This one started when I was teaching at the King’s School in Canterbury. There had been a documentary the night before and a 6th former was telling us how this program  proved that the Moon landings had been faked. The climax of the argument, apparently, related to the limitations of computers at the time.

“You know that the computers in the 60s were not as powerful as the ones we find today in washing machines?”

“Yes, that’s true”.

“Well, there you have it, you couldn’t fly to the Moon with a computer like that…”

What flashed through my mind straight away, was the scene from the movie Apollo 13, where Jim Lovell’s mother was reassuring his wife and children by saying “if they could make a washing machine fly, my Jimmy could land it!”

So, I decided I was going to write a book “To the Moon by washing machine!”. Perhaps its just as well that the working title did not survive the publication process, but that was the intent.

The book is an explanation of the technology of the time and how the various components (Command and Service Modules, Lunar Module etc.) worked. It expanded from its original brief to include the ISS, Space Shuttle and prospects for interstellar travel.