Customer Reviews

The Space Shuttle (True Books: Space)

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I checked this book out from the local library for my son - he's excited by the space program, because I used to work in it. The book was fine for several pages, and then several glaring errors showed up in quick succession.

The "Mid-deck" crew living area is apparently inside the External Tank. (The mid-deck is beneath the flight deck. And the external tank falls off after a few minutes.)

The Solid Rocket Boosters are apparently fuel tanks. (They're not, they're full of solid propellant and fall off after just a couple of minutes of flight.)

The section that deals with launch implies that the External Tank (the big orange part) does not fall off. (It does fall off, after the Shuttle main engines shut down.)

There are others as well.

Fine, this is a book for children, and absolute rigor is not to be expected - but neither should big mistakes that are easily caught by someone even peripherally familiar with the Space Shuttle system be expected either. Even if she was not, the mistakes leave me with the impression that the author was careless. Frankly, I would have caught these errors before I joined the space program. But then I had an interest in the Space Shuttle - just as, I would expect, someone who was attempting to write a book about the Space Shuttle for a series called "True Books About Space."

Maybe we should rename the series "Kinda-sorta True Books about Space."