Space Shuttle: Dawn of an Era (Advances in the Astronautical Sciences Series, Pt.1) [Hardcover]

William F. Rector (Author), Paul Anthony Penzo (Author, Editor), American Astronautical Society (Corporate Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 948 pages
• Publisher: Univelt (June 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0877031118
• ISBN-13: 978-0877031116
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A Valuable Reference of the Early Shuttle Program, February 29, 2004

By 

Robert I. Hedges - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Space Shuttle: Dawn of an Era (Advances in the Astronautical Sciences Series, Pt.1) (Hardcover)

This book is a collection of papers taken from the 26th Annual Advances in the Astronautical Sciences Conference held Oct 29-Nov 1, 1979 in Los Angeles. Despite the claim that the book is 948 pages long, its printed length is actually 435 pages, which is still plenty hefty.

The conference from which the text of this book was taken occurred before the first flight of the shuttle 'Columbia', and is therefore greatly insightful into the early phases of shuttle planning, operations, and design. Needless to say, the program was wildly optimistic at the beginning, and this book reflects that misplaced optimism with papers presented on things like follow on STS derivatives, a 74 passenger shuttle variant (to ferry workers to all the work that would need to be done in space), and most fallacious of all, the concept of launch on demand, in which an orbiter could be launched with minutes notice. Also touted was the incredible economics of the shuttle which was supposed to reduce the cost per pound of orbited payload tenfold, when in reality, it has been more expensive than disposable boosters.

There is a great deal of technical information on the shuttle in the volume, accompanied by a very large number of excellent illustrations (for instance, external tank slosh baffles, and other hard to find photos and drawings), therefore, I highly recommend it for serious shuttle historians, but be forewarned that it is very heavy reading, and also contains numerous papers not related specifically to the shuttle on subjects as diverse as VAB reconfiguration, financial regulations pertaining to the operation of large platforms in space, and the excruciating "Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System," which delves into way more detail on the functional configuration of TDRSS satellites than anyone ever wanted to know.

I gave it four stars overall. The shuttle material was interesting and not commonly known, so that part of the book rated five stars, but the large quantity of non-shuttle information of dubious historical significance brought it to a four star overall rating. This is an excellent shuttle reference overall, just be prepared for quite a bit of extraneous or marginally applicable material.