You can purchase this book clicking here.

If you wish to purchase further titles already reviewed here, please return each time to SBB. Using the direct links available at our site is easier than searching by title, author, or ISBN number.

EDITORIAL INFORMATION

This history of Johnson Space Center (JSC) is a detailed chronicle of the U.S. space program with emphasis on humans in space and on the ground. It realistically balances the role of the highly visible astronaut with the mammouth supporting team who provide the nuts, bolts, and gas to keep the train on the track. It recognizes the early political and technical geniuses who had the vision and ability to create NASA and JSC and keep them expanding at a rapid pace. People like Jim Webb, who was unsurpassed in his ability to create political support and financing, and Bob Gilruth, his counterpart at the technical and operational level, were the real gems in the right place at the right time. They were the true progenitors of manned spaceflight.

(Extracted from the foreword, by Donald K. Slayton)

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Contents.

-Illustrations.

-Foreword. Donald K. Slayton.

-Preface and Acknowledgments.

-1- October 1957.
-2- The Commitment to Space.
-3- Houston-Texas-U.S.A.
-4- Human Dimensions.
-5- Gemini: On Managing Spaceflight.
-6- The NASA Family.
-7- Precious Human Cargo.
-8- A Contractual Relationship.
-9- The Flight of Apollo.
-10- "After Apollo, What Next?"
-11- Skylab to Shuttle.
-12- Lead Center.
-13- Space Business and JSC.
-14- Aspects of Shuttle Development.
-15- The Shuttle at Work.
-16- New Initiatives.
-17- Space Station Earth.

-Epilogue.

-MSC/JSC Directors.

-Reference Notes.

-Index.

-The NASA History Series.

OUR REVIEW

From its very beginnings, NASA has always willed the keeping of adequate documentary files able to describe in full detail the future of each and every one of its programs and research centers. But it is not necessary to go down to their vaults so as to see what the history of such and such department was. At the right time, the agency has published, in the NASA History Series collection, books that make the most important aspects happening during its existence available for the general public. Such is the case of this book, which is exclusively devoted to describing the history from within one of the most noteworthy centers of the NASA, the Johnson Space Center, the central office for all the American manned flights. Going through its pages is reviewing each one of the flights of its astronauts, the circumstances surrounding them, the motivations, pressures and achievements that one is able to mention about them.

The author takes us to the origins of JSC, when it was still called the Space Task Group, and later, when it came to be renamed as the Manned Spacecraft Center. He describes its initial organizative structure and its exponential growth due to the manned flights to the Moon, its latter realignment and its current responsibilities. As the late Slayton (for many years, the true visible head of the astronaut department) says at the Foreword, the book remarks the importance of the men, rather than the events. It is in them where we find the true nature of the center and its almost legendary image with respect to the world outside. It is in JSC where the astronauts are trained, and it also is in it, in Houston, where all the manned flights are controlled from. The health of JSC is then a symptom of the health of the manned missions, one of the most important flags which led the NASA to what it is nowadays.