The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs/Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program. Volume V: Exploring the Cosmos/Uplink-Downlink: A History of the Deep Space Network 1957-1997

STEPHEN B. JOHNSON, The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs. New Series in NASA History. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Pp. xvii + 290. ISBN 0-8018-6898-X. £30.50 (hardback).

JOHN M. LOGSDON (ed.), Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program. Volume V: Exploring the Cosmos. NASA History Series. Washington: NASA, 2001. Pp. xxviii + 796. ISBN 0-16-061774-X. No price given (hardback).

DOUGLAS J. MUDGWAY, Uplink-Downlink: A History of the Deep Space Network 1957-1997. NASA History Series. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration Office of External Relations, 2001. Pp. xlviii + 674. ISBN 0-16-066599-X. $82.00 (US domestic postpaid), $102.50 (internationally) (hardback).

DOI: 10.1017/S0007087404505812

On 22 January 2003 the last signal to be sent by Pioneer 10 was received, via the Deep Space Network, at the Earth-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Launched in 1972, the spacecraft had passed Jupiter late the following year, went beyond the orbit of Pluto in 1983, and was 7.6 billion miles away when it finally gave up the ghost. Such feats of space exploration amply demonstrate the extraordinary distances over which technological systems have been made to operate. How can a historian account for them? These three books offer different approaches.

At the centre of Johnson's text is a contrast between success and failure. In July 1969 the Apollo Moon landings seemed to demonstrate spectacularly the virtues of American technology and management. In the same month, the stumbling progress of the European Space Vehicle Launcher Development Organization (ELDO) was set...