Liftoff; The Story of America's Adventure in Space

New York: Grove Press, 1988. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. James Dean. xi, [1], 288, [4] pages. Illustrated endpapers. Illustrations. Acronyms and key terms. Glossary. Spaceflight Log. Index. Name of previous owner in ink on half title page. The former astronaut traces America's ascent into space and the history of NASA, from the first faltering steps in 1960, to humankind's first small step on the moon's surface, to the 1986 Challenger tragedy. Michael Collins (born October 31, 1930) (major general, USAF) is an American former astronaut and test pilot. Selected as part of the third group of fourteen astronauts in 1963, he flew into space twice. His first spaceflight was on Gemini 10, in which he and Command Pilot John Young performed orbital rendezvous with two different spacecraft and undertook two extravehicular activities (EVAs, also known as spacewalks). His second spaceflight was as the Command Module Pilot for Apollo 11. While he stayed in orbit around the Moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left in the Apollo Lunar Module to make the first crewed landing on its surface. He is one of 24 people to have flown to the Moon. Collins was the seventeenth American in space, the fourth person (and third American) to perform a spacewalk, and the first person to have performed more than one spacewalk. Derived from a Kirkus review: Lively, intelligent, richly detailed history of the US space program by an astronaut who made it to the moon. Collins begins his account just after WW II, when the RAND report called for an ""Experimental World. Circling Spaceship."" A decade later, this visionary machine came into being as the Mercury space capsule. This was just a preamble to the real adventure, the race to the moon, which spawned the Gemini and Apollo programs and their offspring, Skylab and the Space Shuttle. Collins recounts NASA's many engineering coups (how to deal with radiation, acceleration, weightlessness, meteor strikes). There are memories of Collins' own flights, including his stint as commander of the Apollo 11 Lunar Orbitor. He wraps it up with a report on NASA's low post-Challenger morale and a call for a national Mars program. This splendid volume also answers many of those weird questions that nag armchair astronauts in the middle of the nigh. A treat for scholars and thrill-seekers.