Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program

Excellent recount of the behind the scene marketing that was going on at the time. Meeting President Kennedy's goal of sending a man to the moon was truly a national effort, it is reflected in the endeavours of all those who participated. The U.S. needs another such "bold" challenge. Excellent book that accounts for that time, I recall the excitement of growing up during that period and being one one of the many observers being glued to the television.

In Houston it was Sunday, July 20, 21:56, 1969. In the Netherlands, it was Monday, July 21, 03:56 in the night. This was the moment when Armstrong made his first steps on the moon. I have experienced that moment because there were live TV images from the moon. ‘Marketing The Moon’ is not a dry list of successes and failures during NASA’s Apollo space program between 1961 and 1972. The book is filled with stories, photos, anecdotes personal notes, advertising, covers of magazines, images from NASA films, newspaper clippings, TV-screenshots, facts, opinions and prototypes of equipment. Much of this material was new to me. There is also a chapter devoted to the construction of the TV cameras that were taken to the moon at the time. In short, as this period in history interests you then this is a valuable book to read.

Great (and beautiful) book. As someone else said here or elsewhere, if for some totally unbelievable reason the moon landings were found to be faked (which of course they are not) then this is the one book which wouldn't need a rewrite!Fascinating to see the literary impetus for space exploration and also how success ultimately breeds failure - in that the marketing of the space program was a victim of its own success. One of the central tenets of this book is that the (American) public got so into it that once Armstrong had set foot on the moon and moonwalking became a technical commonplace, that was curtains for NASA. Turning the excitement of space travel into the mundanities of where are you going to have a dump and 'oo, look at that rock' geology, meant that it wouldn't be too long before we all had our heads turned by the Jackson 5, Happy Days and - oh yes - Watergate, Vietnam and international terrorism . . . Roll on the mission to Mars!!

Bellissimo, per chi è appassionato ai retroscena, qui c'è spiegato tutta la macchina di marketing avviata per sostenere e creare l'immaginifico dell'impresa per la Luna, un ottima case history. Nasa & MIT, materiale di prima mano e di qualità di difficile reperimento.

Je suis encore en pleine lecture de ce tome (en anglais) mais je ne peux résister à l'envie de partager mon enthousiasme pour le travail effectué par les auteurs !Le conquête de la Lune vous a fait rêver, enfant ?C'est normal, tout était planifié dans les moindres détails d'un plan marketing génial concocté par la NASA et le gouvernement US, dans la plus pure tradition du "Soft Power" qui a fait entrer la nation américaine de l'ère Kennedy dans l'inconscient collectif des peuples du XXe siècle.