Space Shuttle STS 1 - 5: The NASA Mission Reports: Apogee Books Space Series 16 [Paperback]

Robert Godwin (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001 | Series: Apogee Books Space Series

Chronicles all of the details of the space shuttle Columbia's first five flights.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The amount of detail is fantastic and for those interested in the Space Shuttle an essential buy..." -- Spaceflight, January 2002.

About the Author

Robert Godwin, Editor

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Collector's Guide Publishing Inc (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1896522696
• ISBN-13: 978-1896522692
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,283,914 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Addition to the Series, November 5, 2001

By 

John R. Keller (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Space Shuttle STS 1 - 5: The NASA Mission Reports: Apogee Books Space Series 16 (Paperback)

This book, released to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch, contains a great deal of information about the development test flights of the space shuttle and its first operational (non-test) flight. While some readers may not find this book as interesting as the Apollo Mission Reports that have been already been released by Robert Godwin and Apogee books, it does contain a lot of information about the shuttle, its crews and its payloads. The book also contains a lot of nice figures and photographs, especially on the first flight, as well as a CD that contains 700 color photographs and 2 ½ hours of crew press conferences.

The book opens with the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT), which were conducted approximately 4 ½ years before the first launch of the space shuttle, and provides some really interesting information about flying piggybacked airplanes. This was and is the method used to transport the space shuttle orbiter after launch. The next section of the book, which takes up about 40% of the book, covers the first flight of the shuttle. The rest of the book covers the three remaining test flights and the first operational shuttle flight, which had a crew of four.

Even though I work at the Johnson Space Center and have participated in some form or another in many shuttle launches, I found many parts of the book very interesting and informative. For example, it was interesting to see that George Abbey, the future administrator of the Johnson Space Center, dominated the questioning of the first crew's debriefing. There is also a lot of material on the various abort scenarios, which are absent in the press kits, which are released for the current missions. For me, one of the most interesting parts of the book was the charts that showed the crewmember's mission schedules (time-lines). These same figures/charts are still used today.

Some general information that might be useful.

1) These reports are just scanned-in documents from previously released NASA press kits, etc., In order to preserve the spirit of the original reports, all typographical and grammatical errors have NOT been fixed.

2) Proceeds from the book goes to "The Watch" an asteroid impact research project of the Space Frontier Foundation. In other words, Apogee Books is making very little off the sale of US government produced documents.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An incredible collection of NASA documents about STS 1-5, June 18, 2001

By 

Frank Fischer (Braunschweig, Deutschland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Space Shuttle STS 1 - 5: The NASA Mission Reports: Apogee Books Space Series 16 (Paperback)

For the book "Space Shuttle - STS Flights 1-5" from the "The NASA Mission Reports"-series Editor Robert Godwin collected all interesting documents about the first five Shuttle flighst from the NASA archives, such as: Press Kits, Pre Flight Mission Operation Reports, Post Flight Mission Operation Reports, Technical Crew Debriefings But the best (as always) is the included CD-Rom that features some NASA-Footage (like the film "An incredible flying machine") and even another book about the STS ("Shuttle News Reference Volume 1 & 2"). The book is as good as its price and it counts 464 pages filled with NASA documents that really are a treasure for all interested in the first 5 Shuttle flights. But why does Mr. Godwin always pick such horrible colors (this time: light green) in the background of the cover? It looks really bad in the background of the nice STS Photo and it doesn't make any sense because it isn't any kind of color-coding for themes like STS, Mercury, Apollo or something like that. So why don't leave it simply black? Mr. Godwins book should be read as an extention of Dennis R. Jenkins remarkable book about the history of the Shuttle "Space Shuttle - The history of the national Space Transportation System" because Godwins book just focuses on documents about STS 1-5. Again, for all people that are interested in technical documents about the first five Shuttle flights this is absolutly the right choice and it shouldn't be missing on your book shelf.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Space Shuttle STS Flights 1-5 The NASA Mission Reports, July 5, 2001

By 

Paul B (CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Space Shuttle STS 1 - 5: The NASA Mission Reports: Apogee Books Space Series 16 (Paperback)

Having read several of Mr Godwin's other NASA mission reports on the space program, I find this is another welcome book to the collection. The fact that there is a lot of information in this one book is a great asset for a 'armchair astronaut' like myself. The CDROM in this book (like the others, check out Apollo 11 vol 1 & 2) is worth the cost of the book. They are also a great teaching aide. I highly recommend this book to Student, Teacher and Space enthusiast.