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

Basing his work on virtually untapped NASA archives, T.A. Heppenheimer has produced the first two volumes of a definitive three-volume history of the space shuttle. In this first volume, Heppenheimer looks back at the shuttle's technical antecedents such as the X-15 rocket plane and rocket booster technologies, and illuminates the principal personalities involved in the space shuttle decision and their motivations. He traces NASA's evolving program goals, the technical calculations, political maneuvering, and fiscal constraints, and explains the myriad designs that preceded the shuttle concept. In closing, he looks in detail at the circumstances leading to the politically charged development decision of 1972.

(Extracted from the back cover).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

-Contents.

-Acknowledgments.

-Introduction.

-Abbreviations and Acronyms.

-1. Space Stations and Winged Rockets.

-The Collier's Series.
-Background to the Space Station.
-Winged Rockets. The Work of Eugen Sänger.
-The Navaho and the Main Line of American Liquid Rocketry.
-The X-15: An Airplane for Hypersonic Research.
-Lifting Bodies: Wingless Winged Rockets.
-Solid-Propellant Rockets: Inexpensive Boosters.
-Dyna-Soar: A Failure in Evolution.

-2. NASA's Uncertain Future.

-Technology Bypasses the Space Station.
-Apollo Applications: Prelude to a Space Station.
-Space Station Concepts of the 1960s.
-Early Studies of Low-Cost Reusable Space Flight.
-Two Leaders Emerge: Max Hunter and George Mueller.
-NASA and the Post-Apollo Future.

-3. Mars and Other Dream Worlds.

-Nuclear Rocket Engines.
-A New Administrator: Thomas Paine.
-Space Shuttle Studies Continue.
-Space Shuttle Policy: Opening Gambits.
-Paine Seeks a Space Station.
-Space Shuttles Receive New Attention.
-Space Task Group Members Prepare Plans.
-Agnew Leads a Push Toward Mars.

-4. Winter of Discontent.

-The Sixties.
-Mars: The Advance.
-Mars: The Retreat.
-The Turn of Congress.
-Paine Leaves NASA.

-5. Shuttle to the Forefront.

-The Air Force in Space.
-The Air Force and NASA.
-A New Shuttle Configuration.
-Station Fades: Shuttle Advances.
-The Space Shuttle Main Engine.

-6. Economics and the Shuttle.

-Why People Believed in Low-Cost Space Flight.
-The Shuttle Faces Questions.
-Change at NASA and the Bureau of the Budget.
-The Fall of the Two-Stage Fully-Reusable Shuttle.

-7. Aerospace Recession.

-The Boing 747.
-The Supersonic Transport (SST).
-The Lockheed L-1011.
-Aftermaths.

-8. A Shuttle to Fit the Budget.

-The Orbiter: Convergence to a Good Solution.
-The Booster: Confusion and Doubt.
-End Game in the Shuttle Debate.
-TAOS: A New Alternative.
-A Time to Decide.

9. Nixon's Decision.

-Nixon and Technology.
-Space Shuttle: The Last Moves.
-The Hinge of Decision.
-Loose Ends I: A Final Configuration.
-Loose Ends II: NERVA and Cape Canaveral.
-Awarding the Contracts.

-Bibliography.

-Index.
-The NASA History Series.