I was an avid fan of the Apollo missions in the 1960's and early 70's and a few excellent books about the technology and science involved resulted - in particular 'Exploring the moon' by David Harland, 'How Apollo flew to the moon' by David Woods, 'Digital Apollo' by 'David Mindell' and (of interest in this context) 'To a Rocky Moon' by Don Wilhelms. The last book is particularly well and interestingly written and I have since wondered if any progress in the field of lunar science had resulted in the twenty plus years since this was published. So I was interested to browse and then read this book by Arlin Crotts which seemed to delve further into the field.
Arlin Crotts is professor of astronomy at Columbia university (New York) and has wide ranging interests in astronomical research - deep space research, instrument development and planetary science. This book does show a huge breadth of knowledge and I was a bit overwhelmed by the range of facts packed into each chapter - even after you've finished a chapter, the large number of footnotes are almost minichapters in themselves! It is not written in the easy relaxing style of Wilhelms, but jumps from one fact to another at each sentence. Many of the sentences are not properly constructed - adding to the feeling that it was written in breathless haste! However if you can keep up with this, it covers a lot of interesting ideas and science. From my perspective, the earlier chapters were the most interesting. A chapter covers the Apollo and Soviet flights and probes - with many additional facts to those published at the time and a lot of the astronauts conversations (throughout the book) - I did wonder whether these facts were all correct a they clash with some of my memories of other accounts. There follows four particular areas of lunar science I found of great interest. These are the origins of the moon on the interplanetary collision hypothesis, the structure of the moon and its geology and near/far side asymmetry, the possibility of subsurface lunar water and a theory of transient lunar phenomena, a great interest of the late Patrick Moore. The second half of the book is more speculative, being devoted to the possibility of manned lunar bases. Although largely speculative these do point to some interesting issues. For instance, although lunar dust was treated during the Apollo era as a slightly amusing nuisance (given that Astronauts and their craft did not actually sink into it) the author quotes many of the astronauts conversations and shows that dust would actually be a serious problem for any extended manned visits to the moon's surface. I did find it hard to imagine that any large scale occupation of the moon by man, as envisioned in these last chapters would be affordable.
I would recommend this book to any one interested in an up-to-date survey of lunar science but am only giving it four stars for its over-hasty style and lack of easy readability.
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