About this item
The remarkable story of the trailblazers and the ordinary Americans on the front lines of the epic mission to reach the moon.President John F. Kennedy astonished the world on May 25, 1961, when he announced to Congress that the United States should land a man on the Moon by 1970. No group was more surprised than the scientists and engineers at NASA, who suddenly had less than a decade to invent space travel. When Kennedy announced that goal, no one knew how to navigate to the Moon. No one knew how to build a rocket big enough to reach the Moon, or how to build a computer small enough (and powerful enough) to fly a spaceship there. No one knew what the surface of the Moon was like, or what astronauts could eat as they flew there. On the day of Kennedy's historic speech, America had a total of fifteen minutes of spaceflight experience - with just five of those minutes outside the atmosphere. Russian dogs had more time in space than U.S. astronauts. Over the next decade, more than 400,000 scientists, engineers, and factory workers would send 24 astronauts to the Moon. Each hour of space flight would require one million hours of work back on Earth to get America to the Moon on July 20, 1969. Fifty years later, One Giant Leap is the sweeping, definitive behind-the-scenes account of the furious race to complete one of mankind's greatest achievements. It's a story filled with surprises - from the item the astronauts almost forgot to take with them (the American flag) , to the extraordinary impact Apollo would have back on Earth, and on the way we live today. Charles Fishman introduces readers to the men and women who had to solve 10,000 problems before astronauts could reach the Moon. From the research labs of MIT, where the eccentric and legendary pioneer Charles Draper created the tools to fly the Apollo spaceships, to the factories where dozens of women sewed spacesuits, parachutes, and even computer hardware by hand, Fishman captures the exceptional feats of these ordinary Americans. One Giant Leap is the captivating story of men and women charged with changing the world as we knew it - their leaders, their triumphs, their near disasters, all of which led to arguably the greatest success story, and the greatest adventure story, of the twentieth century.
About the Author
Roger D. Launius is a senior curator in the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Between 1990 and 2002 he served as chief historian of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. A graduate of Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa, he received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, in 1982 and worked as a civilian historian with the United States Air Force until 1990. He has written or edited more than twenty books on aerospace history, among others including "Smithsonian Atlas of Space Exploration" (HarperCollins, 2009) ; "Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) ; "Space Stations: Base Camps to the Stars" (Smithsonian Books, 2003; 2nd ed. 2009) , which received the AIAA's history manuscript prize; "Flight: A Celebration of 100 Years in Art and Literature" (Welcome Books, 2003) ; "Reconsidering a Century of Flight" (University of North Carolina Press, 2003) ; "To Reach the High Frontier: A History of U.S. Launch Vehicles" (University Press of Kentucky, 2002) ; "Imagining Space: Achievements, Possibilities, Projections, 1950-2050" (Chronicle Books, 2001) ; "Innovation and the Development of Flight" (Texas A&M University Press, 1999) ; "NASA & the Exploration of Space" (Stewart, Tabori, & Chang, 1998) ; "Frontiers of Space Exploration" (Greenwood Press, 1998, rev. ed. 2004) ; "Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership" (University of Illinois Press, 1997) ; and "NASA: A History of the U.S. Civil Space Program" (Krieger Publishing Co., 1994, rev. ed. 2001) . He is also involved in other historical studies. His book, "Joseph Smith III: Pragmatic Prophet" (University of Illinois Press, 1988) , won the prestigious Evans Award for biography. He has also published "Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History" (University of Illinois Press, 1994) , "Cultures in Conflict: A Documentary History of the Mormon War in Illinois" (Utah State University Press, 1995) , "Kingdom on the Mississippi Revisited: Nauvoo in Mormon History" (University of Illinois Press, 1996) , and several others. "Alexander William Doniphan: Portrait of a Missouri Moderate" (University of Missouri Press, 1997) , discusses the role of the vital center in American politics during the Mexican-American War and sectional conflict.More recently he has been studying the relationship of baseball to American culture and has published, "Charlie Finley: The Outrageous Story of Baseball's Super Showman" (Walker and Co., 2010) , and "Seasons in the Sun: The Story of Big League Baseball in Missouri" (University of Missouri Press, 2002) .He served as a consultant to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in 2003
