HERE鈥橲 a tricky exam question: 鈥淔rank Borman reporting 鈥楲ight on. Ignition,鈥� from the Apollo 8 spacecraft is more significant than Neil Armstrong鈥檚 鈥楾hat鈥檚 one small step鈥︹�� from Apollo 11. Discuss.鈥�

Borman was reporting the firing up of an S-IVB engine that would hurl him and crewmates James Lovell and William Anders out of Earth orbit and towards the moon. This Apollo 8 launch was the moment humanity started its journey to another world. Armstrong鈥檚 stepping onto the moon signalled its arrival.

Jeffrey Kluger鈥檚 new account of Apollo 8 is a welcome reminder that surrounding any famous historical event are others that impinge directly on how posterity remembers it. Indeed, focusing largely on the stories of the three Apollo 8 astronauts, he takes us through their formative time on Project Gemini 鈥� the testing ground for NASA鈥檚 plan to go to the moon.

Apollo was a gargantuan national effort by the US. It cost billions and involved thousands of engineers, technicians, scientists, industrialists and managers. There is plenty of Apollo information and narrative out there for the interested reader, but it needs the discerning eye of a Kluger, who knows how to sift through it all to the essential detail and tell it accessibly.

His style never underplays the spectacle and achievement of the moonshots, but he laces his descriptions with reminders that the endeavour was delivered by human ingenuity, labour and passion. For example, writing about the almost-unimaginable strength of the engines that lifted Borman鈥檚 crew off the launch pad, he invokes a natural context: the engines generated more power than an imaginary hydroelectric turbine fed by all the rivers and streams in the US.

More prosaically, but equally vivid, is his description of a noise the astronauts heard during launch as a 鈥済lug-glug-glugging鈥�, like water going down a plug hole. It was, in fact, the sound of the rocket鈥檚 liquid propellants being pumped from tanks to engines.

Despite the intensity of the astronauts鈥� preparations for the mission, their training couldn鈥檛 alert them to what the experience would really be like. Nor could it give them a hint about what all the monitoring for ill-effects would be like to live with. So great were the space medics鈥� concerns over the expected loss of calcium from the astronauts鈥� bodies, for example, that all their urine and faeces for days before, during and after the mission were collected for analysis. And less a molecule be missed, they showered in distilled water, with the run-off collected for further assessment.

鈥淣ASA stole the race with the launch of Apollo 8, killing off Soviet hopes of landing on the moon first鈥�

In 1968, NASA was facing huge problems with the Apollo programme. It was still recovering from the fire a year earlier that killed three astronauts on the launch pad. The second uncrewed Saturn V launch (Apollo 6) had been a near disaster and the lunar landing module wasn鈥檛 ready.

Aware that the Soviets might launch a mission around the moon, perhaps with cosmonauts on board, NASA reconfigured the original Apollo mission to do likewise.

On 21 December, Borman, Lovell and Anders blasted off from Cape Kennedy and became the first humans to orbit the moon. NASA stole the race with Apollo 8. For cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (the first person to walk in space), that killed off Soviet hopes of landing on the moon first.

As Apollo 8 passed over the moon, Anders, scrambling weightlessly to grab a camera with the right lens, captured perhaps a defining image of the space age: Earth rising from behind the lunar horizon. As he said: 鈥淲e came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.鈥�

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭he view from Apollo鈥�

听

VISIONS of the future omit the messiness of real life. Every solution is total; every technology works equally well for everybody. And when it all goes wrong, journalists like John Bloom are left to pick through the wreckage.

Now and again, though, the story ultimately gets a happy ending. Such is the tale of the satellite system Iridium, making Bloom鈥檚 Eccentric Orbits an inspiring history as well as an effective business thriller.

In 1945, Arthur C. Clarke wrote an article that foresaw the advent of communication satellites. He described three extraterrestrial relays 鈥� crewed space stations positioned at equal distances from each other over the equator at an altitude of 36,000 kilometres. They would orbit in sync with Earth鈥檚 rotation and their signals would reach almost everyone on the planet.

Fifty years later, by satellite link from the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka, Clarke opened a small celebratory exhibition at London鈥檚 Science Museum. His prediction had come true, although the spacecraft were a lot smaller than he anticipated, thanks to miniaturisation and the lack of crews (the components were so reliable that they did not need servicing).

There was one snag, though: signals from geostationary satellites are too weak to reach high latitudes effectively. This problem is what the Iridium satellite service, conceived in the early 1990s, was supposed to tackle. By launching scores of extra satellites into lower orbits, the Iridium network would achieve truly global coverage. Anyone with an Iridium phone would be within sight of a satellite, and those satellites would communicate with each other, enabling everyone on Earth to talk to everyone else.

Calculations showed that 77 satellites would be needed, hence the name 鈥淚ridium鈥� 鈥� after the metal with atomic number 77. It turned out that just 66 were required, but dysprosium (element number 66) didn鈥檛 seem right as a name.

The satellites were launched in a matter of months and in 1998, US Vice President Al Gore made the first Iridium phone call. Everything augured well for a revolution in the satellite communications market, only it didn鈥檛 happen. People didn鈥檛 buy the phones; they were far too expensive. Demand was insufficient to recoup the billions of dollars that had been invested in Iridium, which became the biggest bankruptcy in US history. And this is why, at the beginning of Eccentric Orbits, we encounter Danny Stamp wrestling with what his employer 鈥� the mighty Motorola Corporation, owner of Iridium 鈥� had told him to do: destroy them.

鈥淓xplorers and media correspondents loved the system, but so, crucially, did the world鈥檚 military鈥�

The man who ultimately saved Iridium was Stamp鈥檚 boss Dan Colussy, a retired aerospace executive. Colussy never doubted the technology behind Iridium, and realised that its business plan was letting it down. Iridium was being marketed as a global telecoms solution, when it would only ever appeal to people in places where no other satellite phone would work.

Such users were plentiful: the trick was to identify them. Explorers and reporters loved the system, naturally, but so, crucially, did the world鈥檚 military, operating in places not covered by the International Maritime Organization鈥檚 geosynchronous Inmarsat satellites. This niche market was wealthy enough to justify Iridium鈥檚 continuation.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy urged Americans to send humans to the moon and 鈥渄o the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard鈥�. Bloom argues convincingly that creating and then saving Iridium was one such desperately difficult 鈥� and brilliant 鈥� achievement.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淲hat goes up must stay up鈥�