![]() The author ends with an optimistic review of today’s programs, many led by entrepreneurs spending their own money. Yet, in a catastrophic “failure of imagination,” that is what happened. No one predicted that America would junk Apollos’ superb infrastructure and spacecraft, including what is still the world’s most powerful rocket, the Saturn V. He includes mishaps that marred successful programs, including several during Apollo, but readers will agree with him that the greatest disaster followed its triumph. Pyle has done his homework, delivering informed accounts of the reasons, political and technical, behind each failure. Dwarfing these was the Soviet effort to beat America to the moon, which ended in a catastrophic series of explosions, malfunctions, and deaths. The Air Force spent millions on an early space shuttle, the Dyna-Soar (cancelled in 1963), and space station (cancelled in 1969). ![]() to fund Project Horizon, a massive military moon base. ![]() After World War II, more elaborate plans did not convince the U.S. ![]() The Nazis built the first space rocket, the V2, but not a 100-ton rocket plane designed to cross the Atlantic and bomb America-although a talented engineer submitted plans. The Apollo program and the international space station succeeded, but flops far outnumbered them, writes science journalist Pyle ( Curiosity: An Inside Look at the Mars Rover Mission and the People Who Made It Happen, 2014, etc.) in this delightful collection. “On the cusp of a new space age, with a seemingly limitless opportunity for both robotic and human engagement in space,” an expert surveys many of the manned space programs that failed spectacularly, fizzled, or never left the drawing board. ![]()
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