Product Description

Project Mercury will offer a developmental resume of the first American manned spaceflight programme and its associated infrastructure, including accounts of space launch vehicles. The book highlights the differences in Redstone/Atlas technology, drawing similar comparisons between ballistic capsules and alternative types of spacecraft. The book also covers astronaut selection and training, as well as tracking systems, flight control, basic principles of spaceflight and detailed accounts of individual flights.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #292295 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 485 pages

Review
From the reviews:

"John Catchpolea (TM)s new account of this pioneering project is most welcome. Catchpolea (TM)s account is not so much a chronological history a ] as it is a description of the project and its various elements a" though of course there is a lot of historical material in it. a ] So all in all you get a lot for your money in these 485 pages a ] . this is a very good book a ] ." (David Maclennan, Liftoff, Issue 219, 2004)

"This book describes the first US manned space program in sufficient detail, using not only NASA sources but also alternative sources. He has gathered all the information from the diverse places, sorted it out for us and has produced a history in sufficient detail a ] . A number of appendices provide some useful additional information, including a ] a number of useful tables. a ] And it contains some quite historic photos which I have not seen before. An extremely useful book, definitely worth the money." (Jos Heyman, News Bulletin of the Astronautical Society of Western Australia, Vol. 27 (2), 2001)

"Ita (TM)s a good read for the space buff and certainly fills in a lot of interesting background a ] . The production quality is good, with clear printing, good illustrations some of which Ia (TM)ve never seen before and about the correct number of them to offset the text. a ] ita (TM)s quite easy to read and a ] it kept my attention pretty much to the end. a ] It does fill a gap by providing technical background, and some interesting asides a ] ." (John Davies, The Observatory, Vol. 122 (1167), 2002)

Customer Reviews

Mercury for the connoisseur
I had high hopes from this splendidly bound volume not least to learn new details about the Mercury programme. Most people know that Project Mercury was how America was going to put the first man in space but Yuri Gagarin saw to it that it turned into a catching up exercise.

The book starts with the first world war and labours on through the recent histories of most eastern countries as a backdrop to the Cold War and the reason for the space race. I expect some context here but this was overdone to the point of tedium. I can't be in a minority as a reader who already knows how the second world war turned out and how communism spread through Asia and Eastern Europe.

The book takes us on through the history of rocketry to the beginnings of Mercury including the evolution of the spacecraft and boosters and full accounts of each flight, manned and unmanned. However all this good stuff was diluted by constant schoolboy history references to such events as Vietnam, Kennedy and Cuba that I found myself skipping over.

The book was structured such that repetition of key events was unavoidable as they cropped up in different threads of the story (I lost count of how many times NACA became NASA). The style could have been enlivened by more contemporary personal accounts, especially from the design and engineering phases and the quality feel of the book was marred by quite a few shocking typos, even in bold headings, that got through the proof-reading net.

Having said all that, there were some good, detailed appendices about the experiments, official biographies, spacecraft dimensions etc. and they support my view that this is a book aimed at the space nut. As I count myself as a member of this group I will be moving on to this book's sister volume - Project Gemini.

Mercury projects the USA into the space race
I had high hopes from this splendidly bound volume not least to learn new details about the Mercury programme. Most people know that Project Mercury was how America was going to put the first man in space but Yuri Gagarin saw to it that it turned into a catching up exercise.

The book starts with the first world war and labours on through the recent histories of most eastern countries as a backdrop to the Cold War and the reason for the space race. I expect some context here but this was overdone to the point of tedium. I can't be in a minority as a reader who already knows how the second world war turned out and how communism spread through Asia and Eastern Europe.

The book takes us on through the history of rocketry to the beginnings of Mercury including the evolution of the spacecraft and boosters and full accounts of each flight, manned and unmanned. However all this good stuff was diluted by constant schoolboy history references to such events as Vietnam, Kennedy and Cuba that I found myself skipping over.

The book was structured such that repetition of key events was unavoidable as they cropped up in different threads of the story (I lost count of how many times NACA became NASA). The style could have been enlivened by more contemporary personal accounts, especially from the design and engineering phases and the quality feel of the book was marred by quite a few shocking typos, even in bold headings, that got through the proof-reading net.

Having said all that, there were some good, detailed appendices about the experiments, official biographies, spacecraft dimensions etc. and they support my view that this is a book aimed at the space nut. As I count myself as a member of this group I will be moving on to this book's sister volume - Project Gemini.