sky which NASA have tweeked into red, and fossil evidence on mars. Also an investigation into why NASA are compelled to lie about everything, and why should anyone trust anything they say, including that they went to the moon, when there is so much evidence to show that they didn't, and which Hoagland claims he and his associates have proved to be a false conspiracy, and he hasn't proved it at all. If NASA can fake the colours of mars, why cant they fake the supposed robot head as well, and anything else they feel like?

"Let's go fly a kite..", 08 Mar 2008
"up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear". Quoting Mary Poppins may be a strange way to begin a review but in my opinion this author has been up where the air is clear (and perhaps a bit too thin) for far too long.
Every single half-baked conspiracy is covered in torturous depth with pictures that (try as I might) failed to convince me there are glass cities on the moon.
If you are a real paranoid X-Files freak, this is the book for you!

Top-notch science book and a good intro to heavyweight cosmological topics, 08 Aug 2008
I really enjoyed reading this book, and have just started reading it again. I'm a big fan of Jim Al-Khalili's work, and the attempts he makes to explain seriously heavy cosmological ideas to everyday people.

What I think he does extremely well in this book is to help you build a difficult-to-understand concept in your mind, without a single mind-bending equation. This is all the more amazing, given that a sizeable portion of the information contained in this book is based on theory rather than proven fact.

The only thing that didn't work for me in this book was the attempts at humour. I really like the conversational style, as it really aids your understanding of the information, but the jokey comments remind me of seminars I've been to in the past where the listeners laugh at the speaker's jokes just to be kind and save embarrassment.

But anyway, apart from that, the book is faultless and it thoroughly deserves five stars. I would suggest reading it, even if you aren't interested in this subject. I think it would also work really well as an audiobook too.

An excellent read, not too technical and humorous to boot, 18 Feb 2008
I thought this book was excellent. I've been fascinated by this subject for years and have attempted (and failed) to read Hawking, Einstein et al because I just found them too complicated and too filled with equations to make sense. I have 2 hons degrees so I don't think I am that stupid (I hope not!) but I just found Hawking and the like to be unreadable- their concepts are not explained in laymans terms and unless you are an expert in quantum mechanics its like wading through treacle. This book, however, was perfect for a dunce(!) like me and the author gave practical examples and diagrams for most of the complicated concepts such as how black holes work and the concept of time. The style of writing is also very accessible and smattered with the author's own personal thoughts and witty observations which I liked as it made it seem more like we were having a conversation rather than him talking at me about subjects that i don;t understand. For example, in the time travel section he uses the film "The Terminator" to illustrate the time travel paradox which having seen the film, was really helpful and I actually understood what he was saying (yay!).

The book inevitable throws up more questions that answers but this is the nature of cosmology and science in general I think. There are some fascinating insights into the possibility of time travel and the fact that according to the laws of gravity, it is technically possible and I was blown away by the idea of Planck time (a measurement of time that is so small, there are more planck units in a single second than there are seconds since the universe began). The concept of infinity was also brilliantly explained and it made me realise that the universe in which we live is more mysterious and unfathomable than I ever realised possible. An excellent book which makes this subject understandable. I actually feel more intelligent having read it!!

Fascinating book, accessible to all., 09 Jan 2005
To someone (like myself) who has little or no knowledge of physics, this book is a REAL eye-opener. It is incredibly exciting, and has a deal of humour to boot.

Some parts DO require concentration to get your head around, and I must admit on one or two occasions being slightly lost. Thankfully though 99% of the book was quite easy to follow.

Primarily the book is focused on giving the reader an overview of Einstein's Theories of Relativity, and in particular how these could be applicable to time travel.

My only slight criticism is that the author does seem to concentrate on building/using time machines from a practical viewpoint, as though the reader is a Sc-Fi fan.

Before reading it I thought the universe was born billions of years ago with the Big Bang, and that I was at a certain point in time, and it would carry on ad infinitum after I die. Not necessarily so according to modern physics!

A very small sample of amazing information that I learned was:

Time could start running backwards if the Universe stops expanding and starts contracting.
Time slows down the quicker you go (near the speed of light time almost stops, or speeds up to infinity depending on your viewpoint).
Gravity doesn't pull objects, but bends space itself so objects 'fall' into it.
Gravity bends time and slows it down. Very heavy gravitation can almost stop time.
That the 'present' depends on where you are in space (and your speed), and that all future & past events may co-exist.

The book also touches on Quantum Mechanics, which is even weirder i.e. particles appearing from nowhere and being in 2 places at the same time.

Fantastic, 08 Aug 2002
I find myself coming back to this book over and over again. Everytime you read it you learn something new. The author's writing style is informal, and he explains the various concepts in the book very clearly, with lots of examples and occasional diagrams. Overall, an absoluetly fascinating book to go along with A Brief History of Time.

An absolutely excellent book, 16 Aug 2001
A brilliantly written book for both scientists and non-scientists alike. Unlike most science texts, this one is gripping and informative, written in a clear easy style. Superb.

An outstanding book, 05 Dec 2008
A fantastic book that is pitched at the level of the layman with some technical knowledge. This book contains all of the answers to all of the questions you would have on the subject of the Apollo project from a technical standpoint.

Once you pick it up, you will struggle to put it down.

Do not lend this book to anyone because you wont get it back!

Beautifully written tour de force, 14 Nov 2008
It takes real talent to explain something intricate without confusing or losing your reader in the process. David Woods has pitched the delivery of this masterpiece perfectly.

David gives the book a logical flow from start to finish, citing facts from each mission as appropriate to illustrate the issues. The explanations of hardware design and operation hit just the right level of detail to enlighten, but also end up inspiring awe. Until reading this book I had never realised just how superb the design of the Saturn/Apollo machine was.

Furthermore the significance of mission timings and trajectory calculations is explained, demystifying what for me has been a very grey area for the last 4 decades!

I would recommend this book for anyone already interested in the Apollo missions, but open to finding out more. It's a gem.

Fascinating, 14 Nov 2008
There are plenty of great books, films, TV shows and internet resources telling you who the Apollo astronauts were and what they said and did. There is surprisingly little telling you how they did it. Even the astronauts' and controllers' own memoirs seem to shy away from this, as if afraid that technical details are boring.

So how would you navigate to a pinpoint landing on a distant body? Why were the spaceships the size and shape they were, and what were the alternatives? What did all the bits do? How did they deal with things that went wrong? What was the astronauts' role in all of this? What were all those people in Mission Control doing? In the Apollo 13 movie, what on earth does "FIDO" or "Main Bus B Undervolt" mean?

This book explains it all, and somehow manages to do it in a way that is engaging and fairly easy to follow. I found it endlessly fascinating. Really excellent stuff that really fills a major gap, and I suspect future historians will love him for it.

Some bits work better than others; my mind wandered a little when reading about the scanning instruments in the SIM bay, but he rightly wants to explain every part of it and he structures it in a way that you can skip some bits but easily know where you are.

It is also great to see the attention he gives to all of the missions, not just the big-name ones, and explains really well how the build-up missions (not just Gemini but also Ranger and Surveyor and so on) contributed. And having once met the late Ron Evans of Apollo 17, I was chuffed to see his exploits described in some detail, especially as other books (especially Chaikin) tend to portray him as a bit of an amiable simpleton.

The only questions I would have are extremely minor; he seems to downplay Jim Irwin's health problems, which Chris Kraft's book described as practically a full-blown heart attack. He also downplays the design changes caused by Apollo 13, which again Chris Kraft complains were enforced by political rather than engineering reasons. But given his attention to detail in the rest of it he may well be correct.

So warmly recommended.


From pre-launch to splashdown, 27 May 2008
I have just finished reading this excellent book and I would certainly recommend it to anyone interested in the Apollo project, or space flight in general.

Without getting bogged down in equations, this book explains how the space craft of the Apollo era worked and where flown. Following the journey from the launch pad to splash down, every stage of this grand adventure are explained in detail. Each section contains examples from the real missions to show how a staggering series of procedures allowed the first humans to walk on the Moon.

Well worth reading!

Deserves 10 Stars!, 13 May 2008
This is a book that I've been waiting for all my life! I've read so many books about Project Apollo, many of which naturally focus on the human side of the adventures-this is after all, what the general public wants to know about. But as a reasonably intelligent and educated person I have often been left wondering how they actually did everything they needed to get to the Moon and back safely. This book fills that gap and in a way that the person with an average level of education will fully comprehend and enjoy. Mr Woods's explanations on navigation procedures are so lucid as to make it sound simple and after a few minutes reading I found I could confidently bandy phrases around such as 'state vector' at dinner parties, even though I have to take my shoes and socks off to count up to 23!

After many years of falling into the trap of thinking the Moon landings were a great but, only moderately hard task to achieve, Mr Woods superb book has reinstated my feelings of awe for what humans can achieve if they put their minds to it and polished my absolute admiration for the astronauts who put themselves into the hands of their ground-based colleagues.

I cannot praise Mr Woods efforts enough, however I worry that since the bar has been set so high by the author, every subsequent book I read on Project Apollo will compare unfavourably to 'How Apollo Flew to the Moon'.

Solid science and thoroughly enjoyable, 28 Oct 2008
Phil Plait once again manages to convey a hefty dose of solid scientific knowledge in an entertaining and real page-turner fashion. Covering pretty much every sci-fi end-of-the-world threat from outer space he educates and entertains with stories of supernovae, black holes, gamma bursts and the like.

Along with the scientific explanations there is a common thread of pragmatic risk appraisal without the usual sensationalism. Even the benefits of many of the risks are discussed, such as the generation of heavier elements by supernovae.

Death from the Skies is both enjoyable and educational, and you are unlikely to be disappointed.

How stupid i am - for buying this book!, 22 Nov 2008
How stupid i am - for buying this book!

I enjoy the odd conspiracy books, and the odd alien/ufo book too, mainly to laugh at the loons i have to admit, but still they can be entertaining.

Not this book however. One thing is the constant use of italics and "quotes" where they are not needed - the pages are so heavy with them that sentences actually become hard to read. Another problem is the flimsy conspiracy evidence, mainly that on important occasions, any one of several stars could be 19.5 or 33 degrees above or below the horizon as seen from any one of dozens or 'ritual sites' on the earth, moon or mars. I'm sure you could make any date or time fit that pattern. Maybe I was born during an important conjunction?

It also seems that events are re-presented during the book, changing just a little each time they are mentioned until they fit nicely into the authors belief system. For example at the start of the book it's noted that Buzz Aldrin takes communion (a catholic religious rite) on the moon. Doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Later it's said that communion is based on and earlier ritual used by the Egyptians, which seems reasonable. Pretty soon though we get references to Egyptian rituals on the moon, and by the end of the book the authors are saying that Aldrin is a Horus worshipper whose first act on the moon was to perform his ancient rituals.

The biggest problem though is the author's ego. The book is full of self-promotion, and I'd say nearly half the book is devoted to putting down the authors critics, even going so far as to point out his critics spelling mistakes. It really is very petty, especially as one of the authors slides misspells night as 'nite' a few pages later.

If you still want a copy of this book, you'll find mine in the bin tomorrow morning if you're quick.

A loon writes..., 02 Nov 2008
I've read many books about UFOs and the like, and have considerable sympathy for the subject. This, however, is a rather embarrassing example of the lunatic fringe - in which it is revealed how NASA is just part of some giant unclear conspiracy to cover up all kinds of stuff to do with Mars, the Moon, alien civilisations, Egyptology, fourth-dimensional physics, oh and also a bunch of other conspiracies and sinister organisations.

The main author, one Richard Hoagland, writes of himself in the third person throughout, as if giving a gloss of drama and objectivity, yet this is a self-serving document, recounting the history of his brilliant ideas and his lame, biased or malign detractors, peppered with overuse of italics and shudder quotes in case you don't get the message.

But it is the wild extrapolations from extremely flimsy evidence that make this book just embarrassing and annoying to read. For Hoagland, blurry photographs of the Moon or Mars are a kind of Rorschach inkblot test: to his eye, ordinary rocks are 'mechanical debris' from some advanced but now-extinct interplanetary civilization. A rock with two dents in it is a 'robot's head' (and I suspect that a significant proportion of rocks look more like a robot's head than the example we are given). Mountains are 'pyramids'; a blurry row of rocks is a 'sphinx'. Inevitably, the not particularly face-like 'Face on Mars' gets much attention. These objects are rather more irregular than an advanced civilization ought to be able to produce - actually they look just like rocks and mountains - but this of course is explained by 'erosion' (even though no erosion takes place on the moon, not having an atmosphere or surface water).

Add to this a heavy dose of unconvincing geometry: draw enough straight lines on a photograph and you find some of them seem to connect these mysterious objects - or rather, they do if you draw enough lines and make enough use of wiggle room, such as saying a line connects to an object when actually it goes a bit to the side. (Ley lines, anyone?)

Then measure the angles produced, and with a bit more jiggling you can come up with something close to numbers that don't have any mathematical significance, like, say, e/pi, or e/root 5 - but why not more obvious constants like e or 5? Well, we are told, this is obviously an alien 'message' about hyperdimensional physics which tells us that the planets all contain a fourth-dimensional spinning pyramid or something...

Other photographs of the moon landings have even more bizarre interpretations: anything looking like a scratch on the negative is actually a 'buttress' supporting one of many giant glass domes over craters; these domes are naturally invisible in the photos (being made of glass), but hey, they're obviously there, aren't they? (Hoagland's inability to get any scientific journals to publish such results are naturally all part of the conspiracy.)

But wait, there are more dots to be connected. It's all something to do with not only the Masons, but also the Nazis (I kid you not). As shown by all kinds of things which turn out to be mysteriously symbolic: e.g. a particular moon launch occurs on the anniversary of Hitler's birthday (a date which after all only arises once every year). Quite why NASA would choose a launch date on such a cryptic yet symbolic basis, rather than - say - to do with the relative position of the earth and moon, is not clear; perhaps to send a secret message? To whom, and why? Some NASA announcement occurs three years to the day after JFK's assassination - all very suspicious and symbolic, so clearly is another secret message telling us we're-not-quite-sure-what. After all, the anniversary of JFK's assassination only comes round every year. (Come to think of it, isn't almost every day the anniversary of some more or less important historical event?)

NASA also uses strange symbolism in its official patches for space suits etc - for example, the Apollo program patch has a big letter A on it, secretly denoting (in the mind of Hoagland) not Apollo but Asar, an ancient Egyptian word for Osiris, i.e. the constellation Orion, which has something important to do with Egyptian mythology and hence pyramids and YOU SEE HOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE.

Quite how this book made it to the New York Times bestseller list is a mystery to me, and one rather more disturbing than the contents of this deranged and tedious book.

Intriguing, uncovers many layers of Conspiracy..., 11 Aug 2008
Richard Hoagland was present at JPL in 1969 as the crew of Apollo eleven was on it's way back to Earth. He saw a shady character, accompanied by high ranking NASA officials, distribute leaflets during a press conference stating that the entire moon landing had been faked on a soundstage in Nevada. This, according to Hoagland, was the genesis of the Apollo Conspiracy mythos. Logically this would make the Apollo Conspiracy a Hoax Hoax. Therefore one cannot help wondering what a Hoax Hoax Hoax would be.

Hoagland himself quotes one of his intelligence sources as saying that, "the lie is different at every level". There is no doubt that NASA is concealing something because many of the photographic materials it supplies are obviously tampered with. Hoagland states that NASA (Never A Staight Answer!) is a military organisation rather than as most people think, a civilian one. Therefore they are answerable only to the Pentagon and not to the taxpayer.

Hoagland is committed to the ancient astronauts idea. He believes that the ruins he has detected on the Moon and Mars, are many thousands of years old and probably pre- date human civilization on Earth. He apparently disregards the evidence that humans still interact with with extra- terrestrials. There is no mention in his book of the fact that the Moon, and possibly the entire solar system were created, from basic planetery raw materials, by beings far beyond our technological capacity, beings for whom time means nothing. I believe therefore that everything in our environment is controlled by these entities, whom humans often mistake for Gods.

NASA must have known since it's inception that the moon is artificial, as it's period of orbit is exactly equal to it's period of rotation; also it covers the Sun exactly during solar eclipses. I am convinced that Socrates knew this. I do not agree with Hoagland that there has been only one "time before", there have probably been many; Humankind has reached out to other worlds in the past, and may not actually originate on Earth.

In many of the Apollo photographs of the Moon, Hoagland sees huge glass domes reaching high above the lunar surface, and the remains of supporting rebars, I cannot say that I see this from the reproductions in the book, but there do seem to be atifacts and "arcology" there. Perhaps there are still humans or extra- terrestrials living within the moon, based on it's far side.

Hoagland believes in the notorious "Face on Mars". Of course, if it is truly artificial, then it certainly does not resemble any monolith on Earth, being over a mile in length and apparently honeycombed with rooms and walls; The Face itself is only visible from a high altitude. At the end of the book there are some reproductions of photographs taken by the recent Mars Reconnaissance Orbitor which according to Hoagland reveal an ancient "Headquarters" in The Face. I find it surprising that the orbital photos from Mars appear to be of higher resolution than those from the Moon.



D+ poor effort, must try harder.., 19 Apr 2008
I think the face on mars looks like a collapsed hill, and just a trick of light. The author is obsessed by it. All this astonishing alien artifacts on the moon and mars are present within Richard Hoagland's imagination, and are not present in any of the pictures. What the re-examination of the lunar landing photos probably show is the original hidden background detail of the inside of the studio where they filmed the lunar landings. There's a colour photo of the moon in this book, taken from the Apollo space craft, and according to the author, it's evidence of millions of domes of glass on the moon, as it shows a glow around the moon, which is not possible from space. The more obvious explanation for this is that the photo was taken from a telescope on the earth, and then claimed for the Apollo astronauts.
What is proven in this book is that NASA are habitual liers, and have been covering up something which is far more interesting...evidence of life on mars. What the agenda is, is not explored very well here.
The first chapters about multi-dimentional space is out of the scope for a lay-person and is a stuggle to get through.
What would make for a much better book, by another author, would be an exploration of the mars anomalies, the green-blue sky which NASA have tweeked into red, and fossil evidence on mars. Also an investigation into why NASA are compelled to lie about everything, and why should anyone trust anything they say, including that they went to the moon, when there is so much evidence to show that they didn't, and which Hoagland claims he and his associates have proved to be a false conspiracy, and he hasn't proved it at all. If NASA can fake the colours of mars, why cant they fake the supposed robot head as well, and anything else they feel like?

"Let's go fly a kite..", 08 Mar 2008
"up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear". Quoting Mary Poppins may be a strange way to begin a review but in my opinion this author has been up where the air is clear (and perhaps a bit too thin) for far too long.
Every single half-baked conspiracy is covered in torturous depth with pictures that (try as I might) failed to convince me there are glass cities on the moon.
If you are a real paranoid X-Files freak, this is the book for you!

Top-notch science book and a good intro to heavyweight cosmological topics, 08 Aug 2008
I really enjoyed reading this book, and have just started reading it again. I'm a big fan of Jim Al-Khalili's work, and the attempts he makes to explain seriously heavy cosmological ideas to everyday people.

What I think he does extremely well in this book is to help you build a difficult-to-understand concept in your mind, without a single mind-bending equation. This is all the more amazing, given that a sizeable portion of the information contained in this book is based on theory rather than proven fact.

The only thing that didn't work for me in this book was the attempts at humour. I really like the conversational style, as it really aids your understanding of the information, but the jokey comments remind me of seminars I've been to in the past where the listeners laugh at the speaker's jokes just to be kind and save embarrassment.

But anyway, apart from that, the book is faultless and it thoroughly deserves five stars. I would suggest reading it, even if you aren't interested in this subject. I think it would also work really well as an audiobook too.

An excellent read, not too technical and humorous to boot, 18 Feb 2008
I thought this book was excellent. I've been fascinated by this subject for years and have attempted (and failed) to read Hawking, Einstein et al because I just found them too complicated and too filled with equations to make sense. I have 2 hons degrees so I don't think I am that stupid (I hope not!) but I just found Hawking and the like to be unreadable- their concepts are not explained in laymans terms and unless you are an expert in quantum mechanics its like wading through treacle. This book, however, was perfect for a dunce(!) like me and the author gave practical examples and diagrams for most of the complicated concepts such as how black holes work and the concept of time. The style of writing is also very accessible and smattered with the author's own personal thoughts and witty observations which I liked as it made it seem more like we were having a conversation rather than him talking at me about subjects that i don;t understand. For example, in the time travel section he uses the film "The Terminator" to illustrate the time travel paradox which having seen the film, was really helpful and I actually understood what he was saying (yay!).

The book inevitable throws up more questions that answers but this is the nature of cosmology and science in general I think. There are some fascinating insights into the possibility of time travel and the fact that according to the laws of gravity, it is technically possible and I was blown away by the idea of Planck time (a measurement of time that is so small, there are more planck units in a single second than there are seconds since the universe began). The concept of infinity was also brilliantly explained and it made me realise that the universe in which we live is more mysterious and unfathomable than I ever realised possible. An excellent book which makes this subject understandable. I actually feel more intelligent having read it!!

Fascinating book, accessible to all., 09 Jan 2005
To someone (like myself) who has little or no knowledge of physics, this book is a REAL eye-opener. It is incredibly exciting, and has a deal of humour to boot.

Some parts DO require concentration to get your head around, and I must admit on one or two occasions being slightly lost. Thankfully though 99% of the book was quite easy to follow.

Primarily the book is focused on giving the reader an overview of Einstein's Theories of Relativity, and in particular how these could be applicable to time travel.

My only slight criticism is that the author does seem to concentrate on building/using time machines from a practical viewpoint, as though the reader is a Sc-Fi fan.

Before reading it I thought the universe was born billions of years ago with the Big Bang, and that I was at a certain point in time, and it would carry on ad infinitum after I die. Not necessarily so according to modern physics!

A very small sample of amazing information that I learned was:

Time could start running backwards if the Universe stops expanding and starts contracting.
Time slows down the quicker you go (near the speed of light time almost stops, or speeds up to infinity depending on your viewpoint).
Gravity doesn't pull objects, but bends space itself so objects 'fall' into it.
Gravity bends time and slows it down. Very heavy gravitation can almost stop time.
That the 'present' depends on where you are in space (and your speed), and that all future & past events may co-exist.

The book also touches on Quantum Mechanics, which is even weirder i.e. particles appearing from nowhere and being in 2 places at the same time.

Fantastic, 08 Aug 2002
I find myself coming back to this book over and over again. Everytime you read it you learn something new. The author's writing style is informal, and he explains the various concepts in the book very clearly, with lots of examples and occasional diagrams. Overall, an absoluetly fascinating book to go along with A Brief History of Time.

An absolutely excellent book, 16 Aug 2001
A brilliantly written book for both scientists and non-scientists alike. Unlike most science texts, this one is gripping and informative, written in a clear easy style. Superb.

An outstanding book, 05 Dec 2008
A fantastic book that is pitched at the level of the layman with some technical knowledge. This book contains all of the answers to all of the questions you would have on the subject of the Apollo project from a technical standpoint.

Once you pick it up, you will struggle to put it down.

Do not lend this book to anyone because you wont get it back!

Beautifully written tour de force, 14 Nov 2008
It takes real talent to explain something intricate without confusing or losing your reader in the process. David Woods has pitched the delivery of this masterpiece perfectly.

David gives the book a logical flow from start to finish, citing facts from each mission as appropriate to illustrate the issues. The explanations of hardware design and operation hit just the right level of detail to enlighten, but also end up inspiring awe. Until reading this book I had never realised just how superb the design of the Saturn/Apollo machine was.

Furthermore the significance of mission timings and trajectory calculations is explained, demystifying what for me has been a very grey area for the last 4 decades!

I would recommend this book for anyone already interested in the Apollo missions, but open to finding out more. It's a gem.

Fascinating, 14 Nov 2008
There are plenty of great books, films, TV shows and internet resources telling you who the Apollo astronauts were and what they said and did. There is surprisingly little telling you how they did it. Even the astronauts' and controllers' own memoirs seem to shy away from this, as if afraid that technical details are boring.

So how would you navigate to a pinpoint landing on a distant body? Why were the spaceships the size and shape they were, and what were the alternatives? What did all the bits do? How did they deal with things that went wrong? What was the astronauts' role in all of this? What were all those people in Mission Control doing? In the Apollo 13 movie, what on earth does "FIDO" or "Main Bus B Undervolt" mean?

This book explains it all, and somehow manages to do it in a way that is engaging and fairly easy to follow. I found it endlessly fascinating. Really excellent stuff that really fills a major gap, and I suspect future historians will love him for it.

Some bits work better than others; my mind wandered a little when reading about the scanning instruments in the SIM bay, but he rightly wants to explain every part of it and he structures it in a way that you can skip some bits but easily know where you are.

It is also great to see the attention he gives to all of the missions, not just the big-name ones, and explains really well how the build-up missions (not just Gemini but also Ranger and Surveyor and so on) contributed. And having once met the late Ron Evans of Apollo 17, I was chuffed to see his exploits described in some detail, especially as other books (especially Chaikin) tend to portray him as a bit of an amiable simpleton.

The only questions I would have are extremely minor; he seems to downplay Jim Irwin's health problems, which Chris Kraft's book described as practically a full-blown heart attack. He also downplays the design changes caused by Apollo 13, which again Chris Kraft complains were enforced by political rather than engineering reasons. But given his attention to detail in the rest of it he may well be correct.

So warmly recommended.


From pre-launch to splashdown, 27 May 2008
I have just finished reading this excellent book and I would certainly recommend it to anyone interested in the Apollo project, or space flight in general.

Without getting bogged down in equations, this book explains how the space craft of the Apollo era worked and where flown. Following the journey from the launch pad to splash down, every stage of this grand adventure are explained in detail. Each section contains examples from the real missions to show how a staggering series of procedures allowed the first humans to walk on the Moon.

Well worth reading!

Deserves 10 Stars!, 13 May 2008
This is a book that I've been waiting for all my life! I've read so many books about Project Apollo, many of which naturally focus on the human side of the adventures-this is after all, what the general public wants to know about. But as a reasonably intelligent and educated person I have often been left wondering how they actually did everything they needed to get to the Moon and back safely. This book fills that gap and in a way that the person with an average level of education will fully comprehend and enjoy. Mr Woods's explanations on navigation procedures are so lucid as to make it sound simple and after a few minutes reading I found I could confidently bandy phrases around such as 'state vector' at dinner parties, even though I have to take my shoes and socks off to count up to 23!

After many years of falling into the trap of thinking the Moon landings were a great but, only moderately hard task to achieve, Mr Woods superb book has reinstated my feelings of awe for what humans can achieve if they put their minds to it and polished my absolute admiration for the astronauts who put themselves into the hands of their ground-based colleagues.

I cannot praise Mr Woods efforts enough, however I worry that since the bar has been set so high by the author, every subsequent book I read on Project Apollo will compare unfavourably to 'How Apollo Flew to the Moon'.

Engrossing study of how we view our home planet., 11 Dec 2008
I found this book an engrossing read - an intriguing look at how humans view our planet from afar. What I found most interesting was not just the story of how images have been taken of our planet from space, but also how the taking of such images has apparently been long anticipated in human history. Through studies of paintings and writings made before the Space Age, Poole shows that the impact of such images was anticipated long before the images were made. He goes on to discuss how the images, when made, seem to have made a deep impression on a burgeoning environmental and conservation movement. An interesting study of how the precise literalism of hard engineering can awaken nebulous, imaginative, creative free-thinking on a large scale.

Solid science and thoroughly enjoyable, 28 Oct 2008
Phil Plait once again manages to convey a hefty dose of solid scientific knowledge in an entertaining and real page-turner fashion. Covering pretty much every sci-fi end-of-the-world threat from outer space he educates and entertains with stories of supernovae, black holes, gamma bursts and the like.

Along with the scientific explanations there is a common thread of pragmatic risk appraisal without the usual sensationalism. Even the benefits of many of the risks are discussed, such as the generation of heavier elements by supernovae.

Death from the Skies is both enjoyable and educational, and you are unlikely to be disappointed.

How stupid i am - for buying this book!, 22 Nov 2008
How stupid i am - for buying this book!

I enjoy the odd conspiracy books, and the odd alien/ufo book too, mainly to laugh at the loons i have to admit, but still they can be entertaining.

Not this book however. One thing is the constant use of italics and "quotes" where they are not needed - the pages are so heavy with them that sentences actually become hard to read. Another problem is the flimsy conspiracy evidence, mainly that on important occasions, any one of several stars could be 19.5 or 33 degrees above or below the horizon as seen from any one of dozens or 'ritual sites' on the earth, moon or mars. I'm sure you could make any date or time fit that pattern. Maybe I was born during an important conjunction?

It also seems that events are re-presented during the book, changing just a little each time they are mentioned until they fit nicely into the authors belief system. For example at the start of the book it's noted that Buzz Aldrin takes communion (a catholic religious rite) on the moon. Doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Later it's said that communion is based on and earlier ritual used by the Egyptians, which seems reasonable. Pretty soon though we get references to Egyptian rituals on the moon, and by the end of the book the authors are saying that Aldrin is a Horus worshipper whose first act on the moon was to perform his ancient rituals.

The biggest problem though is the author's ego. The book is full of self-promotion, and I'd say nearly half the book is devoted to putting down the authors critics, even going so far as to point out his critics spelling mistakes. It really is very petty, especially as one of the authors slides misspells night as 'nite' a few pages later.

If you still want a copy of this book, you'll find mine in the bin tomorrow morning if you're quick.

A loon writes..., 02 Nov 2008
I've read many books about UFOs and the like, and have considerable sympathy for the subject. This, however, is a rather embarrassing example of the lunatic fringe - in which it is revealed how NASA is just part of some giant unclear conspiracy to cover up all kinds of stuff to do with Mars, the Moon, alien civilisations, Egyptology, fourth-dimensional physics, oh and also a bunch of other conspiracies and sinister organisations.

The main author, one Richard Hoagland, writes of himself in the third person throughout, as if giving a gloss of drama and objectivity, yet this is a self-serving document, recounting the history of his brilliant ideas and his lame, biased or malign detractors, peppered with overuse of italics and shudder quotes in case you don't get the message.

But it is the wild extrapolations from extremely flimsy evidence that make this book just embarrassing and annoying to read. For Hoagland, blurry photographs of the Moon or Mars are a kind of Rorschach inkblot test: to his eye, ordinary rocks are 'mechanical debris' from some advanced but now-extinct interplanetary civilization. A rock with two dents in it is a 'robot's head' (and I suspect that a significant proportion of rocks look more like a robot's head than the example we are given). Mountains are 'pyramids'; a blurry row of rocks is a 'sphinx'. Inevitably, the not particularly face-like 'Face on Mars' gets much attention. These objects are rather more irregular than an advanced civilization ought to be able to produce - actually they look just like rocks and mountains - but this of course is explained by 'erosion' (even though no erosion takes place on the moon, not having an atmosphere or surface water).

Add to this a heavy dose of unconvincing geometry: draw enough straight lines on a photograph and you find some of them seem to connect these mysterious objects - or rather, they do if you draw enough lines and make enough use of wiggle room, such as saying a line connects to an object when actually it goes a bit to the side. (Ley lines, anyone?)

Then measure the angles produced, and with a bit more jiggling you can come up with something close to numbers that don't have any mathematical significance, like, say, e/pi, or e/root 5 - but why not more obvious constants like e or 5? Well, we are told, this is obviously an alien 'message' about hyperdimensional physics which tells us that the planets all contain a fourth-dimensional spinning pyramid or something...

Other photographs of the moon landings have even more bizarre interpretations: anything looking like a scratch on the negative is actually a 'buttress' supporting one of many giant glass domes over craters; these domes are naturally invisible in the photos (being made of glass), but hey, they're obviously there, aren't they? (Hoagland's inability to get any scientific journals to publish such results are naturally all part of the conspiracy.)

But wait, there are more dots to be connected. It's all something to do with not only the Masons, but also the Nazis (I kid you not). As shown by all kinds of things which turn out to be mysteriously symbolic: e.g. a particular moon launch occurs on the anniversary of Hitler's birthday (a date which after all only arises once every year). Quite why NASA would choose a launch date on such a cryptic yet symbolic basis, rather than - say - to do with the relative position of the earth and moon, is not clear; perhaps to send a secret message? To whom, and why? Some NASA announcement occurs three years to the day after JFK's assassination - all very suspicious and symbolic, so clearly is another secret message telling us we're-not-quite-sure-what. After all, the anniversary of JFK's assassination only comes round every year. (Come to think of it, isn't almost every day the anniversary of some more or less important historical event?)

NASA also uses strange symbolism in its official patches for space suits etc - for example, the Apollo program patch has a big letter A on it, secretly denoting (in the mind of Hoagland) not Apollo but Asar, an ancient Egyptian word for Osiris, i.e. the constellation Orion, which has something important to do with Egyptian mythology and hence pyramids and YOU SEE HOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE.

Quite how this book made it to the New York Times bestseller list is a mystery to me, and one rather more disturbing than the contents of this deranged and tedious book.

Intriguing, uncovers many layers of Conspiracy..., 11 Aug 2008
Richard Hoagland was present at JPL in 1969 as the crew of Apollo eleven was on it's way back to Earth. He saw a shady character, accompanied by high ranking NASA officials, distribute leaflets during a press conference stating that the entire moon landing had been faked on a soundstage in Nevada. This, according to Hoagland, was the genesis of the Apollo Conspiracy mythos. Logically this would make the Apollo Conspiracy a Hoax Hoax. Therefore one cannot help wondering what a Hoax Hoax Hoax would be.

Hoagland himself quotes one of his intelligence sources as saying that, "the lie is different at every level". There is no doubt that NASA is concealing something because many of the photographic materials it supplies are obviously tampered with. Hoagland states that NASA (Never A Staight Answer!) is a military organisation rather than as most people think, a civilian one. Therefore they are answerable only to the Pentagon and not to the taxpayer.

Hoagland is committed to the ancient astronauts idea. He believes that the ruins he has detected on the Moon and Mars, are many thousands of years old and probably pre- date human civilization on Earth. He apparently disregards the evidence that humans still interact with with extra- terrestrials. There is no mention in his book of the fact that the Moon, and possibly the entire solar system were created, from basic planetery raw materials, by beings far beyond our technological capacity, beings for whom time means nothing. I believe therefore that everything in our environment is controlled by these entities, whom humans often mistake for Gods.

NASA must have known since it's inception that the moon is artificial, as it's period of orbit is exactly equal to it's period of rotation; also it covers the Sun exactly during solar eclipses. I am convinced that Socrates knew this. I do not agree with Hoagland that there has been only one "time before", there have probably been many; Humankind has reached out to other worlds in the past, and may not actually originate on Earth.

In many of the Apollo photographs of the Moon, Hoagland sees huge glass domes reaching high above the lunar surface, and the remains of supporting rebars, I cannot say that I see this from the reproductions in the book, but there do seem to be atifacts and "arcology" there. Perhaps there are still humans or extra- terrestrials living within the moon, based on it's far side.

Hoagland believes in the notorious "Face on Mars". Of course, if it is truly artificial, then it certainly does not resemble any monolith on Earth, being over a mile in length and apparently honeycombed with rooms and walls; The Face itself is only visible from a high altitude. At the end of the book there are some reproductions of photographs taken by the recent Mars Reconnaissance Orbitor which according to Hoagland reveal an ancient "Headquarters" in The Face. I find it surprising that the orbital photos from Mars appear to be of higher resolution than those from the Moon.



D+ poor effort, must try harder.., 19 Apr 2008
I think the face on mars looks like a collapsed hill, and just a trick of light. The author is obsessed by it. All this astonishing alien artifacts on the moon and mars are present within Richard Hoagland's imagination, and are not present in any of the pictures. What the re-examination of the lunar landing photos probably show is the original hidden background detail of the inside of the studio where they filmed the lunar landings. There's a colour photo of the moon in this book, taken from the Apollo space craft, and according to the author, it's evidence of millions of domes of glass on the moon, as it shows a glow around the moon, which is not possible from space. The more obvious explanation for this is that the photo was taken from a telescope on the earth, and then claimed for the Apollo astronauts.
What is proven in this book is that NASA are habitual liers, and have been covering up something which is far more interesting...evidence of life on mars. What the agenda is, is not explored very well here.
The first chapters about multi-dimentional space is out of the scope for a lay-person and is a stuggle to get through.
What would make for a much better book, by another author, would be an exploration of the mars anomalies, the green-blue sky which NASA have tweeked into red, and fossil evidence on mars. Also an investigation into why NASA are compelled to lie about everything, and why should anyone trust anything they say, including that they went to the moon, when there is so much evidence to show that they didn't, and which Hoagland claims he and his associates have proved to be a false conspiracy, and he hasn't proved it at all. If NASA can fake the colours of mars, why cant they fake the supposed robot head as well, and anything else they feel like?

"Let's go fly a kite..", 08 Mar 2008
"up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear". Quoting Mary Poppins may be a strange way to begin a review but in my opinion this author has been up where the air is clear (and perhaps a bit too thin) for far too long.
Every single half-baked conspiracy is covered in torturous depth with pictures that (try as I might) failed to convince me there are glass cities on the moon.
If you are a real paranoid X-Files freak, this is the book for you!

Top-notch science book and a good intro to heavyweight cosmological topics, 08 Aug 2008
I really enjoyed reading this book, and have just started reading it again. I'm a big fan of Jim Al-Khalili's work, and the attempts he makes to explain seriously heavy cosmological ideas to everyday people.

What I think he does extremely well in this book is to help you build a difficult-to-understand concept in your mind, without a single mind-bending equation. This is all the more amazing, given that a sizeable portion of the information contained in this book is based on theory rather than proven fact.

The only thing that didn't work for me in this book was the attempts at humour. I really like the conversational style, as it really aids your understanding of the information, but the jokey comments remind me of seminars I've been to in the past where the listeners laugh at the speaker's jokes just to be kind and save embarrassment.

But anyway, apart from that, the book is faultless and it thoroughly deserves five stars. I would suggest reading it, even if you aren't interested in this subject. I think it would also work really well as an audiobook too.

An excellent read, not too technical and humorous to boot, 18 Feb 2008
I thought this book was excellent. I've been fascinated by this subject for years and have attempted (and failed) to read Hawking, Einstein et al because I just found them too complicated and too filled with equations to make sense. I have 2 hons degrees so I don't think I am that stupid (I hope not!) but I just found Hawking and the like to be unreadable- their concepts are not explained in laymans terms and unless you are an expert in quantum mechanics its like wading through treacle. This book, however, was perfect for a dunce(!) like me and the author gave practical examples and diagrams for most of the complicated concepts such as how black holes work and the concept of time. The style of writing is also very accessible and smattered with the author's own personal thoughts and witty observations which I liked as it made it seem more like we were having a conversation rather than him talking at me about subjects that i don;t understand. For example, in the time travel section he uses the film "The Terminator" to illustrate the time travel paradox which having seen the film, was really helpful and I actually understood what he was saying (yay!).

The book inevitable throws up more questions that answers but this is the nature of cosmology and science in general I think. There are some fascinating insights into the possibility of time travel and the fact that according to the laws of gravity, it is technically possible and I was blown away by the idea of Planck time (a measurement of time that is so small, there are more planck units in a single second than there are seconds since the universe began). The concept of infinity was also brilliantly explained and it made me realise that the universe in which we live is more mysterious and unfathomable than I ever realised possible. An excellent book which makes this subject understandable. I actually feel more intelligent having read it!!

Fascinating book, accessible to all., 09 Jan 2005
To someone (like myself) who has little or no knowledge of physics, this book is a REAL eye-opener. It is incredibly exciting, and has a deal of humour to boot.

Some parts DO require concentration to get your head around, and I must admit on one or two occasions being slightly lost. Thankfully though 99% of the book was quite easy to follow.

Primarily the book is focused on giving the reader an overview of Einstein's Theories of Relativity, and in particular how these could be applicable to time travel.

My only slight criticism is that the author does seem to concentrate on building/using time machines from a practical viewpoint, as though the reader is a Sc-Fi fan.

Before reading it I thought the universe was born billions of years ago with the Big Bang, and that I was at a certain point in time, and it would carry on ad infinitum after I die. Not necessarily so according to modern physics!

A very small sample of amazing information that I learned was:

Time could start running backwards if the Universe stops expanding and starts contracting.
Time slows down the quicker you go (near the speed of light time almost stops, or speeds up to infinity depending on your viewpoint).
Gravity doesn't pull objects, but bends space itself so objects 'fall' into it.
Gravity bends time and slows it down. Very heavy gravitation can almost stop time.
That the 'present' depends on where you are in space (and your speed), and that all future & past events may co-exist.

The book also touches on Quantum Mechanics, which is even weirder i.e. particles appearing from nowhere and being in 2 places at the same time.

Fantastic, 08 Aug 2002
I find myself coming back to this book over and over again. Everytime you read it you learn something new. The author's writing style is informal, and he explains the various concepts in the book very clearly, with lots of examples and occasional diagrams. Overall, an absoluetly fascinating book to go along with A Brief History of Time.

An absolutely excellent book, 16 Aug 2001
A brilliantly written book for both scientists and non-scientists alike. Unlike most science texts, this one is gripping and informative, written in a clear easy style. Superb.

An outstanding book, 05 Dec 2008
A fantastic book that is pitched at the level of the layman with some technical knowledge. This book contains all of the answers to all of the questions you would have on the subject of the Apollo project from a technical standpoint.

Once you pick it up, you will struggle to put it down.

Do not lend this book to anyone because you wont get it back!

Beautifully written tour de force, 14 Nov 2008
It takes real talent to explain something intricate without confusing or losing your reader in the process. David Woods has pitched the delivery of this masterpiece perfectly.

David gives the book a logical flow