Never panic early by Fred Haise

Booklist (March 1, 2022 (Vol. 118, No. 13))

“Never panic early” is learned by military pilots to stay calm in moments of crisis. This advice served Haise well over the course of his 40-plus years career. Most famous as one of the three Apollo 13 astronauts and their aborted moon landing, he also worked as a test pilot in the Marine Corps and as a NASA test pilot, and he was a member of the four-­person test-pilot team to fly the first space shuttle, Enterprise. While at NASA, he served as CapCom for Apollo 14, was assigned to several backup crews, worked the closeout crew to prepare for Apollo 8 and 11, acted as a technical advisor on various projects, and even completed Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. He eventually went to work as an executive for Grumman Aerospace. This memoir eschews self-revelation in favor of a focus on the work. It’s dense with detail of the day-to-day reality of being a Marine pilot, engineer, and astronaut, filled with acronyms and technical jargon. It’s a down-to-Earth counterpoint to the typical dramatizations about the space race.

Publishers Weekly (January 24, 2022)

Haise recounts his career as an Apollo astronaut in this meticulous memoir. Born in 1933, Haise joined the Naval Aviation Cadet Program after college and determined to become an aviator upon completing his first flight lesson. After training as a fighter pilot, he obtained a degree in aeronautical engineering and, in 1959, joined the newly created NASA as a research pilot. Haise highlights his experiences at NASA, where he was selected as the backup lunar module commander for Apollo 8 and 11. He vividly shows how that training proved crucial when he was the lunar module commander on Apollo 13 in 1970: after an onboard explosion during the mission, he and his crewmates relied on their vessel’s life support systems while they looped around the moon and made a harrowing return to Earth. Haise’s passion for flying is unmistakable, though the abundance of dense and technical details about aircraft and spacecraft will likely leave more casual readers feeling lost. For those well versed in aeronautics, this is an illuminating personal history of NASA’s space program. Photos. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Recommended by Ms. Williams, Librarian

"Great autobiography from one of the pioneers of NASA. Writing is concise and to the point, but full of great information, technical and otherwise, on the training and lifestyle of astronauts."