Another title for this book could have been Reentry: SpaceX vs. the World. Not that there is anything wrong with the actual subtitle, but SpaceX vs. the World captures the essence of this book perfectly. How did a scrappy rocket company conquer space in a manner the world has never witnessed before?

Veteran space journalist Eric Berger tells the remarkable story of how SpaceX became the most exciting space company on Earth. Berger’s previous book, Liftoff, starts with Elon Musk’s founding of SpaceX in 2002 and ends with the first successful launch of the company’s diminutive Falcon 1 rocket in September 2008. Reentry begins just a few months later. It’s November 2008, and SpaceX is conducting a full-duration test firing of the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage. Despite several notices by SpaceX in local media, the thunderous Falcon 9 test startled the residents of nearby McGregor, Texas. This sets the tone for the book, as it wouldn’t be the last time that SpaceX would be a disrupting force.

Berger, who is also the senior space editor at Ars Technica, is among the most active space writers working today. He wrote Reentry not as a Musk book but as a book about the company itself. This makes for a book filled with many colorful stories from SpaceX lore. Examples include Capricorn One, The Great LOX Boil-Off of 2013, and Hells Bells. Even if you’re an “Occupy Mars” T-shirt wearing SpaceX fan, you will learn a lot from this book.

Berger, most likely, is one of these fans. He is very passionate about SpaceX and is often critical of the company’s rivals. If you work for a SpaceX competitor, chances are you won’t enjoy Reentry. For example, he concludes that Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s “plump and pugnacious” former space chief, “seems like he sucks.” Berger also describes the space business before SpaceX as “stodgy and stale.” Other times, he is a bit softer on SpaceX’s competitors. Berger is not confident in Blue Origin, but at the same time, he wants the company to succeed. He notes that “whatever you may think about Bezos, his passion for space and belief in off-world settlement is genuine.”

Throughout Reentry, a pattern develops with each new SpaceX project. Musk would announce an incredibly ambitious program that has never been done before. He wanted to redesign early versions of Falcon 9 into a reusable rocket by including such innovations as landing legs, grid fins, and propellant densification. He wanted to build a satellite internet constellation known as Starlink. Ultimately, he wants to build the largest rocket in history, Starship, in order to realize SpaceX’s long-term vision of building a city on Mars.

With each Musk announcement, SpaceX would face criticism and pushback from many different entities. Legacy aerospace companies didn’t think Musk’s claims about rocket reusability were possible, and they didn’t change how they built their own launch vehicles. They didn’t think SpaceX would beat them in launching NASA astronauts to the International Space Station following the retirement of the space shuttle. Members of Congress who led states where SpaceX rivals did business were equally dismissive. Many astronauts from NASA’s glory years weren’t pleased with the new way of doing space in the 21st century. The mainstream media were quick to ridicule any explosion in a SpaceX rocket test as a sign of incompetence. To be fair to these critics, no private rocket company before SpaceX ever delivered what it promised.

Nevertheless, this pattern went on for many years. SpaceX would launch rockets and achieve impressive milestones at an increasingly faster rate, while rivals continued to ignore Musk’s claims and took little action. Eventually, Berger writes that “these competitors fail to recognize reality until it is too late, before finally scrambling to emulate Musk.” The David vs. Goliath story that characterized Liftoff turns into a David becomes Goliath tale in Reentry. Berger, very accurately, refers to today’s SpaceX as a steamroller.

The current launch industry is a ridiculously lopsided affair in favor of SpaceX. For instance, during “one stretch, from the end of 2022 into the first half of 2023, SpaceX launched more than fifty rockets between United Launch Alliance flights.” Russia’s once proud space program also didn’t account for SpaceX’s meteoric rise, claiming in 2016 that “the economic feasibility of reusable launch systems is not obvious.” Then, there’s the Europeans, who, as Berger points out, designed a conventional expendable booster with the Ariane 6 instead of a reusable system like Falcon 9.

Keeping the SpaceX steamroller operating requires lots of really dedicated individuals. Dedicated, as in working extremely long hours. After all, going to Mars won’t be easy. This arrangement has worked wonders for the company, as “SpaceX builds some of the very best products in the space industry, faster and at far lower prices than its competitors.” At the same time, working very long hours to achieve such impressive results has taken a toll on many employees. Several people interviewed in the book are no longer with the company.

Despite working much faster than the rest of the space industry, SpaceX still often misses its very aggressive deadlines. In the book, this is known as the “green lights to Malibu” philosophy. Theoretically, someone could drive from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, CA to Malibu in just thirty minutes. All one has to do is drive well over the speed limit and catch all the green lights. In other words, SpaceX timelines assume zero red lights or traffic. In any case, the SpaceX steamroller is barreling towards Mars with its foot firmly on the accelerator. Following a 2016 Musk speech on SpaceX’s Mars plan, Berger described the speech as either mad, brilliant, or both. Today, Berger leans more on the side of brilliance.

Given all the publicity surrounding SpaceX today, Reentry is almost guaranteed to become a bestseller. It’s an absolutely phenomenal read. Musk tweeted “excitement guaranteed” before the inaugural flight of Starship, and that could also be applied to reading Reentry. This book is a case study in defeating your naysayers with style.

© 2024 Casey Suire

NSS index of over 400 book reviews

The beginning of this book states the obvious about space: “Living out there is uncomfortable at best, and deadly at worst. It is a hostile environment that will kill you if you make a mistake.” The astronaut lifestyle has plenty of challenges. There are the detrimental effects of microgravity, the hazards of radiation, lack of air, space sickness, cabin fever, and other serious dangers. What is a budding astronaut supposed to do?

First-time author Samuel Coniglio tackles this question with Creature Comforts in Space. As the title implies, what if astronauts could bring some of the pleasures and comforts of living on Earth to space? What if off-world explorers could take a relaxing hot shower, indulge in snacks like cookies or bacon, drink a fresh cup of coffee, or even enjoy a cocktail? What if astronauts had a gymnasium, clean and comfortable clothing, and a great bed? The challenges associated with such cosmic luxuries are addressed in this book.

Coniglio’s work is about the human factor in spaceflight, a topic that he believes needs more attention and research from space advocates. This isn’t a book about reusable rockets, advanced propulsion concepts, attitude control systems, or spacecraft power systems. Creature Comforts in Space is about space-based refrigerators, freezers, kitchens, air-conditioners, and even bathrooms. The book doesn’t argue in favor of any particular destination for human space settlement; it just argues that humans living in space should have the most enjoyable experience possible.

One nice thing about this book is that Coniglio is an active participant in the case for astronauts having comforts in space. He isn’t an author who simply talks about what other individuals have contributed to this field. Coniglio explains how he designed the Zero Gravity Cocktail Glass. In other sections of the book, he proposes more ideas for astronaut pleasure. For instance, he includes his concept for a space shower. Coniglio’s work experiences include a stint at McDonnell Douglas, where he was a technical writer involved in documenting payload processing systems for both the space shuttle and the International Space Station. During this period, he was also involved in the Delta Clipper program. In 2004, he photographed the X Prize winning flights of SpaceShipOne. Coniglio is also a former Vice President of the Space Tourism Society.

Furthermore, the acknowledgements section of the book is an all-star cast of space talent. In writing this book, Coniglio has worked with NASA’s Don Pettit, ESA’s Samantha Cristoforetti, and private astronaut Christopher Sembroski. Others include Frank White, author of The Overview Effect, and space activist Rick Tumlinson.

The chapter titled “Food and Drink” is quite interesting. Due to fluid shifts caused by microgravity, many astronauts reported changes in taste during spaceflight. For this reason, many space travelers and their swollen tongues enjoy spicy foods while in orbit. Bread is prohibited in space due to the problem of floating crumbs that could damage equipment. Tortillas are used instead. In 2019, astronauts did bake chocolate chip cookies on the International Space Station. However, the station crew didn’t actually eat the cookies. As with bread, the cookie crumbs would have gone everywhere inside the station. Coniglio notes that more work is needed to design an oven that works in space.

Other innovative ideas include constructing single person spacecraft (SPS) in place of bulky spacesuits, using a “water wall” as a radiation shield, and 3D printing astronaut clothing. In addition, there is an interesting discussion about artificial gravity spacecraft. Many of the issues associated with living in space could be eliminated if astronauts had gravity. Coniglio, however, notes that there are challenges with building such a system. To date, nobody has used artificial gravity in space yet.

Many of the creature comforts outlined in the book still need a solution. Like artificial gravity, many ideas show promise but still need additional research to become reality. Luckily for future space settlers, Coniglio and others are trying to figure out how to live in space without leaving behind the pleasures of home. A very important topic indeed as humans march forward in space.

© 2024 Casey Suire

NSS index of over 400 book reviews

In 1979, famed author Tom Wolfe published The Right Stuff. This seminal work pulled back the curtain on the American Mercury Program of the 1960s and gave readers a look into the minds of our first astronauts, the culture of military pilots, the pressure NASA administrators faced, and the desires of the U.S. Government at the height of the Cold War to win the Space Race against the Soviet Union. To say that The Right Stuff was deeply influential would be an understatement, and Wolfe’s incisive, biting, witty, and at times irreverent take on the whole affair both thrilled readers worldwide and changed journalism forever.

John Strausbaugh’s new book, The Wrong Stuff, tries to put the shoe on the other foot: this time the subject of the book is the fledgling Soviet space program. As the title suggests, the book is extremely negative in tone and hostile to the entire Soviet space effort, from top to bottom. The book portrays the Soviets as bumblers and fools, veering from catastrophe to disaster. Soviet space successes (including the first manned spaceflight, the first flight of a female Cosmonaut, and other missions) are treated as lucky breaks or close calls, and nothing more. While some may find this fun or amusing, it has little basis in reality. The Soviet space program was a monumental undertaking that, like the U.S. space program, demanded the service of the nation’s top engineers, manufacturers, pilots, etc. Many books, including Colin Burgess’s outstanding Soviets in Space, James Harford’s Korolev, William Burrough’s This New Ocean, and other works all portray the Soviet effort in a much more realistic manner and demonstrate what a massive and serious effort it was. Even Bryan Burrough’s Dragonfly, which is highly critical of the Russians and details more than a few life-threatening misadventures aboard the Mir Space Station, does not portray the Russians as clods the way that Strausbaugh does.

The book has a sneering and snide tone throughout that is largely unjustified. Events are portrayed in the worst possible light, and the Soviets come across as little better than the Keystone Cops. To be fair, the Soviets had more than their share of mishaps, and Strausbaugh has plenty of material to cover. The death of Vladimir Komarov aboard the disastrous Soyuz 1 mission, Alexi Leonov’s near death experience during the first-ever spacewalk during the Voskhod 2 mission, the Nedelin disaster (wherein a prototype intercontinental ballistic missile exploded on the pad, killing an entire engineering design team), the failed N-1 Moon rocket launches, are all fair game for discussion and analysis. The problem is that one could just as easily write a similar book, with a similar tone, about the U.S. space program. The loss of the Mercury capsule during Gus Grissom’s Liberty Bell 7 flight, the Apollo 1 fire that claimed the lives of three U.S. astronauts, Gene Cernan and Dick Gordon’s deeply troubled spacewalks on Gemini 9A and Gemini 11, respectively, as well as the Challenger and Columbia disasters could be described in the same manner and it would be just as unfair and disingenuous. Manned spaceflight is a serious and dangerous business, and even sixty years later we are still learning new things about how to do it safely.

Strausbaugh describes the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), wherein an American Apollo Command and Service module docked with a Soviet Soyuz craft in Earth orbit. As part of the program, American Astronauts trained in Russia at the Baikonur Cosmodrome and Soviet Cosmonauts trained at the Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers in the USA. Strausbaugh emphasizes that the Soviets were amazed at the abundance of goods and technology in the USA, whereas the Americans were shocked at how bare-bones life in the Soviet Union was and how crummy many of the Soviet facilities were. What Strausbaugh does not mention was how American astronauts saw some wisdom in how the Soyuz operated despite how different it was from NASA technology. Going further, during the Shuttle-Mir era years later, NASA discovered just how deep the Russian experience with space station operations was and how much they could (and did) learn from their new partners in space. These details significantly undermine the narrative Strausbaugh provides and, had they been included, would have shown things in a more honest light.

Tom Wolfe was able to get away with his unconventional writing style in The Right Stuff because it was clear to the reader that, and the end of the day, he admired and respected NASA, the astronauts, and their mission. Strausbaugh has no such admiration for the Soviet program and the people who built it, and it limits his perspective, his insights, and his writing significantly. Working under a brutal communist regime, and under extreme duress to rack up a string of historic space “firsts,” the Soviets pulled off one spectacular space mission after the next for years, kickstarting the American program in the process.

Overall, The Wrong Stuff is a deeply unserious work. You can read it, and you can even enjoy it, but beyond that you should take it with a grain of salt. You can say a lot of bad things about the Russians, their government, and their early space program during the Cold War, but you cannot say that they were dumb.

© 2024 Douglas G. Adler

NSS index of over 400 book reviews

The book From the Garage to Mars: Memoir of a Space Entrepreneur is not the usual book about space start-ups and their impact on the space industry. The author, Scott Tibbitts, uses this venue to educate the reader in how to grow a company with unique products. He discusses his company’s culture and policy, dwelling on how these affected the company’s growth. By doing so, it gives the reader a front row seat in the creation of StarSys Research through the company’s culture of “Fun” and “Family” with team building and having a gripe box, all of which made every employee feel inclusive and appreciated. Potential employees had to subscribe to the “Fun” part which was exemplified by everyone flying on the “Vomit Comet,” as well as the “Family” part, especially when all had to come together to suffer personnel losses.

Scott Tibbits, an outdoor enthusiast and nuclear engineer, started the company in 1986 in Boulder, CO, after inventing a motor actuator from $7.00 in hardware store parts and wax. From this humble beginning, he takes the reader through the growth of the company through manufacture of more than 3,500 devices that flew on 350 spacecraft. Along the way, the company grew through mergers with other space companies. Throughout the book, the author’s method was very personal, providing the reader to life lessons that both helped and harmed the company’s growth. The reader revels in the joy of new product development as well as the uncompromising low that eventually forced him from the CEO position in the company. The book is replete with sidebar explanations, including technical explanations, financial nomenclature, and personal anecdotes. Readers will be happy to be along for the ride and personally feel all the highs and lows as if they were a part of the company.

The book goes into detail of the company’s thermal actuator technology that was used to open, close, deploy and rotate various parts on a spacecraft, like a lens cap would do on a camera. The company had 27 motors on the Mars Spirit which powered the rover as well as other instruments on board. As part of the “Fun” culture the company etched their logo onto the rover. They were ecstatic to see it on the first pictures sent back from Mars.

However, the company grew too fast and Scott Tibbitts kept a firm control as CEO. This was a positive aspect when the company was small and had a small number of parts in their catalogue. As NASA and other space manufacturers looked to StarSys for innovation in other parts, including motors, the staff increased to almost 200 employees. Cracks began to appear as they did not price their products to achieve the optimum returns. In addition they were relying on the profits from some of the products to fund the development of others since payment could sometimes take up to six months to be received. They were strong on paper, but not financially.

When a $1 million part manufactured to fly on a NASA mission to Mars failed, the company had to scramble to produce a replacement part in time. They had to borrow the money from other product lines, but it was not enough. The CEO wavered between taking out a $6 million bank loan or finding investors to shore up the company. They borrowed the bank funds, but soon found they were unable to pay the first installment of $1 million. Unbeknownst to the CEO, an employee was working behind his back with the EO of another space manufacturing company, SpaceDev, to force Tibbits out and merge the two companies. After an infusion of cash from family and friends that staved off the bank covenants, Tibbitts finally acquiesced, and in 2006 SpaceSys was acquired by SpaceDev. The new company was renamed Sierra Nevada Space Systems and Tibbitts was out as CEO. All the drama took its toll on him. He took several years to recuperate and then started companies to counsel new entrepreneurs in the ups and downs of company ownership and growth.

This reviewer recommends From the Garage to Mars: Memoir of a Space Entrepreneur to National Space Society members for several reasons. First, the book is well-written and engages the reader in all the parameters that are needed to create, produce and market a product for space going craft. Secondly, it is a good blueprint for would-be entrepreneurs in how to successfully navigate the ups and downs of the industry, whether it was the space industry or another non-related industry. As a former bank financial risk officer, the reviewer had empathy with the author’s enthusiastic and innocent approach to the growth of the business as well as feeling the angst as the company hit its low and the bottom fell out of the founder’s dream.

© 2024 Susan Raizer
NSS index of over 400 book reviews

America won its first space race with the USSR quite handily, coming from behind after Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin’s flight to put Americans on the Moon in less than a decade. Now, say the authors of this book, we are in a new space race with another power equally deserving of the name “evil empire,” and the stakes are just as high this time around. Whether America or China wins this space race is yet to be determined. Authors Greg Autry (who is NSS Vice President for Space Development) and Peter Navarro argue that “Space Race 2.0” is a race America can’t afford to lose. They are unapologetic in calling out the Chinese government as imperialist, expansionist, and authoritarian, and claiming that if China wins the current space race it will use the power that victory gives them to dominate the world, to the sorrow and detriment of freedom-loving people everywhere.

The authors begin with a survey of the many benefits we currently receive from space, services so intimately interwoven with our daily lives (weather and communications satellites, for example) that we barely notice them. They list the technological benefits already knocking at the door (drugs and other products manufactured in space), and the limitless wealth-generating resources that await the first nations to mine the Moon and asteroids. They then proceed to walk through the history of the United States in space before, during and after the first space race, reaching back as far as World War II. Each chapter ends with a “Lessons Learned” section pointing to the policies America needs to adopt in order to remain first in space.

All this is very well, but it covers ground that has been covered many times before in other books, material that most NSS readers know quite well. But with a title like “Red Moon Rising,” I think it’s fair to say that most readers would expect to learn more about the Chinese space efforts than about American space history. China’s space story is the one we’re much less familiar with. It’s a story that deserves more than just a “by the way” couple of chapters. I think the authors are absolutely right: so long as it remains a communist dictatorship, China supremacy in space is an existential threat to freedom. That being the case, we should read a lot more about what our geopolitical enemy has done, and what it plans to do. The balance of the book seems off.

As a history of how we got to where we are in space at this point, and an argument of why space is now an indispensable part of our economic life and worthy of further investment, this book is a good thumbnail overview for anyone unfamiliar with the subject. In fact, it’s a very good book to give to someone you want to educate about the importance of space to everyone’s future. But devoting so much of the book to these subjects, and so comparatively little to talking about what China has done and is doing to beat us in the second space race, makes its title more than a tiny bit misleading. The subtitle of the book is much more descriptive of its contents.

© 2024 Clifford R. McMurray
NSS index of over 400 book reviews

The author, Catherine (“Cady”) Coleman served in the Air Force as a chemist, retiring as a Colonel in 2009. She was selected by NASA to be an astronaut in 1992 and had a varied career there, retiring in 2016. Her NASA experiences include two space shuttle missions, STS 73 in 1995 and STS 93 in 1999 as well as a six month stay on the International Space station as part of Expeditions 26 and 27. She also served as Chief of Robotics for the Astronaut Office and was on an 11-day mission as an aquanaut on the NEEMO 7 mission.

Throughout her life, she has faced many challenges based on societal and professional challenges (being a woman in a predominantly male-oriented occupation), even from her own family. Her earliest recollection is that her father did not wake her up to view the landing of Apollo 11 in 1969 because he thought she would not be interested in it.

Growing up, she saw only male astronauts until 1978 when a class of astronauts first included women. One of these, Sally Ride, presented a lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where Cady was an undergraduate student majoring in chemistry and engineering, while also a member of the ROTC. For the first time, she saw women as astronauts and it sparked her interest. After graduation, she went on active duty, stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force base as a research chemist. However, she never lost the astronaut bug instilled in her by Sally Ride. She was not a likely NASA candidate because she was only in the Air Force for two years and was a scientist as well as working on her doctorate at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Nevertheless, she applied and was selected by NASA in 1992.

The book details how she overcame all roadblocks to achieve her goals. This began when she applied to MIT even though her peers did not think she would be accepted. Applying to NASA was a challenge because she had to get Air Force permission. Her NASA training brought her more challenges but she learned that she had a voice and that people would listen to her while at the same time help her become the best astronaut she could be. She admitted that she was a bit of a procrastinator; however she had a ‘community’ of support of friends, family and colleagues to keep her focused and support her in every way. She had willing colleagues to teach her to fly the T38 (she was not a pilot in the Air Force). She also studied intensely to make sure that she knew all the parameters of her missions. For her mission on STS 93 that deployed the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, not only did she learn how to deploy  the telescope, but immersed herself in learning about the science and history of x-ray astronomy.

Coupled with the strenuous learning curve she set for herself at NASA, she had the added responsibilities of being a wife and a mother. Her marriage was unusual in that her husband Josh Simpson could not relocate to Houston, TX as he was a glass artist with a business in Massachusetts. The marriage was long-distance, but her husband was fully supportive of her work at NASA. When she had her son, it was a constant struggle to raise him in two different states. In this, she relied on NASA colleagues and friends to help with baby-sitting and even flight arrangements. Her son went to schools in Houston when she was there, and in Massachusetts when she was on a mission or was away in training or at conferences for NASA.

She explained in the book that it was not only familial responsibilities that challenged her, but she had to convince NASA and her colleagues that she could handle all her responsibilities. In addition to these challenges, she had negative reactions from some colleagues, especially those of other nationalities, who felt there was no place for a woman in space. Through her performance and expertise, she was able to overcome these naysayers. In addition, she was successful in offering changes that made tasks easier and missions more successful, as well as being very supportive of girls and women pursuing their dreams.

This reviewer recommends Sharing Space to National Space Society members for several reasons. First, the book is well-written and engages the reader in what an astronaut, especially a female astronaut, has to face to be successful. Secondly, Cady Coleman had to perform her work while at the same time having family responsibilities. It was gratifying to learn how she relied on her ‘community’ to provide support as she went to other countries for training and to space to pursue her astronaut career. Third, this reviewer met Cady Coleman in 1999 and found her to be a warm, friendly and intelligent person.

© 2024 Susan Raizer
NSS index of over 400 book reviews

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham follows his previous work, Midnight in Chernobyl, another tragedy from 1986 that showed how misused technologies could permanently alter humanity. Like Chernobyl, which saw a Soviet nuclear reactor stressed to its crisis point by a series of misguided tests, the Space Shuttle program was being pushed from risky to riskier missions from 1985 to early 1986. Both tragedies, in a way, represented the technological and social culture of the decade in which everything had to be bigger and bigger – the hair, the shoulder pads, the spacecraft, the Space Shuttle, and the nuclear reactors. However, no one thought both stories would have similarities in how the Soviet Union and NASA’s management of the time conducted post-disaster cleanup.

If you’re not new to the story of the Challenger tragedy and how it was perpetuated by the culture of a space agency awash with hubris and obsessed with unrealistic timelines, this new Challenger book will not provide you with many new revelations. But the book is a riveting primer for those previously unfamiliar with the machinations behind the decision to launch Challenger on a brutally, unseasonably cold Florida morning and how NASA – which had been previously known as a historically “open” government agency – did its best to distance itself from the tragedy it caused and seemed embarrassed to admit it was even at fault. NASA’s “closed-mouth,” less-than-forthcoming behavior of the time recalled how the Soviet Union was reluctant to acknowledge the radioactive particulates contaminating parts of Scandinavian countries were due to its freshly exploded nuclear reactor. The Rogers Commission Report was a presidential commission and not one appointed by NASA, which should tell you something; the government even discerned that some outside counsel was required to investigate the tragedy objectively.

The culture of NASA was so distressingly “closed” post-accident that following the investigation, much of the Challenger debris was placed in a disused Cape Canaveral silo, where it was further destroyed by water and Florida snakes and wildlife. This is in alarming contrast to the aftermath of 2003’s STS-107 Columbia tragedy, where the remnants of the first orbital Space Shuttle were more tastefully laid to rest inside a private room at Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building, where families and researchers could visit to pay tribute, reflect, or learn from the debris. Tellingly, few photos can be located on NASA’s public photo server when typing in the search term “STS-51L.”

Higginbotham’s Challenger book does make linkages to the future Columbia disaster, which was also predicated by NASA’s inability to accept its technology wasn’t as robust as previously thought and an agency whose culture had slipped back into magical thinking. After all, former Shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane once remarked after his STS-27 Atlantis mission – one that suffered a similar foam strike that doomed Columbia – that NASA brass believed the return of his spacecraft showed how “robust the Thermal Protection System was,” not how ultimately fragile and vulnerable the orbiter was. The disparity in viewpoints between Mullane – a human being with a family who flew on the Shuttle – and NASA management should be alarming, but apparently, it wasn’t in 1988, only two years post-Challenger.

The infamous explosion of a Delta II rocket carrying the GPS IIR-1 satellite happened in 1997, eleven years after Challenger and during a markedly different decade in which “King of Pop” Michael Jackson was dethroned from the album charts by a little-known band from Seattle called Nirvana. This failure was caused by a crack in a solid rocket motor that reached critical mass 13 seconds into the flight. While thankfully this was an uncrewed launch, many neglected to think about the people trapped in a neighboring blockhouse post-accident – and how their lives could have been permanently altered by the large chunks of debris and solid rocket motor fuel crashing around their humble housing. One of these people was system administrator Dan Kovalchik. His most recent book, Days of Delta Thunder, starts detailing that fateful day and how he was trapped inside the blockhouse while numerous fires raged outside, filling his shelter with toxic fumes and smoke. Later, the reader discovers the blockhouse had been under safety waivers for six years; it was only during the post-accident investigation that this tidbit of news was widely discovered.

Kovalchik’s story has a cheerful ending, as he is still around, thankfully discussing it. But it does remind the reader that being a “space worker” – as glamorous as the job title sounds, with visions of wearing a hardhat around scores of beautiful rockets with Delta blue livery – is pretty dangerous stuff at times, and no launch is a guaranteed success until its payload is firmly in orbit. The book also pays tribute to Kovalchik’s career launching the Delta family of rockets, which was recently retired after 60+ years of heritage. It’s an illuminating and sometimes sobering look into the grandeur and terror of spaceflight and how sometimes all you have to show for post-launch is a melted automobile (this actually happened to Kovalchik, but if you’d like to know more, read the book).

While Challenger and the 1997 Delta II explosion were accidents that took place during different eras and within different corporate cultures, these new books remind us that no launch is ever “routine” or “safe,” words still bandied about today as we view high volumes of space launches on both sides of the country. In the words of Mullane from a 2021 blog post, “Has anybody reminded [Jeff] Bezos, [Richard] Branson and [Elon] Musk of that fact?  That would certainly be an interesting conversation, ‘Hey, boss.  Just thought you should know the rocket we built with all that money you gave us can still kill you.’  But it needs to be said…Space is hard.”

*****

Featured photo credit: “At Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the rotating service structure has pulled back to the prelaunch position, the shuttle Challenger sits at Launch Pad 39-A bathed in billion candlepower searchlights ready to embark on its fourth space mission, STS-41B, the 10th flight of the space shuttle. Photo Credit: NASA.” Out of respect for the Challenger families, I will not post photos of its final launch.

This article was previously published on Medium.com.

Emily Carney is a writer, space enthusiast, and creator of the This Space Available space blog, published since 2010. In January 2019, Emily’s This Space Available blog was incorporated into the National Space Society’s blog. The content of Emily’s blog can be accessed via the This Space Available blog category.

Note: The views expressed in This Space Available are those of the author and should not be considered as representing the positions or views of the National Space Society.

When it started in 1973, what became the Spacelab program was the first example of international partnership in space. It predated the European Space Agency (ESA), being one of the drivers that led to consolidation of existing European space organizations into ESA. During missions between 1983 and 1998, Spacelab hardware gave NASA and the world an orbiting science laboratory.

The Spacelab Story: Science Aboard the Shuttle tells the full Spacelab story from its inception in the early 1970s until its conclusion at the end of the 20th Century.

Author Ben Evans opens by exploring the origins of Spacelab and the pioneering role it played in international space cooperation. He reveals the turf fights that took place in defining the roles the participants would play. These included Johnson Space Center which led NASA’s manned space program, Marshall Spaceflight Center which became the Spacelab Program Office (over JSC objections), and the European partners that built the hardware and provided scientists for flights. These struggles ultimately defined processes used today in international programs, including Lunar Gateway.

He presents the different elements of the Spacelab program. This included the iconic manned habitat in the Shuttle payload bay most often associated with Spacelab, and the various unmanned science pallets which could also fly in the payload bay to perform important science experiments.

He next examines the difficult path to flight, revealing the difficulties involved in creating both the Spacelab hardware and the Shuttle itself. Neither had an easy path to first flight, and Evans shows how NASA finally launched the Shuttle and tested different elements of the Spacelab hardware during the first Shuttle flight.

The book’s heart consists of chapters that describe the 22 Shuttle missions which flew Spacelab elements and the science done during those missions. Spacelab supported a wide range of science during its many years of flight. This included life science, minerology, materials science, space science, astronomy, and earth science. Materials’ processing in microgravity environment was pioneered aboard Spacelab. The Tethered Satellite System was tested during Spacelab missions. Much of the early space medicine research was done by the program. Evans looks at all of these.

He also evaluates the program’s successes and failures. He looks at European expectations for the program and their disappointment at not being able to fly as many payload specialists as they had been led to expect when they signed on to it. He also shows the impact of the Challenger catastrophe on Spacelab. It led to delay of all subsequent Spacelab flights and cancellation of several planned missions. Like the Shuttle itself, Spacelab never delivered its full potential.

The Spacelab Story is as comprehensive a book as can be written in a one-volume work on Spacelab. It covers every mission and its accomplishments. More than that, the book explores the personalities involved—the people that flew and supported the missions. It explores the politics involved and the legacy of the program. It is simultaneously a story about science, people, and the promise of space. While a long read, it is rewarding.

© 2024 Mark Lardas

NSS index of over 400 book reviews

Last October, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft departed Earth. After a gravity assist from Mars in 2026, this robotic explorer is expected to reach its destination, the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche, in August 2029. Psyche is the latest mission in NASA’s Discovery program, a series of small and relatively inexpensive robotic space missions focused on exploring planets and small solar system bodies.

This book, produced by NASA’s History Division, details the first two decades of the Discovery program. Unlike big-budget Flagship-class space missions like Viking, Voyager, and Galileo, Discovery missions were conceived as a frequent and lower-cost way to do planetary science. Initially, the cost of each Discovery mission, excluding the launch vehicle, was limited to $150 million (in 1992 dollars). This was perfect for the “faster, better, cheaper” Goldin-era NASA of the 1990s. At one point, personnel in the program proclaimed, “We wanted to show that for the cost of a typical Hollywood movie, you can explore interplanetary space.” Eventually, however, setbacks with the Discovery program in the early 2000s, coupled with the much publicized failures of the non-Discovery Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander missions, resulted in changes that made future Discovery missions rise in cost.

In the book’s forward, the Discovery program is described as “the most important NASA robotic planetary spacecraft program you have never heard of—unless you are a space agency insider.” This assessment perfectly sums up the program. The book will teach you a lot about the Discovery program’s quest to unlock the secrets of our solar system. Even if you’re a die-hard NASA fan familiar with the Discovery missions, you’re likely to learn something new. There are plenty of behind-the-scenes stories by those involved in the program. This is a great thing, as the contributions of key people involved with the Discovery missions, such as Wesley Huntress and Tom Krimigis, are not very well known compared with those from other areas of space exploration. With this book, these relatively unknown figures get their due.

There are inconsistencies with how much coverage each Discovery mission gets in the book. Noticeably, the first three missions, Mars Pathfinder, NEAR Shoemaker, and Lunar Prospector, only get a few pages of attention. Many interesting facts from this trio of missions were not mentioned. For example, Mars Pathfinder’s Independence Day 1997 landing on the Red Planet was a massive Internet event. The mission had 566 million total Internet hits, including 47 million during one day. This incredible display of public admiration and support for the space program was not included in the book. Furthermore, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission was renamed NEAR Shoemaker following the death of famed geologist Gene Shoemaker. During the Apollo program, Shoemaker helped train the astronauts. Some of his ashes were sent to the Moon aboard Lunar Prospector. This story was also excluded from the book. Subsequent missions are covered in much greater detail: Stardust, Genesis, CONTOUR, MESSENGER, Deep Impact, Dawn, and Kepler.

Overall, the book is written in such a way that readers will feel like they’re working alongside the Discovery team. A wide range of emotions will be experienced. There will be stress and despair: “I hope the mission doesn’t get canceled.” “I hope we get these cost overruns under control.” “Will we be able to meet the next launch window?” “Why didn’t this piece of hardware work?” Also, there will be success and exhilaration: “Wow, those images are amazing!” “The samples have returned to Earth!” “What a great discovery we just made!” “This is a great team effort!” This is one of those space books that will make readers feel like they’re part of the action.

The origins of NASA’s Discovery Program can be traced back to 2007. Susan Niebur, a Discovery program scientist, won a grant to write the book. Sadly, she died in 2012, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript. Author David Brown, who previously wrote a book about the upcoming Europa Clipper mission, edited and completed Niebur’s work. He did a very commendable job. One nitpick: when someone is mentioned, there’s a habit of repeating their job title over and over again.

Since the book only covers the first twenty years of the Discovery program, more recent missions are not discussed. After the Kepler mission, the details of the GRAIL spacecraft are discussed, but the mission itself gets no coverage. InSight, Lucy, and Psyche are skipped completely. In 2021, two new Discovery missions, DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, were announced. By the time these two spacecraft reach Venus, it will be time for NASA to release a new book about the Discovery missions, this time covering the first forty years of the program. Hopefully, that book will be written and be as good as this one.

© 2024 Casey Suire

NSS index of over 400 book reviews

When people first told stories of space in moving pictures, music played a key role. Some soundtracks have invoked the profound within us, such as gazing upon the Earth and our Sun rising up from behind the Moon whenever we hear the opening of Richard Strauss’ tone poem, Also sprach Zarathustra, the iconic opening for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and inspiration for more to follow. For others, this may be the blaring horns of the Star Wars theme, evoking an interstellar epic. The former inspires awe and the latter, the thrill of contemporary mythology. This is what Carberry’s The Music of Space conveys: how space movies and TV ingrained themselves into our culture.

Chris Carberry, having written numerous articles about space and another book, Alcohol in Space: Past, Present and Future, is also the CEO of Explore Mars. His current book unveils an astounding history of science-fiction cinema and its music in particular. His purpose is to tell us about the composers and other influencers who have shaped the sounds of space-related film and TV. He will also educate the reader about the art of composing music to enhance the art.

The history begins with rocketry, such as Tsiolkovsky’s theory of multi-stage launches and Goddard’s experiments in liquid-fueled propulsion. Prior to the first science-fiction film there were musicals and opera. Hence these traditions influenced the musical scores of early sci-fi films. For instance, the 1936 film Things to Come, based on an H.G. Wells book, foresaw a future of societal collapse followed by a triumph of technology and a lunar mission. The composer, Arthur Bliss, strived to closely interweave his musical spectacle with the picture sequences. Carberry reveals the process, drama and the earlier musical influences upon the score, such as Tchaikovsky and Wagner. The author will similarly detail the back stories and creator interactions for numerous examples throughout the last century to the early 2000s.

In similar fashion, the following chapters chronologically reveal the influences and impacts of numerous films and then later, also TV. During the early 1930s, up to the 60s, composers often employed atonal instrumentation, minor keys and electronic music to convey the alien, whereas the more melodic and major keys accompanied the familiarity of humanity. Carberry offers us a primer on certain musical properties such as leitmotif, whereby a short, recurring musical phrase is thematically associated with a specific character, place, or concept. Star Wars illustrates a prime example: Whenever Luke uses the ‘force,’ the background music becomes the “Force” theme.

During the 60s and 70s, the music tends to be orchestral, although novel instrumentation also gets introduced. This is the beginning of Star Trek with its iconic ‘final frontier’ introducing a utopian exploration with the prime directive of respecting other cultures and also of breaking social barriers. But Carberry devotes the most coverage to Star Wars and its composer, John Williams, who became famous for numerous works. Star Wars has heavily influenced us culturally, such as whimsically celebrating May 4 as Star Wars Day.  Subtitled as: A Turning Point in Space Music, this chapter states: “audiences jolted to attention as the fortissimo brassy downbeat of an orchestra thundered,” as quoted by the author. The scores of the entire series and its spinoffs have influenced music well into the present day.

The final chapter is a refreshing change to the preceding details regarding the back story of music in space-related fiction. Instead, this section portrays how music becomes a necessary element when people live and work in space. Here is where the author describes in detail as to how astronaut Chris Hadfield covered David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” as well as Cady Coleman playing flute aboard the International Space Station. He also describes some of the physics and physiology related to performing in a micro-gravity environment.

However, Carberry could have developed more the possibility of music being a universal language used by other (so far theoretical) sentient species in the universe. His writing style is oft times colorful, but occasionally some biographic details overwhelm. The book includes extensive footnotes, index and some photos. However, given that the book is about sound, I wonder whether a supporting website with audio clips should be included.

For those who love all things space and music, this book can be a worthy addition to one’s library. Having not given much prior attention to soundtracks, I will certainly do so in future. As the quote in the foreword reminds us, people may forget what you have done, but will never forget how you made them feel. And who can forget the sound of a favorite musical score transporting us to a wondrous far beyond?

© 2024 Peter Spasov

NSS index of over 400 book reviews