Customer Reviews

This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age (Modern Library Paperbacks)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

An exhaustive and outstanding compendium that catalogues the entire space effort over the past fifty years with emphasis on both civilian and military ventures as well as manned and unmanned ventures. I have been reading about the space program for over 20 years and I was impressed with the amount of detail that the author was able to uncover. I also very much like the way he gave equal time to the oft-ignored gemini program and the equally ignored mariner and viking missions. In contrast to other reader reviews, I found his political commentary to be relatively fair. Overall, a great read but only one for those with a deep and genuine interest in all aspects of the subject. 700 pages of dense material. "Lost Moon" it is not.

Whew! I feel as if I've spent a significant chunk of my life reading this book! It's a sweeping history of the space program that delves deeply into the background and circumstances, so much so that it's not till the halfway point of the book that it gets to Gagarin, Shepard, and the first manned space flights.

The first part is actually the strongest, covering in detail what went before (going clear back to Daedalus!), particularly the contributions of Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, Oberth, and the German V-2 team.

Even when it does get to what we think of as the space program proper, technogeeks may be disappointed because it's short on technical detail but but long on the individuals and circumstances responsible for the rockets: not what the Saturn V was but how and why it came to be.

The breadth leads to some mildly startling brevity: Apollo 11 is covered in a sometimes annoyingly inaccurate three pages: The alarms on the landing approach were not "ignored" by the controller but understood as not being critical, and there were more than six seconds of fuel left in the engines at touchdown.

But there are other books for that (Chaikin's of course being the first to come to mind). What I read here but not elsewhere in addition to the background included extensive coverage of the military space program, particularly reconaissance satellites but also the never-to-be Dyna-Soar and Manned Orbiting Laboratory programs.

Weaknesses include a jarring tendency for the author to abruptly step forward and insert his own opinions, usually in sentence fragments; a sometimes glib, too-clever tone; oblique references to incidents or people mentioned ten or fifty or hundreds of pages ago that the author expects the reader to pick up on; the occasional inaccuracy, as with Apollo 11 above or with the Ariane rocket described as French rather than European; and an appallingly bad index which, among other gaps, has no mention of Project Gemini despite fairly good coverage in the book itself.

And the final chapter, covering the present and future of the space program, seems to be the weakest. It comes across as kind of a laundry list of what's going on and what's planned: Hubble, lunar mining, Pathfinder, Cassini, John Glenn's shuttle flight, future Mars missions, Zubrin's plans, terraforming Mars, and the possibility of missions to the stars all take a brief moment on the stage before being ushered off again.

Still, it's an awesome feat to cover in one book the history of the space program in all of its manifestations: Russian, American, manned, unmanned, military, civilian. I was impressed and will likely be referring back to this book often.

William Burrows has compiled a complete and detailed history of the space program from the earliest thoughts and writings about the nature of space and space travel, to the present day struggles of NASA with the space station. Especially interesting is his tracing of the dynamic tension and close brotherhood between the "civilian" space program and the "military" program, although they were supposed to be separate.

As a long-time worker in the civilian space program I can attest to the accuracy of Burrow's writing about it. The only flaw in the book is its tendency to belabor the same points a bit, e.g. that the military and civilian space programs were inextricably linked. Also, the book is so replete with names that it can be a little confusing.

Nevertheless, this is a book that should be on the shelf of everyone interested in space exploration.

The first two chapters offer a summary of humankind's attempts at space travel OVER THE LAST THOUSAND PLUS YEARS -- information which can be found easily no where else. From early Chinese rocketry to the public ridiclue suffered by Goddard, Burrows offers the most intelligently written comprehensive text on the history of space exploration available, with a constant, striking sense of humor. After the second chapter his writing becomes a much more obtuse, detailed study, but only because he conveys that much more information -- if you are serious about the subject, there is no more important source. Please read it. Please pass it to a friend. We need more authors as inspiring as this one and this book needs more readers! If you are writing fiction, a historical study, a screenplay, or doing general research -- PLEASE -- do not consider your work complete without having finished this wonderful book!

I enjoyed this book very much, and thought it filled a niche I hadn't thought of before. Its strongest focus seems to be on the political environment of space exploration, where "political" has 2 meanings: 1) The traditional fight for funds in the US Congress and also the environments in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and 2) the infighting for limited funds among the different areas of the civilian and military space establishments. (The "office politics" of space, if you will.)

In this context, the book could be thought of as a space history from a management point of view. There's not a lot of technical detail here, esp. for those who have read a lot of space books. But Burrows does a good job of explaining why certain decisions were made in the different programs, given the historical context. It leads to a greater understanding of why we have the systems we have today, and how they have evolved, fight by political fight. The parts about the US spy satellites, the space shuttle, and solar system exploration were definitely enlightening from this point of view.

As noted with other reviews, "This New Ocean" has rather startling breadth, but sometimes maddeningly little depth. This is OK and to be expected in a survey book; my only problem was that it felt uneven. Some parts were covered with a broad stroke that gave the outlines but not every last detail, while others felt tacked on or thrown in. In particular, the development of the Russian space program after Khrushchev felt shallow, esp. coming after an extended section on the US program. This was a little unsatisfying, given the importance of Russian rockets in the more commercial environment of the post-Cold War world.

Overall though, this book is clearly recommended reading. It enlarged my view beyond just the science and technology to see how things get done, and has stimulated me and made me aware of new areas and ideas to learn about.

This was an enjoyable read and it would take a good read to make me hang in there for 650 pages (not counting biblio and index). You will learn a lot about Soviet space mishaps that you probably hadn't heard before. You will not learn much more about the Challenger incident unless you never watch Nova. There is more detail here about the German rocket program. Goddard is given his due but you will get more detail from other sources (and I can't remember the name of the book I read 30 years ago about Goddard). It was particularly revealing to learn about the battles between the various "parts" of the space program: the Air Force, JPL, NASA, others. Tom Hanks, in his Earth to the Moon series for HBO, said that the landing on the moon owed a lot to 3 people Sergei Korolyov, Wernher Von Braun and John Kennedy. If you are a little light on the background of the first two, this book will fix that. As for Kennedy, he gave this book its name.

The breadth of "This New Ocean" forces Burrows to treat the most compelling technical and personal achievements of the Space Age too lightly. With rocket launches more reliable today than fifty years ago, it's difficult to understand what the big deal was about the early rocket launches. A deeper engineering background than he offers would permit a better appreciation of the early rocketeers' work. Moreover, Burrows' writing seems heavy-handed at times (especially in condemning the effects of the Soviet political structure on research there). Burrows seems most comfortable writing on space-based reconnaissance (thanks to his earlier work on that subject), and he carefully relates the internecine funding battles of the 1950s and 1970s to the political climates of those times.

This volume is best used to place technological developments in a political context; look to Baker's "History of Manned Space Flight" or "The Rocket" for more careful consideration of the engineering.

Burrows does an excellent job of giving a review of the exploration of space by the two heavy hitters, the US and USSR. As an aerospace historian, I was familiar with almost all of what he wrote. The positive of this book is all of the information is contained in one book. Well researched and documented, it gives many insights to the past 40+ years of space exploration. Of course he is biased in his writing, but all historical works are by nature, biased, since we were not there personally to see it firsthand. Recommended reading for the space enthusiast.

I found this book to be a comprehensive history of spaceflight. The book is more historical and political in perspective than technical. More technical information and more illustrations would have helped. Coverage of the early twentieth century up until the sixties is wonderful, but the more recent chronology of the book progressively declines in authoritativeness and interest. Overall, I recommend the title for those who are interested in learning the complete history of spaceflight.

I've read almost all the Astronaut books. After dozens and dozens it gets redundant. Bought this book in hopes of learning new tidbits. I did, but not about the Astronauts/Cosmonauts and their missions. That part of the book was just so so 3 stars. Many other better books describing the Astronauts/Cosmonauts and their missions ( see my reviews ).

The book is 646 pages of written material plus the reference section. It reads well and William Burrows has a good flowing, easy to understand and follow writing style. There are some interesting B/W pictures too. After the first 100 pages I had a good handle how the material was to be presented. I told myself I was going to keep an open mind and not have opinions on INMO the liberal writing of professor (journalism) Burrows.

I did learn many new things about the politics between Republicans and Democrats in relation to space money spent and positioning their executive administrations to be seen in a good light by the general public. Congress members too. Lots of government internal fighting to get pet projects approved and more money to be spent on space. The Air Force, Navy and Army seemed to constantly be at each others throats to be in control of aspects of space to protect the country. Seems the Air Force was always locking horns with the CIA to be in charge of space reconnaissance. Eventually the Air Force gets to be in charge of getting the spy satellites in space and the CIA for interpreting the data.

INMO Dr. Burrows was knocking down the hawks like the big SAC General Curtis Le May. He seems to have knocked space penny pinching President Eisenhower. Thank goodness we had a few hawks around to help deter the possible Soviet nuclear threat with the level minded tempered likes of president John F Kennedy.

We see the race for space and the extreme financial cost, the accomplishments, tragedies and loss of life. We see the vast arena of space satellites that allow global communication, navigation, weather forecasting, military surveillance and more. We see the SALT treaty. Fascinating stuff.

Much of what William Burrows tells us was top secret and now is declassified. I was really interested in the then top secret program of satellite military recon that had the picture shots ejected and parachuted down, picked up by hook from a passing plane and then processed. Later the recon gets better and better in real time with much better resolution.

Fascinating for me was the knowledge learned from the "Grand Tour" of the outer planets by Voyager 1 and 2.

We see some space cooperation from the USSR later as their economy is falling apart. We see our Skylab and their Mir program. Also both our shuttle programs. YES the soviets had a shuttle program. We see the the breakup of the Soviet Union and what they had to do to keep their space program going.

Mr Burrows shows the beginning of the second space race with many countries like India, France, Russia, China, Japan and the US to name a few. Now a global space communication,navigation, weather and partial military surveillance system.

Even though I am a conservative at heart I do see the need for space research both manned and non manned and the many billions and billions of dollars needed. As William Burrows has shown us there was massive waste and money spend wrong on some space programs. Also congress did not give enough funding for some really great useful programs. All in all I'm very proud of the space accomplishments of our military, NASA and JPL ( both manned and unmanned programs) and the Soviet Cosmonauts. Based on the knowledge learned and technology created it was worth every penny. Hopefully soon there will be a world wide effort place for a Mars manned expedition and beyond.

A good 4 star book. Thanks William Burrows for the political space information and the battle between the military branches, CIA and NASA and the space battle between the US and the ex Soviet Union ( both miltary and non military ). Learned many new interesting tidbits.