While the glories and tragedies of the space shuttle make headlines and move the nation, the story of the shuttle forms an inseparabe part of a lesser-known but no less important drama—the search for a reusable single-stage-to-orbit rocket. Here an award-winning student of space science, Andrew J. Butrica, examines the long and tangled history of this ambitious concept, from it first glimmerings in the 1920s, when technicians dismissed it as unfeasible, to its highly expensive heyday in the midst of the Cold War, when conservative-backed government programs struggled to produce an operational flight vehicle. Butrica finds a blending of far-sighted engineering and heavy-handed politics. To the first and oldest idea—that of the reusable rocket-powered single-stage-to-orbit vehicle—planners who belonged to what President Eisenhower referred to as the military-industrial complex.added experimental ("X"), "aircraft-like" capabilties and, eventually, a "faster, cheaper, smaller" managerial approach. Single Stage to Orbit traces the interplay of technology, corporate interest, and politics, a combination that well served the conservative space agenda and ultimately triumphed—not in the realization of inexpensive, reliable space transport—but in a vision of space militarization and commercialization that would appear settled United States policy in the early twenty-first century. -- D. M. Ashford

This work deals with the future aero-space launchers - reusable launch vehicles that are operated like aircraft - from the integrated perspective of the political, technical and economic issues that drive their development. Case study analyses include NASP, Sanger, HOTOL and Delta Clipper.

This book offers a unified presentation that does not discriminate between atmospheric and space flight. It demonstrates that the two disciplines have evolved from the same set of physical principles and introduces a broad range of critical concepts in an accessible, yet mathematically rigorous presentation. The book presents many MATLAB and Simulink-based numerical examples and real-world simulations. Replete with illustrations, end-of-chapter exercises, and selected solutions, the work is primarily useful as a textbook for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate-level students.

The updated and expanded third edition of this book focuses on the multi-disciplinary coupling between flight-vehicle hardware alternatives and enabling propulsion systems. It discusses how to match near-term and far-term aerospace vehicles to missions and provides a comprehensive overview of the subject, directly contributing to the next-generation space infrastructure, from space tourism to space exploration. This holistic treatment defines a mission portfolio addressing near-term to long-term space transportation needs covering sub-orbital, orbital and escape flight profiles. In this context, a vehicle configuration classification is introduced covering alternatives starting from the dawn of space access. A best-practice parametric sizing approach is introduced to correctly design the flight vehicle for the mission. This technique balances required mission with the available vehicle solution space and is an essential capability sought after by technology forecasters and strategic planners alike.

Access—no single word better describes the primary concern of the exploration and development of space. Every participant in space activities—civil, military, scientific, or commercial—needs affordable, reliable, frequent, and flexible access to space. To Reach the High Frontier details the histories of the various space access vehicles developed in the United States since the birth of the space age in 1957. Each case study has been written by a specialist knowledgeable about the vehicle described and places each system in the larger context of the history of spaceflight. The technical challenge of reaching space with chemical rockets, the high costs associated with space launch, the long lead times necessary for scheduling flights, and the poor reliability of the rockets themselves show launch vehicles to be the space program's most difficult challenge.

Detailed history of the American Space Shuttle Program from award-winning NASA insider Each mission is reviewed from its early inception to delivering the remaining vehicles to their final display sites Covers the history of reusable winged spacecraft from the 1920s throughout the final mission of the American space shuttle

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s courageous, candid memoir of his return to Earth after the historic moon landing and his personal struggle with fame and depression. “We landed with all the grace of a freight elevator,” Buzz Aldrin relates in the opening passages of Return to Earth, remembering Command Module Columbia’s abrupt descent into the gravity of the blue planet. With that splash, Aldrin takes readers on a journey through the human side of the space program, as one of the first two men to land on the moon learns to cope with the pressures of his new public persona. In honest and compelling prose, Aldrin reveals a side of instant fame for which West Point and NASA could never have prepared him. One day a fighter pilot and engineer, the next a cultural hero burdened with the adoration of thousands, Aldrin gives a poignant account of the affair that threatened his marriage, as well as his descent into alcoholism and depression that resulted from trying to be too many things to too many people. He didn’t realize that when he landed on his home planet his odyssey had just begun. As Aldrin puts it, “I traveled to the moon, but the most significant voyage of my life began when I returned from where no man had been before.” Return to Earth is a powerful and moving memoir that exposes the stresses suffered by those in the Apollo program and the price Buzz Aldrin paid when he became an American icon.