Earl Swift - Across the Airless Wilds

Across the Airless Wilds, a history of the Lunar Rover and its voyages on the final three Apollo missions, might seem like a niche subject - even for those of us fascinated by the history of space exploration. Yet Earl Swift's book is a surprisingly gripping read and deserves a readership beyond the narrow confines of enthusiasts. 

The rover concept had its origins in the near fantasy science fiction stories that shaped the early popular vision of rockets and spaceflight. In those gaudy depictions of Americans on space, popular magazines depicted astronauts exploring the moon and travelling around in a variety of vehicles. For a society seeped in automobile culture it seemed inevitable that visionaries, scientists and science-fiction authors would suggest that moon explorers would soon need a "car". Yet oddly the first people to really push the idea of such vehicles were not Americans, they were German scientists.

Just before reading Across the Airless Wilds I finished a book about the early Atomic scientists and the development of the atomic bomb. Robert Jungk's Brighter Than 1000 Suns showed how former German nuclear scientists were central to the US development of the Atomic bomb. This was also true of the space programme, and indeed the Lunar Rover. Two key figures in its early development Werner von Braun and Hermann Oberth were both  German scientists, with von Braun at least having played a significant role in the Nazi war effort. Swift makes a point that many key figures in the US space programme were "foreign born". 

He continues "America's race to reach the moon, both within NASA and at the aerospace companies that built the hardware, relied on the minds and talents of immigrants - on Americans who happened to start their lives elsewhere." It is hard not to think that Swift is taking a dig at the right-wing politicians in the US (and elsewhere) who attack immigrants, but he makes an important general point about the space programme itself - it was the product of an enormous amount of physical and mental labour by hundreds of thousands of people, and its roots go back into the early twentieth century. That said, Swift does not ignore the murky parts of this history. We cannot forget the fact that one of the key architects of the Apollo programme was a former leading member of the SS and it is important that Swift acknowledges this.

I highlight this to emphasise that Swift's book is no mere celebration of technical achievement, but places that achievement in the context of the time and politics. That said the technical and economic history of the Lunar Rover makes up the bulk of this book, and readers will be fascinated by how the Rover itself came to be. Despite its long intellectual gestation, the Rover itself was only given the go ahead by NASA a few days before Apollo 11 lifted off to put Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon. The engineers had a limited budget and barely 18 months to turn their designs into a functioning vehicle. It seems utterly incredible that it happened, not least as it began around the time that budgets for moon flights were beginning to be cut back. Nevertheless it is testament to the way that the central drive from the state could make things happen far faster than would normally take place if just left to the free market.

The Rover was far more than a car on the moon. It had to be incredibly light and strong, rugged and safe. It had to be able to take its passengers far away from their spacecraft and bring them back. This required incredible inventions in terms of batteries, cooling, and navigation instruments. Even the tires are unique and incredible inventions. The accounts of the six astronauts who drove the Rover on the moon, and how they fared are breath-taking in and of themselves, especially when you see the interaction between crewmembers and technology in terms of solving problems on the lunar surface.

Swift points out that the Rover's importance was not just in terms of exploration. It also helped inspire and reawaken public interest in the programme. As I said earlier this is, in no small part, because of the centrality of the car to US culture. Few people could imagine piloting a lunar lander. But everyone could imagine driving a car. Video of astronauts skidding and racing on the surface touched a nerve in a way that the early astronauts bunny hopping did not. I would have liked Swift to explore this further - not least to draw out more about how the public understood and celebrated the Rover itself. 

There is no doubt that the Rover transformed lunar exploration and massively increased the amount of science that the Apollo machines did. The price tag was around 250 million USD in today's money - a significant investment. Whether that sort of spending was worthwhile is something that continues to be discussed today. Nevertheless the story of the Lunar Rover is the story of how when resources and labour are set to solve a technological task, then the amazing can be achieved. It is a lesson we could do with applying to many other social and economic needs today.

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