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Earthrise. An enduring image from the early U.S. space program, the picture taken by one of three astronauts orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, on the first flight of the Apollo project to leave Earth's gravity. Seven months later, two U.S. astronauts walked on the moon. Those of us old enough doubtless remember the suspense, the excitement, the nationally shared realization of huge accomplishments -- above all, the enormous pride in our technology, our astronauts and what they did. Twelve men walked on the surface of Earth's satellite during six landings, the last in 1972. Three decades later, despite political nods in that direction, any continuation of manned space travel beyond Earth orbit remains an ill-defined goal.
M.G. Lord's "Astro Turf" seems to have been conceived as a search for her father's role in the early Space Age. Charles Carroll Lord began his career as a mechanical engineer doing detailed design work on farm equipment in the 1930s, then joined the aircraft industry during World War II. In the late 1960s, he was "a foot soldier, not a general" with Northrop, a contractor to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he worked on Mariner 6 and 7, unmanned spacecraft that flew by Mars and snapped pictures in the summer of 1969. Lord's descriptions of her father's career (he retired in 1971 and died in 1994) and her own experiences as a girl growing up in the young Space Age form a poignant backdrop to her account of America's space program.
Having little concern for the science and engineering or the results achieved by the various projects, Lord instead focuses on the people who devised the machines and made things happen -- the "private life" of her subtitle. Apart from her personal history of life with her father, much of the book consists of two stories. The first evolves from the modest beginnings of JPL, which Lord recounts briefly but well.
In 1936, five young enthusiasts began...