The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield
This is a counterfactual history work of fiction that sets up an alternative scenario for the Apollo moon shots of the early 1970s that involved intense competition with the Russians for dominance in space. The Soviets were not trying to land men on the moon after Apollo 11 touched down on the lunar surface in July of 1969. In this book, the Russians focus on orbiting and manning a sophisticated spy satellite that can provide detailed information and intelligence that can tell them exactly what the US is planning militarily. The Soviets also land a sophisticated unmanned lunar explorer that is clearing the way for the development of a Soviet lunar base.
The book blends fact and fiction. Many of the people in it are real - astronauts John Glenn and Alan Shepard, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, CIA Director James Schlesinger, Soviet leader Yuri Andropov - while others are fictional. Kaz Zemeckis is a major character whose career as a NASA astronaut was cut short by a plane accident that cost him vision in one eye. He has various titles in the book, but he essentially is the fixer, the guy who can get the things done that need to be done. As the novel opens, Kaz is heading to NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center near Houston to make sure that the last moon landing – Apollo 18 in April of 1973 – goes off without a hitch. In the real world, Apollo 17 and Apollo 18 never happened. They were scheduled but ultimately canceled because of budget issues.
The book goes into great detail about what it takes to actually launch a rocket to the moon. That’s no surprise since the author, Chris Hadfield, was a real astronaut with lots of space travel in his resume. The mission planning is tedious and repetitive but essential to training the astronauts to correctly and automatically respond to any emergency. The book also gives us a sense of what NASA needs to see in potential space men and women. They have to be great pilots, wicked smaht, fearless, in superb physical shape, and able to quickly fix whatever problem is thrown at them. The astronaut corps is probably the most elite group in the world.
The Soviets are about to launch Almaz, a very high-end reconnaissance satellite. CIA Director Schlesinger and others are determined to keep Almaz from becoming operational. US intelligence reports that there shouldn’t be any Russians on the satellite; they will be rocketed up later to operate the satellite. As fate would have it, the upcoming Apollo 18 is a military mission so the generals come up with a scheme to have the astronauts’ rendezvous with Almaz, take pictures, and, if possible, quietly disable it. After that is done, they can continue their journey to the moon.
The <em>Apollo 18</em> flight crew consists of Tom Hoffman (Commander), Luke Hemming, and Michael Esdale. Kaz is working with them to make sure the mission is successful. One of their jobs on the moon will be to do some geologic investigation, including looking for uranium to power a nuclear reactor. Kaz is working with astro-geologist Dr. Laura Woodsworth. They soon become an item. Laura wants to be an astronaut so she has to learn how to fly. Kaz teaches her.
Gabdul Latypov is also interested in moon rocks. He’s in charge of operating the Soviet lunar rover, Lunokhod (“Moon River” in Russian). After the Americans won the race to land on the Moon, Russia focused on the next big thing, setting up a lunar base. The rover is also trying to figure out if there is uranium on the Moon which could be used for power. Lunokhod finds uranium.
Astronauts need to be able to land on the moon. They practice on a device known as the Bedstead which is like a pogo stick with an engine. Tom Hoffman, the Apollo 18 commander, finished his work on the Bedstead and flew a small helicopter over the practice site to observe his team practicing landings. Something happens and he is killed in a crash.Everyone is devastated. Tom was a great pilot who was unlikely to do something to cause a crash. As a result of his death, backup Chad Miller becomes the commander.
Al Shepard, the first American to be launched into space and the only one to hit golf balls on the moon (February 6, 1971) is designated to be the public face of the mission. In early 1973 the war in Vietnam was not going well as it was winding down and the country always liked moon landings. Shepard was a good pitch man for the mission.
Shepard was suspicious about Tom Hoffman’s helicopter crash so he brings in a friend of his from DC who is a trained accident investigator. It turns out that the crash wasn’t an accident. Someone loosened a bolt which caused the crash. That’s the first murder in the book.
Dive bars and Corvettes are important to astronauts. They spend a lot of time drinking in a place called the U-Joint (a real place) that celebrates their celebrity. The bar does serve a function. It’s where the crews and support staff go to let off steam and talk about the mission away from the formality of NASA. In order to get back and forth from the bar, local Chevy dealers give the guys Corvettes, which is good advertising for the businesses.
Meanwhile, the Russians are ready to launch Almaz with cameras capable of detecting objects on earth only a foot wide. Kaz works with the Apollo crew on how to disable the Russian spy satellite. The astronauts are not too happy with this mission addendum, but it is a military flight and they are in the military so they move forward.
The backup commander, Chad Miller, who replaced Tom Hoffman who died in the helicopter crash, is a little strange. He’s tightly wound, even for an astronaut. In a conversation with Kaz, who is of Lithuanian Jewish extraction, Miller makes some borderline anti-Semitic comments. Kaz will do some digging to see if others have any concerns about Chad.
The author gives a great description of the preparations for launch as the date approaches. There is a lot going on with both the rocket and the astronauts. Inside the capsule there are 600 switches and controls that the pilots have to master. The Saturn V launch vehicle is 365 feet high and 33 feet across. At take-off, it burns 15 tons of fuel a second and produces 160 million horsepower. Think about all of that. It is really amazing.
The description of the launch from the astronaut's perspective is very well done, no surprise since the author has been there and done that. A Russian “fishing trawler” – actually a spy ship – is in the area near the Cape Canaveral launch site. The ship’s captain notices that the rocket is not on its normal trajectory for a moon landing. He gets back to his Moscow bosses and they figure out that the Apollo crew may be making a stop at the recently-launched Almaz reconnaissance satellite.
On the way to the rendezvous with Almaz, Apollo 18 loses communications with ground control. It turns out that a small soldering mistake 18 months earlier caused the failure. Despite the setback, the NASA people are confident that they can fix the problem. After all, three years earlier they got Apollo 13 back safely and that vessel had sustained serious damage. Mission control and the astronauts develop a workaround that provides enough communications capacity for the journey.
Apollo catches up with Almaz, and Astronaut Luke Hemming takes a spacewalk to photograph and perhaps disable the satellite. It turns out that our intelligence assets got it wrong. There are Russian cosmonauts onboard Almaz and they are waiting for the Americans. Luke decides to retreat to Apollo as the Russians chase him. Almaz has a machine gun on it which ground control fires. Not a good decision. Most of the fifteen bullets fired miss, but one hits a cosmonaut, one hits Luke’s space suit, and one hits Almaz in a bad place. The cosmonaut is dead, Luke is in trouble, and the Almaz is rendered inoperable.
Chad and Michaels get Luke back into Apollo. As they close the capsule door they alertly notice that there's a hand keeping the door from shutting. It’s a Russian cosmonaut who they help into the capsule.
It turned out that Luke was dead. The bullet cut off his air supply. It also turns out that the visiting cosmonaut is a woman, Svetlana.
This is pretty far-fetched. But wait! It gets sillier!
Back in Washington, US Air Force General Sam Phillips (who was a real person in charge of the Apollo program) meets with NASA brass and they decide that they can turn this mess into a win. The plan had been for Luke and Chad to walk on the moon. Michael was to fly the command module (named Pursuit) around the moon. They need two people to take the lunar lander (named Bulldog) to the surface and do a moonwalk. Luke is dead so Svetlana is the logical replacement. The Americans and Russians will have worked together (albeit under duress) to land the first woman on the moon. President Nixon and Bob Haldeman, his chief of staff, have the final decision and they like the idea.
Russians back on earth have of course figured out how to listen in on the communications between <em>Apollo </em>and Houston so they know what’s going on. Now they have one of their people on <em>Apollo</em> about to walk on the moon.
Svetlana doesn’t understand much English so NASA has a person in Houston acting as a translator. Madame Cosmonaut happens to have a pistol with her which she hides. It may come in handy; you never know what these crazy Americans might do
.Mission Commander Chad seems more upset that Svetlana is there than that he is that Luke is dead. As it turns out, Chad speaks Russian, although he’s kept that a secret. He was born to Russian parents in Berlin and was put up for adoption as a young child. He was separated from his brother. Chad was adopted by a Michigan couple and became an All-American boy.
The Russian leaders back in Moscow know all about Chad’s background. They are delighted that they have a chance to control the mission commander. The Soviets are nothing if not organized. Knowing that Chad would be commanding the mission, they brought his brother, a Russian Orthodox priest, to Moscow in case they needed to put pressure on Chad to do their bidding. It turns out that Chad had been receiving large sums of money regularly from his brother, Ilarion, or so he was led to believe. They never met, supposedly because the brother was in exile and had to keep his location a secret. So, the Russians also can blackmail Chad by threatening to reveal that he’s been taking money from the Soviets for decades.
The Russians regularly talk to Svetlana in her native language which Chad understands. They say things to the cosmonaut that seem silly but are really meant for Chad who is listening and understands Russian. Later, the people in Moscow devise a way to talk to Chad when Michael and Svetlana are asleep. The Russians tell Chad that they expect him to do a favor or else his brother will suffer. Chad is ticked off but they do have his brother.
The Americans will land next to the Russian lunar rover which they will try to disable. The Russians, who listen in on all communications, are delighted because they want Chad to get the uranium rock that the rover found was radioactive. Once Svetlana figures out where they’ll be landing, she realizes that her space mates will probably do something bad to the Lunokhod. As a Soviet citizen, she may want to thwart that.
Chad and Svetlana – two Russians – land on the moon. No dummies, the Russians turn Lunokhod to where they think Bulldog (the lunar lander) will touch down. After Michael and the command module travel to the dark side of the moon, the Russians can directly and candidly talk to the moon walkers. I’m not sure how that works without US ground control overhearing it, but this is a work of extreme fiction.) Chad is instructed to pick up a rock that the rover has found to be uranium and say nothing to Houston. Chad’s brother says a few words to him and the Russians give a veiled threat that if Chad doesn’t get the rock, bad things will happen to the priest.
Chad goes down the ladder to the moon and does his assigned tasks. Svetlana will join him a few hours later for the photo op of the first woman on the moon. Svetlana doesn't like that plan so she shuts off the video camera that is recording the moon walk and she goes to the surface before she is supposed to. This upsets both Chad and the Russians who wonder what she’s up to. As it turns out, she doesn’t do much. She doesn’t trust Chad so she basically is keeping an eye on him. She also figures that she may never get back to the moon again so she wants to maximize her time on the surface,
The Russian lunar rover Lunokhod is sending video of the progress of the astronauts back to Moscow. Chad does a lot of geologic exploration and picks up lots of rock samples in addition to the uranium one. It’s almost time for Svetlana to descend to the surface so she goes back into the lunar module. The video is turned back on so that the world can see history being made.
President Nixon and Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin (a real person) narrate Svetlana’s descent to the moon. Svetlana is addressed as “Major'' by the ambassador, an instant two-rank promotion. She is surprised and happy.
Next, the two astronauts drop Luke’s body onto a crater, while back on earth a minister reads appropriate funeral prayers. Chad wanders too close to the crater's rim and almost falls in, but all ends up well after a couple of pages of tense description.
Besides being told what to do by the Russians, Chad also has orders from NASA to disable the Russian rover. He drops lunar dust on the vehicle’s solar panels, which will kill it’s cooling system and cause it to stop working. He then goes to cut vital cable at which point Svetlana pulls out her pistol, tells him to stop, and fires a warning shot. He wonders how the crazy commie got a pistol but decides that he doesn’t want to get shot so he walks away. A few minutes later he retrieves the wire cutter he had dropped and walks towards the rover to finish the job, Svetlana shoots his oxygen tank, leaving him with only enough oxygen to scramble back into the rover and its air. She joins him.
Back in Houston, the medical staff notice big spikes in the heart rate of the two moon walkers which they can’t explain.
Chad hides the rock. Svetlana peppers him with questions about how he learned Russian which he ignores.
Back in Houston, there is evidence that Chad was one of the last people to have access to the helicopter that was sabotaged and crashed and killed Tom, the initial mission commander. There also is some evidence that Chad was living way above his salary level.
Back in the lunar lander before takeoff, Moscow contacts Chad and tells him of a change of plans for the landing, threatening the life of his brother as pressure.
The lunar lander takes off and docks with the command module without incident. Svetlana is impressed with Chad’s skill as a space pilot. He may be an egomaniacal jerk, but he has mastered space travel technology. She’s also impressed with the quality of the American rocket and space hardware which is better than Russia’s.
The first item of business is to clean Bulldog, the lander, which is filthy with moon dust. They spend a lot of time vacuuming things so that dust doesn’t get into the command module. This is one aspect of space exploration that we don’t think about much. Svetlana initially resents being asked to vacuum but she relents and joins in. She figures that there are probably better times and places to stake out a feminist position than while orbiting the moon. She still has the pistol.
The crew releases Bulldog to crash onto the moon. The lunar lander did its job flawlessly.
The crew leaves lunar orbit and heads home. The description of that journey is really impressive, with a lot of technical detail made understandable and exciting.
Back on earth, the Harris County (Houston) sheriff’s office finished its investigation and found that Chad Miller is in fact of Russian heritage and has been receiving sizable monthly payments for years, ostensibly from his brother. The main problem with that theory is that his brother, Father Ilarion, is a penniless priest.
Kaz and his colleagues are on the USS New Orleans, a flat-topped amphibious assault ship which will pick up the astronauts. Since a cosmonaut is a member of the crew, Russia sent an observer to participate in the end of the mission. Kaz doesn't trust him; he looks like a KGB agent.
Just as the command module Pursuit is about to enter the atmosphere, Commander Chad declares an emergency and takes over the controls, altering the capsule’s course slightly so that it will land 400 miles short of its initial splashdown point. There happens to be a Russian ship in that neighborhood.
Once the crew of the New Orleans determines that the landing site has changed, Kaz and his colleagues take a helicopter to the new landing site. The Navy frogmen who will pick up the crew take another copter. The New Orleans changes course and heads to where the action will be.
Kaz is surprised that the KGB guy and the crew of the Russian ship that is with the New Orleans are not surprised at the change in course. It’s as if they expected it.
The Pursuit lands hard and tips over in the water, a not uncommon event. Usually big balloons inflate and right the capsule but this time that doesn’t work and the capsule remains tipped, much to the consternation of the crew. They decide to leave Pursuit and get on the handy-dandy inflatable raft, complete with a homing beacon, that is standard equipment on moon shots. Michael almost doesn’t make it onto the raft but Svetlana saves him while Chad is busy barfing in the rough seas.
Of course, the Russian submarine happens to surface now and sends a raft to get Svetlana. First, she needs to get the radioactive stone from Chad. She pulls out her gun (Bob’s Query: Will a water-logged pistol still shoot?). The Russian raft arrives with heavily armed frogmen who grab the crew and demand to have the rock. Chad indicates that what they want is back in the capsule so he and a Russian head over to it. In the capsule, Chad stabs his captor with a machete he happened to find. His victim reflexively stabs Chad. Now Svetlana, who had decided to join the boys in the capsule, shows up and looks for the stone with a Geiger counter. She finds the stone in Chad’s pocket and grabs it. Now Kaz shows up and tells Chad that they know about his Russian background. Kaz confronts Svetlana who shoots him in the shoulder before swimming back to the Russian boat.
Chad sees that his life is a mess, so he grabs a metal box of moon rocks and straps it on as he jumps into the ocean and drowns.
Despite his wound, Kaz is functional. The Russian that he thought was KGB is KGB. He tries to drown Kaz, who shoots him. Kaz then tries to swim after Svetlana who has the rock. She gets away
.Later, back in Houston, Kaz and Laura are relaxing at his house. Luke, who was killed by the Russians on the moon, gets a hero’s funeral as the first soldier to give his life in space for his country. Chad’s body is never found but he also gets a respectful send-off with the details of what happened buried. Russia and the US praise each other for the successful joint moon landing and all is well with the world.
Bob’s Take
I really enjoyed the book, perhaps because I was a space nut growing up. I read all of the <em>Tom Corbett, Space Cadet</em>, books before the term “space cadet” was used to describe people who behaved wackily. Speaking of space cadet, here I am at a tender age in Richmond with my model rocket collection.
— The book gives you lots of detail about exactly what happened during a moon mission. Some people may think it’s too detailed, but it was fine for me.
— The plot of the book is a bit of a stretch but it is fiction after all. Much of what happens is really over the top, but it’s fun. On the other hand, most of the technology in the book, including the Russian’s listening in on NASA’s communications with the astronauts, either did happen or was possible to do.
— The book captured the first American astronauts' lives pretty well. Most of the Mercury 7 astronauts – the ones that first orbited the earth in the 1960s - liked drinking, fast cars, and women, as did the characters in the book.
— After reading this, I thought back to how neat it was back in the 1960s and 1970s when the US was regularly launching rockets all over the place. I miss the big launches
— Author Chris Hadfield flew on three space missions and was the commander of the International Space Station. He also was Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM – the link between the astronauts and mission control) – for 25 other flights. He wrote this by himself. It is well-written. Besides being a space pilot, he can write.
One of the videos this week is David Bowie’s Space Oddity performed by Chris Hadfield on the International Space Station. Check it out.
