The Dream of Spaceflight: Essays on the Near Edge of Infinity [Hardcover]

Wyn Wachhorst (Author), Buzz Aldrin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2000

In the tradition of Loren Eiseley, Arthur Koestler, and Lewis Thomas, Wynn Wachhorst is a great rarity: an author of truly lyrical essays on science and technology. In his hands, the drive to explore space is a mirror of humanity's profoundest aspirations and noblest urges.Each of the book's four essays is a montage of images and reflections on the dream of spaceflight and its historical meaning. The opening essay, a survey of major figures from Johannes Kepler to Werner von Braun, sees in the rise of spaceflight a metaphor of modern history as a recurrent story of transformation and rebirth. The second essay recalls the romantic vision of the decades prior to Sputnik, and sets our own nostalgia for those days against that era's nostalgia for the future. The third essay looks at the moon landing as the signature event of our century—the one that our descendants, a thousand years from now, will see as our greatest achievement—and the fourth returns to the themes of transformation and rebirth, offering spaceflight as a cure for the withered capacity for wonder that afflicts the postmodern mind.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Will we walk on distant planets? Terrestrial problems may have regained center stage in our awareness, but the mythic and poetic possibilities unearthed by the space programs of the 20th century have changed us forever. Historian Wyn Wachhorst captures the essence of our birth as an interstellar species in The Dream of Spaceflight, a collection of five essays spanning 500 years of scientific and technological achievement. The marriage of curiosity and hard work that drove heroes like Johannes Kepler, Wernher von Braun, and the Apollo astronauts (one of whom, Buzz Aldrin, wrote the foreword to this collection) to conceive, develop, and implement the knowledge and machinery of space travel comes alive in Wachhorst's evocative prose. The subtitle of the second piece, "Nostalgia for a Bygone Future," speaks volumes about the thoughtfulness and creative energy the author devotes to his craft. Wachhorst knows why we cared so deeply about the space program during its heroic phase. And he explains our curious ambivalence now that human involvement is restricted to mission control and orbital flights perceived as not much different from extended plane rides. The reader comes away from The Dream of Spaceflight freshly inspired--if a few U.S. senators read this, NASA will get all the funding it needs. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

"Spaceflight is a spiritual quest in the broadest sense, one promising a revitalization of humanity." Wachhorst's brief, lyrical essays trace an enraptured and sometimes informative triad of historical trajectories; each of his five chapters covers space travel as idea and imagination (a strand in the history of science fiction); space travel as scientific accomplishment (part of the history of technology); and space travel as a motif in Wachhorst's own life and mind (a kind of autobiography). Moving from the 1500s to the year 2000, Wachhorst covers the planetary voyages of 17th-century proto-SF; the cash-strapped early rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard; 1940s architect and artist Chesley Bonnestell, who painted vivid, realistic space flights and planetary surfaces; the film Destination Moon, on which Bonnestell collaborated with producer George Pal and Robert A. Heinlein; and, for most of the book's last half, the space program itself. At the time, the Apollo program met with both admiration and deprecation. Wachhorst wants to exult it anew, and his final agenda is philosophical and polemical, as well as literary. He believes that human beings should, can and will travel back to the planets or the stars in order to realize our higher nature, and that to abandon space travel would represent an ultimate "failure of nerve." Wachhorst's prose can be as wondrously compact as a moon rockAor as glowingly gaseous as the Crab Nebula; readers who already share his enthusiasms may wish he had given more space to facts, descriptions and arguments, while those who remain of two minds about the final frontier may learn moreAand find more sheer wonderAin Carl Sagan's writings. Agents, Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 225 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1st edition (May 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465090575
• ISBN-13: 978-0465090570
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,498,532 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review of The Dream of Spaceflight, May 3, 2000

By 

Michelle Gillett - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dream of Spaceflight: Essays on the Near Edge of Infinity (Hardcover)

The beautiful prose in Wyn Wachhorst's The Dream of Spaceflight : Essays on the Near Edge of Infinity, led me to a greater understanding of space exploration and invited me to meditate with the author on the deeper meanings waiting for us if we open ourselves to the mysteries of the universe. Reading this book reminded me of how I felt when I first read Chet Raymo's The Soul of the Night: that I was being taken on a journey to new places with a trustworthy guide. I love the way Wachhorst, like Raymo, looks at science through the lens of poetry. Throughout the essays in his book, whether he's writing about the history of spaceflight and the evolution of Western culture, philosophical concerns related to space exploration, or the workings of the human psyche, Wachhorst made me aware of how important it is not to lose the capacity for wonder and for the human race to keep dreaming of reaching the stars. As he focuses on what it means to explore other worlds, Wachhorst never loses sight of the inner, subjective meaning inherent in all our undertakings. The personal narrative that Wachhorst weaves through the book connects those inner and outer realities and celebrates a world that is infinite. These are essays I will return to often for their poetry, their intelligence, and their wisdom.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wachhorst's magic realized, September 20, 2000

By 

D. E. Phillips (Maryville, Missouri USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dream of Spaceflight: Essays on the Near Edge of Infinity (Hardcover)

If every politician in Washington had read this book we would not only have saved the Pluto-Kuiper Express mission but might well be revitalizing our whole space effort in the direction of actual exploration. Wachhorst gets beyond the nuts and bolts and tired histories to the real meaning of spaceflight-what it feels like to dream the dream. My wife and I are avid readers, and this is simply the best non-fiction writing we have ever encountered.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Dream of Space Flight, September 7, 2000

By 

R Harvey Dye (Phoenix, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dream of Spaceflight: Essays on the Near Edge of Infinity (Hardcover)

I wish I could afford a full-page ad in the New York Times to tell the world about this book. It should be read not only by everyone committed to the exploration of space, but by anyone with the capacity to appreciate lyrical prose and profound insight. This is not just for space buffs, but for every person who has ever looked into the night sky and felt a visceral surge of wonder and a longing to know. I have to believe that if this book were made known to everyone in the English-speaking world, there would be literally millions who would feel it was one of the ten best books they had ever read. Pick it up and read just one page--any page in the book--and you'll be compelled to read the rest.