Like Undaunted Courage and D-Day, this is a tale of achieving the extraordinary against extraordinary odds.  As incredible as the "official" story of the space program is, the true, behind-the-scenes tale is more thrilling, more entertaining, and ultimately more ennobling.

    Now, using never-before-published quotes taken from his in-depth interviews with twenty-three of the twenty-four Apollo lunar astronauts, Chaikin and his collaborator, Victoria Kohl, have created an extraordinary account of the lunar missions. In Voices from the Moon the astronauts vividly recount their experiences in intimate detail; their distinct personalities and remarkably varied perspectives emerge from their candid and deeply personal reflections. Carefully assembled into a narrative that reflects the entire arc of the lunar journey, Voices from the Moon captures the magnificence of the Apollo program like no other book. Paired with their own words are 160 images taken from NASA's new high-resolution scans of the photos the astronauts took during the missions. Many of the photos, which are reproduced with stunning and unprecedented detail, have rarely-if ever-been seen by the general public. Voices from the Moon is an utterly unique chronicle of these defining moments in human history.

    . . . Roger Bilstein gracefully wends his way through a maze of technical documentation to reveal the important themes of this story. Rarely has such a nuts-and-bolts tale been so gracefully told."—Air University Review"Easily the best book of the NASA History Series. . . . Starting with the earliest rockets, Bilstein traces the development of the family of massive Saturn launch vehicles that carried the Apollo astronauts to the moon and boosted Skylab into orbit."—Technology and CultureA classic study of the development of the Saturn launch vehicle that took Americans to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s, Stages to Saturn is one of the finest official histories ever produced. The Saturn rocket was developed as a means of accomplishing President John F. Kennedy's goal for the United States to reach the moon before the end of the decade. Without the Saturn V rocket, with its capability of sending as payload the Apollo Command and Lunar Modules--along with support equipment and three astronauts--more than a quarter of a million miles from earth, Kennedy's goal would have been unrealizable. Stages to Saturn not only tells the important story of the research and development of the Saturn rockets and the people who designed them but also recounts the stirring exploits of their operations, from orbital missions around earth testing Apollo equipment to their journeys to the moon and back.  Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the development of space flight in America and the course of modern technology, this reprint edition includes a new preface by the author providing a 21st-century perspective on the historic importance of the Saturn project.Roger E. Bilstein is professor emeritus of history at the University of Houston, Clear Lake. Regarded as one of the nation’s premier aerospace historians, he is the author of six books, including Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts and Testing Aircraft, Exploring Space: An Illustrated History of NACA and NASA.

    But it was also a time of human drama, of moments less public but no less dramatic in the lives of those who made the golden age of space flight happen. These are the moments and the lives that Into That Silent Sea captures, a book that tells the intimate stories of the men and women, American and Russian, who made the space race their own and gave the era its compelling character. These pages chronicle a varied and riveting cavalcade of human stories, including a look at Yuri Gagarin’s harrowing childhood in war-ravaged Russia and Alan Shepard’s firm purchase on the American dream. It also examines the controversial career of cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, and the remarkable struggle and ultimate disappointment of her American counterparts. It tries to uncover the truth behind the allegations that shadowed Gus Grissom and Scott Carpenter and then allows the reader to share the heart-stopping suspense of Alexei Leonov’s near-fatal first space walk. Through dozens of interviews and access to Russian and American official documents and family records, the authors bring to life the experiences that shaped the lives of the first astronauts and cosmonauts and forever changed their world and ours.

    In this spirit, the team at NASA set about developing the Space Shuttle, arguably the most complex piece of machinery ever created. The world’s first reusable spacecraft, it launched like a rocket, landed like a glider, and carried out complicated missions in between.  Bold They Rise tells the story of the Space Shuttle through the personal experiences of the astronauts, engineers, and scientists who made it happen—in space and on the ground, from the days of research and design through the heroic accomplishments of the program to the tragic last minutes of the Challenger disaster. In the participants’ own voices, we learn what so few are privy to: what it was like to create a new form of spacecraft, to risk one’s life testing that craft, to float freely in the vacuum of space as a one-man satellite, to witness a friend’s death. A “guided tour” of the Shuttle—in historical, scientific, and personal terms—this book provides a fascinating, richly informed, and deeply personal view of a feat without parallel in the human story.

    But with the Challenger catastrophe in 1986, the whole Space Shuttle program came into question, as did NASA itself, so long an institution that was seemingly above reproach. Wheels Stop tells the stirring story of how, after the Challenger disaster, the Space Shuttle not only recovered but went on to perform its greatest missions. From the Return to Flight mission of STS-26 in 1988 to the last shuttle mission ever on STS-135 in 2011, Wheels Stop takes readers behind the scenes as the shuttle’s crews begin to mend Cold War tensions with the former Soviet Union, conduct vital research, deploy satellites, repair the Hubble Space Telescope, and assist in constructing the International Space Station. It also tells the heart-wrenching story of the Columbia tragedy and the loss of the magnificent STS-107 crew.As complex as the shuttle was, the people it carried into orbit were often more so—and this is their story, too. Close encounters with astronauts, flight controllers, and shuttle workers capture the human side of the Space Shuttle’s amazing journey—and invite readers along for the ride. Browse more spaceflight books at upinspace.org.Purchase the audio edition.

    on July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 rocket launched in the presence of more than a million spectators who had gathered to witness a truly historic event. It carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins to the last frontier of human imagination: the moon. Rocket Men is the thrilling story of the moon mission, and it restores the mystery and majesty to an event that may have become too familiar for most people to realize what a stunning achievement it represented in planning, technology, and execution. Through interviews, twenty-three thousand pages of NASA oral histories, and declassified CIA documents on the space race, Craig Nelson re-creates a vivid and detailed account of the Apollo 11 mission. From the quotidian to the scientific to the magical, readers are taken right into the cockpit with Aldrin and Armstrong and behind the scenes at Mission Control. Rocket Men is the story of a twentieth-century pilgrimage; a voyage into the unknown motivated by politics, faith, science, and wonder that changed the course of history.

    It is a book for those who were part of Apollo and want to recapture the experience and for those of a new generation who want to know how it was done. It is an opinion shared by many Apollo veterans. Republished in 2004 with a new Foreword by the authors.

    He moved to the then-sleepy village of Cocoa Beach, Florida, right outside Cape Canaveral, and began reporting on rockets that fizzled as often as they soared. In "Live from Cape Canaveral," Barbree, the only reporter who has covered every mission flown by astronauts, offers his unique perspective on the space program. He shares affectionate portraits of astronauts as well as some of his fellow journalists and tells some very funny behind-the-scenes stories, many involving astronaut pranks. Barbree also shows how much the space program and its press coverage have changed over time. Warm and perceptive, he reminds us just how thrilling the great moments of the space race were and why America fell in love with its heroic, sometimes larger-than-life astronauts.

    As a flight director in NASA’s Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race. He helped to launch Alan Shepard and John Glenn, then assumed the flight director’s role in the Gemini program, which he guided to fruition. With his teammates, he accepted the challenge to carry out President John F. Kennedy’s commitment to land a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s. Kranz recounts these thrilling historic events and offers new information about the famous flights. What appeared as nearly flawless missions to the Moon were, in fact, a series of hair-raising near misses. When the space technology failed, as it sometimes did, the controllers’ only recourse was to rely on their skills and those of their teammates. He reveals behind-the-scenes details to demonstrate the leadership, discipline, trust, and teamwork that made the space program a success. A fascinating firsthand account by a veteran mission controller of one of America’s greatest achievements, Failure is Not an Option reflects on what has happened to the space program and offers his own bold suggestions about what we ought to be doing in space now.

    Webb. The Man Who Ran the Moon explores a time when Webb and an elite group of charismatic business associates took control of America's Apollo moon project, sometimes with disturbing results. In 1967, NASA was rocked by disaster and Apollo was grounded. Webb was savaged in a Congressional investigation. Not just a matter of broken hardware, there were accusations of corruption at the heart of America's space effort. Some of Webb's political allies had been caught up in the biggest scandal ever to hit Washington prior to Watergate. The backwash unfairly tainted NASA's chief. By the time of the first triumphant lunar landing, Webb had resigned and his name had all but been forgotten. But he's the man who got us to the moon, and the power base he forged in the 1960s has kept NASA on a solid footing to this day. Washington insiders now acknowledge Webb as one of the greatest leaders in modern American history. No space boss since his time has wielded so much power and such a powerful story.

    The impressive result is this fascinating story--the first comprehensive account--of the space age. Here are the strategists and war planners; engineers and scientists; politicians and industrialists; astronauts and cosmonauts; science fiction writers and journalists; and plain, ordinary, unabashed dreamers who wanted to transcend gravity's shackles for the ultimate ride. The story is written from the perspective of a witness who was present at the beginning and who has seen the conclusion of the first space age and the start of the second.From the Hardcover edition.

    G. Lord was becoming a teenager in Southern California and her mother was dying of cancer, Lord's father-an archetypal, remote, rocket engineer- disappeared into his work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, building the space probes of the Mariner Mars 69 mission. Thirty years later, Lord found herself reporting on the JPL, triggering childhood memories and a desire to revisit her past as a way of understanding the ethos of rocket science. Astro Turf is the brilliant result of her journey of discovery.Remembering her pain at her father's absence, yet intrigued by what he did, Lord captures him on the page as she recalls her own youthful, eccentric fascination with science and space exploration. Into her family's saga she weaves the story of the legendary JPL- examining the complexities of its cultural history, from its start in 1936 to the triumphant Mars landings in 2004. She illuminates its founder, Frank Malina, whose brilliance in rocketry was shadowed by a flirtation with communism, driving him from the country even as we welcomed Wernher von Braun and his Nazi colleagues. Lord's own love of science fiction becomes a lens through which she views a profound cultural shift in the male-dominated world of space. And in pursuing the cause of her father's absence she stumbles on a hidden guilt, understanding "the anguish his proud silence caused both him and me, and how rooted that silence was in the culture of engineering."As in her acclaimed book Forever Barbie, which demystified an icon of feminine culture, Lord brings her penetrating insight to bear on a bastion of American masculinity, opening our eyes in unexpected and memorable ways.

    Armstrong become the first person to step on the surface of another heavenly body. Perhaps no words in human history became better known than those few he uttered at that historic moment. In a penetrating exploration of American hero worship, Hansen addresses the complex legacy of the First Man, as an astronaut and an individual.

    More than 3 billion miles from Earth, a small NASA spacecraft called New Horizons screamed past Pluto at more than 32,000 miles per hour, focusing its instruments on the long mysterious icy worlds of the Pluto system, and then, just as quickly, continued on its journey out into the beyond.Nothing like this has occurred in a generation--a raw exploration of new worlds unparalleled since NASA's Voyager missions to Uranus and Neptune--and nothing like it is planned to happen ever again. The photos that New Horizons sent back to Earth graced the front pages of newspapers on all 7 continents, and NASA's website for the mission received more than 2 billion hits in the days surrounding the flyby. At a time when so many think our most historic achievements are in the past, the most distant planetary exploration ever attempted not only succeeded but made history and captured the world's imagination.How did this happen? Chasing New Horizons is the story of the men and women behind the mission: of their decades-long commitment; of the political fights within and outside of NASA; of the sheer human ingenuity it took to design, build, and fly the mission; and of the plans for New Horizons' next encounter, 1 billion miles past Pluto. Told from the insider's perspective of Dr. Alan Stern--the man who led the mission--Chasing New Horizons is a riveting story of scientific discovery, and of how far humanity can go when people focused on a dream work together toward their incredible goal.