We Came in Peace for All Mankind: The Untold Story of the Apollo 11 Silicon Disc (Special 40th Anniversary of Landing) Hardcover – January 15, 2008

Great overview and details of the first true information artifact left on the moon. Includes images of each message that was on the disc.

The story of the least-remembered memento Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin left on the Moon in 1969.Almost forty years ago we were glued to our tvs watching NASA's greatest show yet: humans encased in silver space suits cavorting on the Moon, our one & only orbital companion which has inspired us to lunacy & romance & poetry for countless generations. No, Virginia, there is no Man in the Moon, only astronauts upon it.Above all other images we remember the one of Earthrise as our big blue marble hove into view beyond the curve of Moon's horizon. Then there was the planting of a floppy Stars & Stripes & the reading of the plaque below. What none of us remember, & the astronauts themselves almost forgot to do, was the placing of a cloth pouch in which reposed elegant powder compact-like cases of various materials which protected a silicon disc the size of a half-dollar, etched with goodwill messages from nation states around our world.When I opened Tahir Rahman's beautiful coffee-table tome called WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND: The Untold Story of the Apollo 11 Silicon Disc, I was hooked from page one, & not only by the multitude of glorious color photos.The silicon disc was intended to tell who/whatever opens it upon landing on the Moon how diverse the inhabitants of the planet they see on the horizon are, & hopefully dissuade the reader/s from violent invasion. What we left was an engraved invitation to come visit, & WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND is your invitation, too.In the beginning there are awe-inspiring photos of Earthrise, a footprint & the silicon disc coupled with quips & quotes from Moonwalkers & prime ministers, & then Tahir Rahman's story starts: "Neil Armstrong peered through one of the small windows of the lunar module, Eagle..." He was preparing to step outside his safety zone into the unknown. Six-hundred-million people watched him, & "we laughed & cried & lit up cigars." It was a different time, folks, B4PC = personal computers & political correctness both! "Our world was united in a unique way while the astronauts walked on a surreal world for the first time in {our] history."I enjoyed learning of the planning committee's conclusions, especially #2: "The activities should be in good taste from a world perspective." Naturally, like Columbus did, we thought to plant a flag, & a whole host of them was packed on board to be brought back as souvenirs for important supporters. Then someone thought up the commemorative plaque & we see its genesis.Soon we're briefly meeting the Apollo 11 Crew, reading about how slivers of wood from the Orville brother's Kitty Hawk would be in the baggage. Some attention is devoted to how it was decided to use a US flag instead of another one, & how to make & hang such a flag in Moon's gravity-deficient atmosphere, as well as other Moonly scientific considerations.& then we get to NASA's invitation to world leaders to add their 2 cents, & while we wait for them to reply, we learn who made the silicon disc & how. It becomes quite evident that Sprague Electric Company had a nightmare of a deadline. Then we're on to launch preparations, & soon they're off to the Moon.The Library of Goodwill Messages makes up most of the rest of this volume: who & how the leaders of the world responded. I like that there's a map to each nation's reply so we can learn where on Earth they are/were. Plus a whole slew of Americans who backed the endeavor. It all sounds so dry, until you read it & realize how much was etched in gold into that little disc.Tahir Rahman, a physician fascinated by the Apollo Program, was given a duplicate of the silicon disc by Neil Armstrong. What he found, upon magnification, on that little piece of plastic (sic!) so astonished him that he just had to investigate further, rousing NASA historians to dust off their memories & unearthing storage boxes in the warrens of the Library of Congress that had gathered decades of dust.WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND is a superb addition to your library. To be oohed & aahed over by all the generations of your family. Very well done!

I enjoyed this book as, instead of being too narrowly focused (as a story about one little object might sound at first), it tells the story of this tiny disc as just one symbolic element of the first mission to the lunar surface. Not just for the committed space-geek, this book does a good job of conveying some of the wonder of the first lunar landing mission, both in words and in beautiful full-page images. As a snapshot of the world of 1969, it is fascinating.The disc, intended as a symbolic gesture, turns out to tell many more stories than its original intention, and in many ways summarize the whole venture. As the book describes the rush to add last-minute messages to the disc, hurriedly collecting messages from world leaders, so we come to understand the tensions between science, engineering, PR and politics that were taking place in the busy runup to launch. Some arguments, such as whether to include religious wording to symbolic statements, sound very familiar to some current political debates.The political reasonings behind some of the messages, and also why some nations declined involvement, give an interesting insight into late-1960s global politics. It's very interesting to read all of the messages themselves as a reflection of the times. Some of the blandest statements come from the major powers on the world stage, with smaller countries such as Liberia, Guyana, the Ivory Coast, Trinidad and Tobago providing some of the most thought-provoking words as they decide how to claim their own little intellectual corner of the mission. The messages come from countries which in many cases no longer exist or have been renamed, from leaders long gone, long deposed and in many cases long discredited. Very few, such as Queen Elizabeth, are still around.Without any commentary, the end of the book is nevertheless perhaps the most powerful part. Giving a brief biography of each of the leaders whose words appear on the disc, in many cases we are treated to a rogue's gallery of dictators, coup winners, corrupt tyrants and those who went on to murky and inglorious ends. A good portion of the leaders are people who, today, we may view as the last names we'd want representing humankind in a message to the future. While aiming for a high purpose, the disc therefore also inadvertently summarizes what a messy and imperfect world we lived in in 1969. Perhaps, in doing so, it gives extra luster to the Apollo 11 mission itself, which managed to reach above its Cold War origins and achieve something for all humankind.A very interesting work, presented in beautiful form.

I was just 7 when men first set foot on the moon and I can still remember the excitement as my parents explained what was going on and tried to impart to me the significance of what I was witnessing on our old black and white TV. Until I read this book I had no idea that over 70 nations sent unique messages of goodwill to be left on the moon forever. Tahir has done a wonderful job in collecting these messages together, as well as giving us many rare and beautiful photographs which pictorially document that time almost 40 years ago. I can heartily recommend this book for anyone with an interest in the space programme. However, it is far more than merely another book about Apollo, Neil Armstrong etc; it gives us a rare insight into how other nations apart from America perceived the significance of this monumental effort and event. In the turbulent times of the late 1960s, it is heart-warming to learn that so many countries which might, in many ways, be at odds with one another, genuinely wished the best for the men who landed on the moon and wanted to feel a part of the whole enterprise. That is the true message of this book and is perhaps a lesson that nations might learn from today.