Moon Manual (Haynes Owners' Workshop Manual)

We love Haynes manuals. We used to do our own car repairs with them, but now we have moved on to rockets, Star Trek/Wars vehicles, and now, the Moon! A very fun book with great information about our wonderful tide turner, in a clear format. Nice hard cover book. Always a fun gift for the space nut in your life!

Neat book would recommend!

Although the title makes it sound like a novelty guide for prospective lunar dictators, this book actually provides a concise chronological overview of lunar science from the days of Plato and Aristotle to the present day. Although David Harland has written a number of detailed works on the manned and unmanned exploration of the Moon, this "manual" seeks to condense a very complex subject into a single heavily illustrated volume.Where this book largely excels is in its detailed, but readable, explanations of the fine arts of selenology and selenography. Despite being only 172 pages, this book covers subjects as diverse as Lunar Orbiter's photographic system, to the formation of the Apennine Range, and Aristarchus determining the distance between Earth and the Moon. As a bit of an astronomy dunce, I appreciated the plain-language explanations of certain aspects of lunar science that had eluded me over the years. David Woods has provided a number of crisp diagrams explaining, to give a couple examples, the difference between a Synodic and Sidereal month, how librations occur, and Kepler's laws of planetary motion. On a visual level, this is another home run for Haynes. There are photographs, maps, diagrams, and paintings on almost every page, and the reproduction quality is extremely good this time. David Woods has done an excellent job cleaning up old NASA diagrams, re-annotating them and adding color where needed.Dr. Harland co-wrote a manual for Haynes last year on the Gemini spacecraft, and this one also displays many of the same strengths and weaknesses of the format. Although the material contained within is exceptionally good, this book is screaming out for at least another 20 pages just to flesh things out. I would have loved to have seen more on the Luna and Lunik programs, some detailed asides on the Lunokhod rovers, descriptions of the Apollo lunar surface experiments and SIM bay instruments...well, you get the picture! As a result, this book feels rather choppy in places.Although it suffers somewhat from Haynes' editorial constraints, this is another pretty solid entry in their "Workshop Manual" series. The subject is perhaps too big for a single book, but David Harland has done an admirable job explaining lunar science to us folks who don't have PhDs. If anything, it's convinced me to start tracking down some of the space books he's written for Springer/Praxis.

My huband loved his birthday present

One of the best books to have on our celestial companion.

Good

This is a great book covering everything you would want to know about the Moon, from the ancient philosophers’ thoughts through the Chinese landing of a rover. David Harland does an excellent job explaining complex ideas in terms that the layman can understand while at the same time including rich details the advanced reader loves to discover! It includes beautiful, large photos and diagrams, some I have never seen published before (this is a trademark of Harland’s books). Nearly all of the many people referenced in the book have their portrait or photograph included. He also includes photographs of the Ranger and Saturn rocket impacts on the Moon, pointing out that how similar each crater looks. I can’t think of any unmanned mission to the Moon that he missed, as he included everything from the sub-satellites carried on some of the last Apollo missions through the Grail twins. Ebb and Flow. He also includes a section on the Manned Apollo Missions. I really love how colorful and filled-to-the brim these Haynes books are (not one page wasted). While I would certainly recommend this book for all ages, I feel it would be an especially good book for children interested in space and science. This book is a must-have for space enthusiasts! For even more detailed reading, I would recommend Harland’s “NASA's Moon Program: Paving the Way for Apollo 11” for even more details about unmanned lunar exploration and his latest Apollo book “Apollo 12 - On the Ocean of Storms”.

Many mistakes made about origin of landforms. Made me think of the stuff from the 1950s.

Great book.

nuovo in ottime condizioni

Lots of great information. More than I expected to see.

Très bel ouvrage permettant d'apprendre beaucoup de choses diverses :- Savants, chercheurs, techniciens, ...- missions et satellites, ...Le tout sous forme de photos, schémas, ... texte en anglais

brought for sister she loves it