Product Description

For more than a century before 1957, scientists and adventurers dreamed about the exploration of space and designed rockets and vehicles to make it possible, but the real space age began on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite. Until then, America's space exploration had been entrusted to the military, but immediately following Sputnik, the United States began to plan for the first civilian space agency. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) was officially born on July 29, 1958."America in Space" is a visual history of NASA, from its early days as a pioneer in supersonic flight, through the first manned space missions of the 1960s, to the shuttle and international space station missions that are still underway. It also covers NASA's exploration of the Solar System using unmanned probes and the imagery from satellite telescopes like Hubble.In fall 2007, NASA begins to celebrate its 50th Anniversary and Abrams is privileged to publish the official visual history of its many achievements in manned and unmanned space travel. Written and edited by a team of experienced NASA staffers and illustrated with many unpublished and rare images from the voluminous NASA archives scattered across the country, "America in Space" offers an unparalleled view of the human need to explore unknown places.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58430 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

About the Author
America in Space is the work of many people. The main contributors to the project are Steven Dick, NASA Chief Historian; Bertram Ulrich, Curator, NASA Art Program; Constance Moore, NASA Visual Information Specialist and Robert Jacobs, NASA Media Services Director. Neil Armstrong was the first human to set foot on the Moon. Armstrong served as commander of Apollo 11, the first manned Moon-landing mission in 1969 and as command pilot of Gemini 8, the first manned docking mission of two spacecraft in 1966. He was born and raised in Ohio, where he lives today.

Customer Reviews

One small step, one big book of NASA's photographic history.
I found this book to be absolutely fascinating, coming from a typical `how did actually they do that?' engineers point of view I was in complete awe of the vast scale of the NASA moon landing programme which this book faithfully chronicles, ( in large A3'ish format ).

While reading this book I would frequently find myself thinking aloud `but to do that you would need a massive wind tunnel / launch pad / test range' only to turn the page and be presented with a huge photo of said wind tunnel / launch pad / test range with test pilots and engineers getting on with the task of making and testing the space craft.

Some of the other reviews criticise the over use of pictures of the test pilots and ground crew, but this misses the point, actually seeing the space programme evolve through the early chapters to the fully fledged exploration of space in later chapters was totally captivating.

There are tonnes of books out there showing what was happens when we make it in to space but few which shows the people and the assiduous step by step process from those early beginnings to the first moon landing and beyond to the space shuttle and the international space station.

I would defiantly recommend this book, not just to engineers, but to any body interested in the details of how NASA solved the myriad of problems associated with space travel and the people involved. Top class.

Slightly disappointed


I purchased this book with a gift token I received from a friend. I was hoping for a "definitive" pictorial account of Nasa's first fifty years in space. It does have a comprehensive collection of images with many full page colour reproductions of original material.
BUT
Far too many of the pictures are of NASA personnel, Astronauts, engineers flight controllers etc. After a while one lantern jawed,crew cut guy in a flight suit looks like any other! If you are looking for a NASA "family album" then fine but to my taste there's simply too many pretty mundane portrait type pictures at the expense of "the bigger picture" of space exploration. For that reason I cannot recommend its purchase since there are better books out there on the subject.

Poor
I completely agree with Grober, there are just too many pictures of personnel and very few of Nasa in space.